In the News

Fall 2008

Healthy Food Declaration. Dan Imhoff recently joined Roots of Change and a team of top-notch food and agriculture thinkers to write a Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture. Dan served as Originating Author and Primary Editor of the declaration, with an editing team of Wendell Berry, Michael Pollan and 13 activists around the country. After its release in a ceremony at Slow Food Nation on August 28 in the Rotunda of San Francisco's City Hall, the document immediately made it into the national press cycle. The declaration is now the cornerstone of a campaign to collect hundreds of thousands of signatures—to be delivered, along with a set of policy recommendations, to policy makers in Washington in the Fall of 2009. Check out the declaration at fooddeclaration.org where individuals can endorse and comment on the twelve farm and food principles. Send your message to Washington!

Recent Press:
Edible Portland, Fall 2008 issue, 9/13 ediblePolitics page, "Spark a Change - Four things you can do this election season to stir up the food debate - Vote with your Fork"

Washington Post, 8/29: "The 12 principles include providing access to affordable, nutritious food to everyone..." (read more)

New York Times, 8/31: "…the Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture, which had a huge presence at the event..." (read more)

Water Consciousness Book. In the springtime we were approached by the San Francisco independent news organization, AlterNet, to design for them a book called Water Consciousness: How we All have to Change to Protect Our Most Critical Resource. It was a tight schedule—a month and a half to design and fine tune the book for the printer so it would be ready for a late August event that would kick off a year-long campaign on water consciousness. Hot off the press, this book is "a solution-focused guide to the world's greatest environmental crisis." The book's writers include Maude Barlow, Tony Clarke, Vandana Shiva, Bill McKibben, and Brock Dolman. We anticipate this will be the beginning of many collaborative publishing projects.

New Office. In July, after 8 years in our previous space, we've moved into new digs in Healdsburg. We're now in a renovated craftsman house, with a great yard and inspiring work spaces where we will continue our projects and meet with future partners, friends, and activists from around the world. We couldn't be more fortunate.

CAFO Book. Work on CAFO: Confined Animal Feeding Operations continues. It's a 400-page book on industrial animal food production, not for the weak of heart. It will feature full-page photographs, behind-the-scenes reporting on industrial animal farms, and essays by luminaries in the field. We're not sure if it will be a Spring '09 or Fall '09 release, but we're working to make it as fast as possible.

Farm Bill Work Continues. Our farm bill work never dies. Requests for talks and presentations continue, including a September plenary talk by Dan Imhoff at the Healthy Foods Local Farms Conference in Louisville, Kentucky and Natural Products Expo in Boston in October. In addition, Dan also attended the first meeting on a 50-year farm bill plan in Washington, D.C.. The 50-year plan is being spearheaded by Wes Jackson—and the first meeting brought together a small group of thinkers including Herman Daly, Wendell Berry, David Orr, Laura Jackson. This is just one of a number of policy oriented efforts designed to more directly confront the gap between policy and the on-the-ground challenges we face in our food and agriculture system.

Paula Crossfield spoke with Dan recently and asked him some questions about his work and his participation in Slow Food Nation. Read Part 1 of the interview, followed by Part 2.

Interviews. In August, Dan Imhoff interviewed two leading writers on the global food crisis: Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved; and Vandana Shiva, renowned food and agriculture activist and author.

Listen to the interview with Raj Patel: Inforum/Commonwealth Club Radio Program (mp3 audio file, 29.2MB).

Listen to the interview with Vandana Shiva: Soil Not Oil (mp3 audio file, 56 minutes).

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Spring 2008

We’ll Reap What We Sow. In early April, an editor from the Los Angeles Times approached Dan Imhoff to write an Op Ed on the progress of (what’s now called) the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008. It provided a great platform and an excellent opportunity to check back in on ongoing battles to finalize a bill between the House and Senate. The essay, We'll Reap What We Sow, was immediately picked up by newspapers across the country.

Me and My Planet. In April, Dan Imhoff re-launched the Watershed Media blog, this time under a new name, "Me and My Planet." Inspired by the readability, satire, and brevity of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s final essay collection, Man Without a Country, this online journal will feature concise pieces on wide ranging topics (mostly related to the environment and sustainability).

Farm Bill Events. Dan Imhoff was back on the road in May, for three events around Farm Bill issues. They coincided with the House and Senate passage of the Farm Bill—as well as President Bush’s veto and the subsequent override of the veto in both houses of Congress. The tour started with the two events sponsored by the Pickering Creek Audubon Center in Easton, Maryland on Tuesday, May 20th. This was followed up by an evening talk in St. Louis at the local eatery, The Companion.

Living on Earth. The syndicated National Public Radio program, Living on Earth, opened its May 24th show by interviewing Dan Imhoff on his perspectives on the latest Farm Bill. The show offered an excellent overview of how well conservation programs fared in this year’s Farm Bill negotiations. Check it out.

Water Consciousness Book Project. Roberto Carra is designing an exciting new book produced by AlterNet, the Bay Area web-based news organization. The book includes essays from many notable activists and writers, including Watershed Media Advisory Board member Bill McKibben, Brock Dolman, Vandana Shiva, Maude Barlow, and Tony Clarke. The book launches in late summer and will serve as the focus of a year-long campaign to raise awareness around water issues.

Emmett Hopkins Returns. Stanford University graduate and former Watershed Media intern Emmett Hopkins has returned for the summer to work for us on a variety of projects, and we couldn't be happier. In addition to putting hours in at the studio, he is farming a one-acre market garden on his family's farm south of Healdsburg.

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Winter 2008

Dan Imhoff wins 2008 EDDY Award. Dan Imhoff’s essay “Farm Bill 2007: A Citizen’s Guide,” first appeared in Edible Portland, one of 50 local food publications around the U.S. and Canada. By year’s end the essay was published in nearly all of the Edible Community’s publications around the United States as well as on websites, reaching tens of thousands of readers. (See www.ediblecommunities.com for more information on this great community of publishers.) In January it was awarded “Best Column (National focus/ Edible Nation) for the 2008 EDDY Awards. We are thrilled with the honor.

Eco Packaging Workshops. Dan Imhoff will be at the Anaheim Natural Foods Expo on March 13th moderating two half-day sessions on packaging solutions for the natural foods industry. The Produce-AM session, organized by Natalie Reitman-White and the Food Trade Sustainability Leadership Initiative, will focus on solutions for produce packaging. The Grocery-PM session, organized by Tom Wright of Sustainable Business Solutions, will focus on packaging for cereal, grains, and snacks. Both workshops are co-sponsored by Whole Foods.

Watershed Media to introduce new advisory council. In late 2007, we reached out to some of our long-time supporters and backers and established a top notch Advisory Board. They include:

Alice Waters, author, food activist, and founder of Chez Panisse Restaurant in Berkeley, California	Dan Barber, chef, farmer, and founder of Blue Hill restaurant in New York City and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Tarrytown, New York
Bill McKibben, author and climate change activist	Dr. Andrew Weil, author and founder of the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona School of Medicine
Jean Hegland, author of many books, including the post apocalyptic eco-feminist novel, Into the Forest, and Windfalls	Yvon Chouinard, environmentalist, activist, writer and founder of Patagonia Inc.
Orville Schell, author, former dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, current Director of the Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations

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Fall 2007

Three New Book Campaigns

This fall we’ve set three new projects in motion that we expect to launch in Spring 2009. (A fourth may soon be added.) Thanks to a two-year capacity building grant from one of our most loyal supporters, the Garfield Foundation, we’re planning a steady increase in the number of projects we manage at a given time. Using our experience from six book and outreach campaigns, we are joining forces with other outstanding organizations and individuals to produce some very exciting and worthy projects.

Eco Schools. This is being spearheaded by the Berkeley, California-based Center for Ecoliteracy (CEL) and published by Watershed Media. Eco Schools will address the urgent need for an inspirational and instructive tool to infuse environmental awareness in every phase of K through 12 school design and administration. Author Mike Stone is currently scouring the country for outstanding examples of eco school development in a variety of categories: campus and grounds; curriculum; cafeterias, school gardens, and nutrition programs; community engagement. Watershed Media was recently awarded a grant from the Compton Family Advisory Board to help complete this project — a new and valued supporter of our work.

Animal Factory Farms. We were approached by the Foundation for Deep Ecology to complete a sister project to the largely influential Fatal Harvest book and outreach campaign. This book, which includes both a large format, photo-driven, volume and an affordable companion reader, takes on a grim topic: industrial animal confinement agriculture. Despite the enormous popularity and success of books such as Fast Food Nation, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and Animal Liberation, which expose the brutality of large-scale animal production, the factory farm continues to dominate U.S. meat, dairy, and egg industries. Look for this book to take on the ethical, environmental, health, economic, climatic, and social aspects of treating domestic livestock as protein machines. We won’t be mincing words or sparing the graphic details.

The Food Chain Reader. We’ve informally joined forces with best-selling author and University of California journalism professor Michael Pollan on yet another new book project. (He has already contributed to our last two Watershed Media publications, Food Fight and Farming and the Fate of Wild Nature.) The Food Chain Reader (working title) will be geared toward the growing number of university classes around the country that focus on the many aspects of food production and agriculture — for which no adequate text currently exists. Michael Pollan teaches one such class himself. We’re shooting for a collection that will be both contemporary and timeless, one that can increase the national literacy around the importance of food production and which could also inspire a whole new generation of food journalism, business reporting, and research in geography, nutritional ecology, and other important disciplines.

Other news. The CBS Sunday Morning program, “Talking Trash,” on plastic packaging which featured an interview with Dan Imhoff has been nominated for an Emmy Award.  The Farm Bill has become front page news and op ed material for major newspapers across the country, with Food Fight helping to lead that charge. Onward!

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Summer 2007

Watershed Media’s Food Fight 2007 Farm Bill Outreach Campaign kicked into high gear in July. A front-page San Francisco Chronicle article — “The New Food Crusade” by Carol Ness — featured Food Fight as a beacon in the movement for Farm Bill reform. This outstanding article traveled quickly around the internet, giving a much needed jolt to an already inspired campaign. Next, we unveiled our “Vote with Your Fork” campaign. This evolves around a great graphic design that’s being printed on t-shirts and post cards and being made available to organizations who want to replicate and distribute cards to their constituencies. Also included in the outreach materials are easy-to-follow instructions for contacting representatives, learning more about the Farm Bill, and setting up information tables at some of the more than 4,000 farmers markets throughout the country. Buy "Vote with your Fork" T-shirt Now

As Representative Colin Peterson unveiled his blueprint for what can only be described as a reform-lite, pro-agribusiness Farm Bill, H.R. 2419, Dan Imhoff hit the road during the third week of July. There were three consecutive days in California: at the Patagonia Outlet in Santa Cruz; at the Santa Barbara Public Library; and at Stone Brewery in Oceanside. Meanwhile, reform groups were valiantly fighting for under-funded conservation and nutrition programs as negotiations in the House escalated.

Dan Imhoff then traveled to the East Coast for five more Farm Bill literacy building events: at the Westport Theater in Westport, Connecticut with former agriculture official Gus Schumacher, chef Michel Nischan, and Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT); at the New York University Library with Dan Barber and Clark Wolf; at the Community Center in Great Barrington, Massachusetts with a panel of local activists; at Vermont Law School with author and global warming activist Bill McKibben; and at the Stone Barns Center for Sustainable Agriculture in Pocantico Hills with Dan Barber and Clark Wolf.

On July 27, Democrats in the House of Representatives approved a Farm Bill that — if passed in its current form — would continue to give handouts to multi-millionaire farm corporations. That same afternoon, Dan Imhoff and Bill McKibben engaged in a two-hour conversation at the Vermont Law School about the importance of redirecting national spending toward regional economies, beginning with food production. So the 2007 Farm Bill Food Fight is now half over. (Commodity agribusiness 1, the Tax Payers 0.) The Senate is now expected to debate its own version of the Farm Bill in September. Any hopes of a food and farm legislation with a heavy emphasis on conservation, sustainability, and family farm values now lie in the hands of the Senate Agriculture Committee chaired by Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). Tune in to www.farmpolicy.com for daily updates on the twists and turns of ongoing Farm Bill negotiations. 

It’s not too late to contact your senators or to turn up the heat and Vote with Your Forks!

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Spring 2007

Food Fight 2007 Farm Bill Outreach Campaign

It’s been an action-packed Spring. Although we had our hunches that the Farm Bill would be a popular topic when we took the leap on this project, it’s hard to believe the wave we’ve been riding since the launch of Food Fight in February. Large capacity crowds have turned out at exciting venues in Oregon, California, Arizona, and Washington D.C.. These have included:

• a Farm Bill teach-in featuring Michael Pollan, Ann Cooper, Ken Cook, George Naylor, Carlos Marentes and Dan Imhoff at the University of California Berkeley’s Wheeler Auditorium (view webcast, 1hr 52mins);
• a Food Fight community forum with Dr. Andrew Weil and others at Pima College in Tucson;
• a city-wide event in San Diego at the University of Arizona College of Medicine’s Program in Integrated Medicine’s annual conference with Dr. Andrew Weil, Michael Pollan, Dr. David Wallinga, and Dan Imhoff.

Across the United States, Slow Food chapters have rallied around the Farm Bill issue and organized events in Portland, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Santa Rosa, San Diego, Washington D.C., Albuquerque, Tucson, and Santa Fe — to name just a few. Check the Watershed Media calendar for events near you in the next few months.

Dan Imhoff is reaching millions of listeners through a radio campaign that’s included 40 interviews between February and early June. These have been on big and small market shows, late night and commuter talk programs, solo interviews and panel discussions, AM, FM, satellite, syndicated public affairs beats, webcasts, and podcasts. Thanks to our very effective publicist, Kathlene Carney, we expect dozens more interviews as the September 30 reauthorization deadlines grows near.

FOOD NEWS: The Farm Bill. This is an extended conversation with Dan Imhoff, about the importance of the federal Farm Bill legislation, and its effect historically upon our national food production, and public health.

Print coverage of Food Fight is also catching up with the 2007 Farm Bill debate. Time Magazine devoted nearly half a page to the “Farm Bill Food Fight” in the Dashboard section of their “Report Card on No Child Left Behind” issue (June 4, 2007). Reviews have appeared in Body + Soul, Mother Earth News, the Santa Fe New Mexican, and on over a dozen blog and web sites. Dan Imhoff’s overview article on why the Farm Bill matters has appeared in the high-quality Edible Communities publications from Sacramento to the Chesapeake Bay to Santa Fe. The May 20, 2007 Sunday San Jose Mercury News devoted two full pages to “Fat Food Nation: How Farm Policy Affects our Health.”

Watershed Media has also been extremely fortunate to have attracted a number of first-time funders to support this campaign: Nancy Schaub, Marjorie Roswell, the Lawrence Levine Foundation, the Levinson Foundation, and Roll International. We are so grateful for their support.

Paper or Plastic has also been in the news. With the announcement by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to require all plastic bags to be compostable, (along with the city of Leaf Rapids, Manitoba’s outright ban on plastic bags and the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors decision to take up a study) the issue of single-use disposable packaging is also gaining some traction. Don’t worry, we won’t say we told you so. Check our Recent Articles section for timely articles.

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