True Left

A rare flash of sanity from Greece:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/19/greece-to-legalise-papers-for-thousands-of-migrants-to-counter-labour-shortage

Thousands of migrants are to have their papers legalised in Greece as part of efforts to curb an acute labour shortage that is hitting key sectors of an otherwise resurgent economy.

In a move that has thrown his centre-right party into turmoil, the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, pushed through legislation on Tuesday regularising the status of about 30,000 unregistered labourers.

Critics of the bill, which was passed in a parliamentary vote with the endorsement of the leftwing opposition, have described it as dangerous. Mitsotakis’s predecessor, Antonis Samaras, who voted against the law, had argued it risked turning Greece into “a beacon of attraction for illegal migrants”.

Defending the one-off measure, the country’s migration and asylum minister, Dimitris Kairidis, told the Guardian that the legislation would help with not only labour shortages but also social cohesion.

30000 is a tiny number (the population of Greece is >10 million), but it is better than none. Why should it be a one-off measure? The workers will eventually move to other EU countries, and Greece will need new workers. It should be regular policy.

Agricultural associations, which depend on immigrants to gather fruit and vegetables, have increasingly complained of their produce rotting, and MPs in rural areas have exhorted Mitsotakis to take action. Fears for this year’s olive harvest have similarly grown, with farmers whose yields have fallen because of the climate crisis voicing alarm over the prospect of reduced pickings on account of the labour shortages.

Under the bill, migrants will be able to legalise their status more easily by acquiring residence permits in three years rather than seven if they can prove they are employed. Greek government officials have been quick to emphasise that by integrating “invisible people”, the measure will help boost public revenue with employment taxes and contributions. Many of the jobs that people from abroad are willing to do are ones that unemployed Greeks will not touch, unions say.

At a time when anti-immigrant sentiment is fuelling far-right support across Europe, the law has been welcomed, with the left seeing it as overdue, if also opportune.

“Simply because it has proven incapable of confronting the big problem of labour shortages, the government has been forced to adopt [our] proposal and has moved ahead with the rapid legalisation of work and residence permits for undocumented migrants,” said Theodora Tzakri, who heads the main opposition party Syriza’s parliamentary group.

Greece still deserves to be made Ottoman again, though:

On Europe’s south-eastern frontline, Greece has long been a gateway to the EU, and the centre-right administration has faced criticism for enforcing self-declared “tough but fair” migration policies that have sought to keep asylum seekers at bay through illegal “pushbacks” at land and sea borders, according to human rights groups.

With ruling party MPs told they would face discipline if they failed to back the bill on Tuesday, cabinet ministers were at pains to stress that the measure in no way presaged a relaxation of the government’s migration management agenda.

See also:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/enemies/hungary-v4/

Returning the ‘Three Sisters’—Corn, Beans and Squash—to Native American Farms Nourishes People, Land and Cultures

For centuries Native Americans intercropped corn, beans and squash because the plants thrived together. A new initiative is measuring health and social benefits from reuniting the “three sisters.”

Historians know that turkey and corn were part of the first Thanksgiving, when Wampanoag peoples shared a harvest meal with the pilgrims of Plymouth plantation in Massachusetts. And traditional Native American farming practices tell us that squash and beans likely were part of that 1621 dinner too.

For centuries before Europeans reached North America, many Native Americans grew these foods together in one plot, along with the less familiar sunflower. They called the plants sisters to reflect how they thrived when they were cultivated together.

Today three-quarters of Native Americans live off of reservations, mainly in urban areas. And nationwide, many Native American communities lack access to healthy food. As a scholar of Indigenous studies focusing on Native relationships with the land, I began to wonder why Native farming practices had declined and what benefits could emerge from bringing them back.

Side note:

Wild—but not domestic—turkey was indeed plentiful in the region and a common food source for both English settlers and Native Americans. But it is just as likely that the fowling party returned with other birds we know the colonists regularly consumed, such as ducks, geese and swans.

https://www.history.com/topics/thanksgiving/first-thanksgiving-meal

Back to the original article:

To answer these questions, I am working with agronomist Marshall McDaniel, horticulturalist Ajay Nair, nutritionist Donna Winham and Native gardening projects in Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Our research project, “Reuniting the Three Sisters,” explores what it means to be a responsible caretaker of the land from the perspective of peoples who have been balancing agricultural production with sustainability for hundreds of years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSwGxJe4bVs

Abundant Harvests

Historically, Native people throughout the Americas bred indigenous plant varieties specific to the growing conditions of their homelands. They selected seeds for many different traits, such as flavor, texture and color.

Native growers knew that planting corn, beans, squash and sunflowers together produced mutual benefits. Corn stalks created a trellis for beans to climb, and beans’ twining vines secured the corn in high winds. They also certainly observed that corn and bean plants growing together tended to be healthier than when raised separately. Today we know the reason: Bacteria living on bean plant roots pull nitrogen – an essential plant nutrient – from the air and convert it to a form that both beans and corn can use.

Squash plants contributed by shading the ground with their broad leaves, preventing weeds from growing and retaining water in the soil. Heritage squash varieties also had spines that discouraged deer and raccoons from visiting the garden for a snack. And sunflowers planted around the edges of the garden created a natural fence, protecting other plants from wind and animals and attracting pollinators.

Interplanting these agricultural sisters produced bountiful harvests that sustained large Native communities and spurred fruitful trade economies. The first Europeans who reached the Americas were shocked at the abundant food crops they found. My research is exploring how, 200 years ago, Native American agriculturalists around the Great Lakes and along the Missouri and Red rivers fed fur traders with their diverse vegetable products.

Displaced From the Land

As Euro-Americans settled permanently on the most fertile North American lands and acquired seeds that Native growers had carefully bred, they imposed policies that made Native farming practices impossible. In 1830 President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, which made it official U.S. policy to force Native peoples from their home locations, pushing them onto subpar lands.

On reservations, U.S. government officials discouraged Native women from cultivating anything larger than small garden plots and pressured Native men to practice Euro-American style monoculture. Allotment policies assigned small plots to nuclear families, further limiting Native Americans’ access to land and preventing them from using communal farming practices.

Native children were forced to attend boarding schools, where they had no opportunity to learn Native agriculture techniques or preservation and preparation of Indigenous foods. Instead they were forced to eat Western foods, turning their palates away from their traditional preferences. Taken together, these policies almost entirely eradicated three sisters agriculture from Native communities in the Midwest by the 1930s.

Entire article: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/returning-the-three-sisters-corn-beans-and-squash-to-native-american-farms-nourishes-people-land-and?utm_source=pocket-newtab

BONUS:

Three Sisters • Native American Flute Song • Jonny Lipford
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--Rjjny6H1U

Three Sisters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3gnxcpeCj8

Why Crop Rotation is a Waste of Time

Timestamps:
0:43 - Time requirements of growing food and excuses
1:46 - Crop rotation purpose and refresh of what it is
3:05 - Gardening techniques have progressed over the years
3:53 - Why crop rotation is needed
5:01 - The important link between succession planting and rotation
6:25 - Observe and interact, inspired by nature
8:17 - Lack of flexibility of rotating
8:41 - My version of crop rotation
9:34 - How I deal with a plant disease
10:44 - Garden examples 1
11:58 - Garden examples 2
12:49 - Weather's impact on yearly yields
13:14 - Importance of creativity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSd-G_o3NGI

"Low dig" and "no dig" methods. Fascinating stuff!

https://www.yahoo.com/news/farmers-ease-workers-path-citizenship-050100486.html

Dec. 13—California farmers frustrated with congressional inaction on farmworker immigration and guest-worker reform have settled on another way to nudge their workforce toward U.S. citizenship.

A partnership announced last week between the California Farm Bureau and the Washington, D.C.-based National Immigration Forum gives ag employees access to an online portal guiding them through the naturalization process. The platform also helps with matters like protecting family members facing deportation.

The agreement reflects the worsening shortage of field workers as much as it does industry's cultivation of laborers fueling the Central Valley's economy, with restricted or no legal status.

"Offering farm employees who are eligible for U.S. citizenship a low-cost means to access citizenship puts them on a path to fully share in the American bounty they work every day to create," the president of the bureau, Jamie Johansson, said in a news release Monday.

For years the farm bureau has sided with immigrant rights organizations in promoting a path toward citizenship for farmworkers. The industry also advocates wider access to guest workers.

Farmworker immigration and visa reforms supported by the bureau and passed by the House earlier this year have stalled in the Senate. For the bureau, the partnership represents progress through another channel.

Under the new contract with the National Immigration Forum, bureau members will be able to refer their employees, free of charge, to an online service offering application preparation help, citizenship eligibility assessments and other legal reviews. The service also comes with case management services and noncitizen-related immigration inquiries such as deportation defense work.

NIF said in the news release its mission is to help immigrants eligible for access to U.S. citizenship "and we are grateful to the California Farm Bureau for giving us access to nearly 31,000 farm bureau members whose employees can benefit from the services we offer."

The organization also advocates for pro-immigration policies at the federal level, which is how it started working with the farm bureau years ago, said Bryan Little, the farm bureau's director of employment policy.

Little interprets the partnership as the state's farmers investing in their employees. It deepens the attachment some workers may feel for their employers, he said, and it may help with retention of top talent including supervisors.

"They're going to be key employees in that business so why wouldn't you want to invest (in them)?" Little asked. He emphasized information gathered by the portal will be kept confidential, inaccessible to the bureau or the NIF.

For years Kern County growers have complained of a worker shortage. The state's ag labor force has been stagnant for 15 years and averages 40 years of age, Little estimated, adding, "There are practically no people coming to the United States now to work in agriculture."

In its news release about the new partnership, the farm bureau reiterated its support for the Farm Workforce Modernization Act of 2021. The measure, passed by the House March 18 with bipartisan support, proposes to reform the ag guest worker program and provide a path to legal status for farm employees.

The Kern County Farm Bureau did not respond to a request for comment on the state farm bureau's partnership with the NIF.

The president of the California Fresh Fruit Association trade group, Ian LeMay, called the NIF's portal a "fantastic service" that increases certainty for people who can't afford a lawyer or advocate through the lengthy application process.

It doesn't lessen the need for changes to federal guest worker programs, LeMay said, and comprehensive immigration reform is still needed.

"It's an additional service to help our employees who might be in somewhat of a limbo state to have more confidence in terms of their status," he said.

A spokeswoman for the United Farm Workers Foundation declined to address the farm bureau's partnership with the NIF. She instead invited the farm bureau to add its support to the federal Build Back Better bill, which includes measures that would protect farmworkers and other immigrants from deportation.

But rightists prefer food to be expensive.

High-tech vertical farming:
https://youtu.be/AGcYApKfHuY

Transporting water to high elevations would require additional energy than regular farming, but I assume the tradeoff would be greater crop yield per unit land and thus a net energy gain. Of course, rainwater harvesting could eliminate this problem altogether.

Also, it looks like the plants are being grown with U.V. lights, which require electricity and hence energy to power. Solar powered electricity could reduce the dependency on fossil fuels, but the best solution would be using the sunlight itself for biochemical photosynthesis.

Finally, while the technology involved in crop maintenance is impressive, it also requires electricity, and hence energy, to run. The energy expenditure of maintaining the technology must be calculated to determine whether it is energy efficient compared to maintaining the crops with manual labor.

The Nation’s Corn Belt Has Lost a Third of Its Topsoil

Researchers used satellite imaging and surface soil color to find out how much of the nutrient-rich earth has eroded away

Seth Watkins has been farming his family’s land in southern Iowa for decades, growing pasture for his cows as well as corn and other row crops. His great-grandfather founded the farm in 1848. “He came in with one of John Deere’s steel plows and pierced the prairie,” Watkins recounted. With its rolling hills and neat lines of corn stretching to the horizon, broken by clumps of trees, it’s a picturesque scene.

But centuries of farming those hills have taken their toll on the soil. Now, farmers like Watkins are facing widespread soil degradation that can lower their crop yields and incomes. “In 150 years or so, we’ve lost over half of that rich topsoil—if not all in some places.”

Crops hunger for the carbon-packed composition of rich topsoil. They need the nutrients and water that it stores, unlike the compacted, infertile soils that decades of conventional farming create.

The baseline for soil in Iowa is visible on land owned by Jon Judson, a sustainable farmer and conservation advocate. His farm hosts a rare plot of original prairie grasses and wildflowers. Under the prairie, the soil is thick and dark, with feet of organic matter built up and plenty of moisture. The next field over is a recovering conventional field like Watkins’ farm, and the effect of years of conventional practices is obvious. The soil is pale and compacted, with only a few inches of organic carbon, much less soil moisture, and a lot more clay.

Scientists and farmers know that agricultural soil erosion has been a problem for decades, but quantifying soil loss from a hundred years of farming and across multiple states has proven difficult. Now a study led by geomorphologist Evan Thaler and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in February attempts to answer the elusive question of how much topsoil has been eroded in the Corn Belt, which stretches roughly from Ohio to Nebraska and produces 75 percent of the nation’s corn. The study estimated that about 35 percent of the region has lost its topsoil completely, leaving carbon-poor lower soil layers to do the work of supporting crops. Having thick, healthy topsoil means plants can grow faster and healthier, increasing crop yields and keeping the field’s ecosystem running smoothly. Topsoil loss creates environmental problems, such as when eroded, nutrient-laden dirt degrades streams and rivers, and is estimated to cost the Midwest’s agricultural industry almost $3 billion annually.

“I think it’s probably an underestimate,” says Thaler, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst. “There are areas where there’s probably a centimeter of topsoil left.”

Entire article: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/scientists-say-nations-corn-belt-has-lost-third-its-topsoil-180977485/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

At least Biden does positive things once in a while:

https://www.agriculture.com/news/business/biden-to-sign-bill-with-4-billion-in-debt-relief-for-minority-farmers

President Biden said he would sign the $1.9 trillion coronavirus bill on Friday at the White House. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the package, which includes $16 billion in public nutrition and agricultural aid, “provides historic debt relief to Black, Indigenous, Hispanic, and other farmers of color who for generations have struggled to fully succeed due to systemic discrimination and a cycle of debt. We cannot ignore the pain and suffering that this pandemic has wrought in communities of color.”
...
House Agriculture Committee chairman David Scott said the aid was justified because of the oppression Black farmers had endured. “It is important for you to know that our Black farmers were not included in the other pieces,” he said, referring to pandemic relief bills that sent $23 billion to farmers last year, almost exclusively to whites. “So we got them $4 billion just to help them.”
...
In 1920, roughly one in every six farmers was Black. Today, less than 2% of U.S. farms have Black operators. Black farms are one-fourth of the size of the average U.S. farm, with smaller sales, and they are located mostly in the South. In 2007, the USDA Census of Agriculture said that a smaller portion of Black farmers than white farmers received federal farm payments and that the amount they received was half the U.S. average.

Advocates say the debt relief program will begin to rectify decades of USDA discrimination against Black farmers.

Korean Natural Farming
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_natural_farming

• Use the nutrients contained within the seeds
• Use indigenous microorganisms (IMO's)
• Maximize inborn potential with fewer inputs
• Avoid commercial fertilizers
• Avoid tilling
• No use of livestock waste

In Hawaii, crop productivity increased 2-fold with the use of KNF, while reducing water use by 30% and eliminating the use of pesticides proved to be a superior cover crop on degraded Hawaii fields.

More about this style of farming in Hawaii:
https://naturalfarminghawaii.net/
https://hawaiianparadisecoop.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/the-basics-of-korean-natural-farming-methods/

In South Korea, Natural Farming has been embraced by the South Korean government after one county experimented and every farmer in the county practiced it for a year. These rice farmers not only had bigger yields than usual, but saved money on their inputs and sold their rice for a premium. Where they practice Natural Farming it has had the added benefit of cleaning up the waterways, rivers and even coastal waters.https://web.archive.org/web/20140628024150/http://www.kalapanaorganics.com%3a80/natural-farming-with-indigenous-microorganisms/natural-farming/

The Basics of Korean Natural Farming (KNP)https://hawaiianparadisecoop.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/the-basics-of-korean-natural-farming-methods/