Tag Archives: health

Making a Planet-Friendly Farm Bill

, , , , , , , ,

Feb. 12, 2024

Making a Planet-Friendly Farm Bill

The federal Farm Bill isn’t just vitally important to farmers, it impacts every American community—urban, suburban and rural. This massive legislation shapes national policies dealing with everything from nutrition and hunger to climate change and natural resource conservation. Hear how a new Farm Bill can be turned into a force promoting agricultural practices that are good for farmers, the land, air and water quality, consumers, and future prospects for life on our planet. Find out what you can do to influence what the next Farm Bill ends up looking like.

SPEAKERS

Darin Von Ruden is a third-generation dairy farmer who is president of Wisconsin Farmers Union. Darin has been active with Farmers Union at the local, state and national levels and is a seven-time recipient of the Silver Star Award, National Farmers Union’s highest recognition of membership development. He and his wife JoAnn live in Westby and transitioned the farm to the fourth generation when their son Brett purchased the machinery and 50-cow dairy herd.

Margaret Krome has spent over 30 years developing federal and state programs and policies supporting sustainable agriculture. Margaret’s interest in agriculture dates back to her childhood, as the grandchild of a Florida avocado and citrus grower. She is policy program director at Michael Fields Agriculture Institute and previously worked for the Wisconsin Rural Development Center.

Mike McCabe is a member of a team promoting regenerative agriculture for the climate action group 350 Wisconsin. Mike got his start milking cows and working the land on his family’s farm before going on to lead the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign for nearly two decades and establish the grassroots group Blue Jean Nation. During a two-year stint in the Peace Corps, he served as an agriculture education adviser in the West African country of Mali.

HOSTED BY
Farley Center for Peace, Justice, and Sustainability
Southwest Wisconsin Area Progressives (SWWAP)
Brix Cider
Blue Jean Nation
350 Wisconsin

Natural Path Sanctuary/Gunderson – What is Green Burial? – Mineral Point Public Library

, , , , ,

March 21, 2024

What is Green Burial?
Cemeterian Dustin Duve from Natural Path Sanctuary will discuss green burial options. Learn about the Natural Path Sanctuary, located in Verona, a nature preserve burial ground also known as a green cemetery. The first cemetery in Dane County that exclusively follows natural/green burial practices offering natural and traditional alternative to modern-day burials.

Please RSVP to

Farley Center – The Dine’ and Uranium

, , , ,

4/13/24

The Dine’ and Uranium

The presenters, Omie Baldwin and Cathy Middlecamp, will tell not one but two stories, as the title suggests. But these quickly converge, because uranium ore was found on the land of the Dine’ in the Four Corners Area of the United States. Omie Baldwin will speak about the Navajo People’s cultural history, where and how they lived, past and present, how they needed work, and the mining facilities nearby in which they found work. Cathy Middlecamp will talk about three reasons why we took uranium out of the ground, what happened when we did, and some more general stuff about radioactivity and “radiation.”

Who are these people and what are the stories of their land? What is uranium and what are the stories of uranium miners in the past? What new chapters in the story are being written today? We promise more questions than answers together with a lively romp through stories of our (slightly) radioactive planet.

Please RSVP to

This presentation is co-sponsored with Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR)

Presenter: Omie Baldwin

Omie Baldwin is retired as the Student Service emerita in the University Counseling and consultation Service/University Health Services at UW-Madison. As a counselor and as an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation, she and her colleague, Cathy Middlecamp, designed and taught the course “Uranium and American Indians. The first chemistry course, to meet the campus wide ethnic studies requirement. She is past board member of the Farley Center, She served a board member and board chair of the Farley Center for seven years.

Presenter: Cathy Middlecamp

Cathy Middlecamp is professor emerita in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and an affiliate of the Department of Chemistry. From 2015 to 2020, she also served as the director for education and research at the Office of Sustainability. Her scholarship lies at the intersection of science, people, and the planet. For her teaching and work bringing science to the general public, she has received awards at the local, state, and national levels. As a professor, she sought to engage students in learning chemistry in real-world contexts, including chemistry that related to radioactive substances. https://nelson.wisc.edu/staff/middlecamp-cathy/

Natural Path Sanctuary/Gunderson – What is Green Burial?

, , , , ,

Feb. 19, 2024

What is Green Burial?
Shedd Farley and Dustin Duve from Natural Path Sanctuary along with Melissa Theisen from Gunderson Funeral & Cremation Care will be here to discuss green burial options. Learn about Natural Path Sanctuary, Verona, a nature preserve burial ground also known as a green cemetery. The first cemetery in Dane County that exclusively follows natural/green burial practices offering natural and traditional alternative to modern-day burials.

The Ants and the Grasshopper Mt. Horeb Screening

, , , , ,

October 18, 2023

SouthWest Wisconsin Area Progressives, (SWWAP) and 350 Wisconsin and the Farley Center invites you to a FREE screening of The Ants & The Grasshopper, a full-length documentary shedding light on an amazing woman’s quest to save the world.

Anita Chitaya has a gift; she can help bring abundant food from dead soil, she can make men fight for gender equality, and she can end child hunger in her village. Now, to save her home from extreme weather, she faces her greatest challenge: persuading Americans that climate change is real.

Traveling from Malawi to California to the White House, she meets climate skeptics and despairing farmers. Her journey takes her across all the divisions shaping the US, from the rural-urban divide, to schisms of race, class and gender, to the thinking that allows Americans to believe we live on a different planet from everyone else. It will take all her skill and experience to persuade us that we’re all in this together.

This documentary, ten years in the making, weaves together the most urgent themes of our times: climate change, gender and racial inequality, the gaps between the rich and the poor, and the ideas that groups around the world have generated in order to save the planet.

WHAT: The Ants & The Grasshopper, followed by discussion and Q&A with members of the Agriculture Policy and Practices Team
WHEN: Wednesday, October 18, 2023, 7pm
WHERE: Mount Horeb Community Center, 107 N. Grove Street
Mount Horeb, WI 53572 See less See less