I had the pleasure of attending a large community dinner in Bellingham to honor Cesar Chavez last week.  Our partner organization, Community to Community (C2C), hosted the event, as they do almost every year near his birthday.  Community to Community, under the leadership of Rosalinda Guillen, a former organizer with the United Farm Workers, has served and organized farm workers and former farm workers and their families in the Whatcom County area for years.

It's the infrastructure, stupid!  The New York Times discusses the reason it's difficult to produce and sell food grown in a sustainable manner.  The infrastructure that moves product from farm to retail outlets is decreasing just when the demand for sustainably grown, local food is growing.  In Vermont, where there is increased demand for meat and dairy raised in a sustainable manner, farmers are having difficulty.  The state had 25 slaughterhouses in the mid-1080s; now there are seven.  Nationally, the number of slaughterhouses declined from 1,211 in 1992 while the number of small farmers has increased by 108,000 in the last five years.

Governor Gregoire signed a bill into law, the Forest Biomass Supply Agreements Bill (2SHB 2481) that was passed nearly unanimously through the legislature near the end of the regular session.  Peter Goldmark, Lands Commissioner, requested the bill as part of the Department of Natural Resource's new emphasis on making use of forest biomass to encourage green industry in rural areas, thin out forests and prevent forest fires.

The Department of Natural Resources has announced partnerships with 4 pilot biomass projects, including one involving IWF and our partner Atlas Pellets, the largest wood pellet producer in Washington State, to move renewable energy from woody biomass along in Washington State.  In a Press Release, Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark said that the four partnerships "will put their technologies to work using forest products they purchase from state trust lands to produce clean, sustainable energy and rural jobs".

One of the (only) good things about the economic downturn is that government agencies at all levels have to get creative about how they provide services.  The City of Seattle is asking residents to adopt storm drains to help with the huge chore of removing leaves and debris that clog the drainage system especially during the rainy season.  The new program, akin to the popular Adopt a Street program, provides volunteers with a storm drain kit.

As we hear about the Copenhagen talks and what is coming out of them, very little is being discussed about the impact of US agricultural practices and climate change.  The Seattle Times had an article up last week about a UW climate scientist, David Battisti, and his shift in interest from the looking at the regional impacts of global warming to understanding the impacts of climate change on crops around the world.