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N.M. food banks want farm bill

As most Americans prepare for Thanksgiving, 35 million Americans, including 372,000 in New Mexico, were struggling to put food on their tables, and food-bank inventories nationwide were scarce. Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate stalled debate on a farm bill that could bring much-needed hope to food banks and hungry Americans.

Food banks are suffering as a result of a more than 70 percent decline in support from a federal food-aid program in recent years. Strong agricultural markets have led to drastic reductions in food purchased and distributed by the federal government.

Every day that goes by without a farm bill enacted is a day that shelves continue to go empty. The New Mexico Association of Food Banks and the 240,000 people that we serve need a farm bill that provides increased funding for the Emergency Food Assistance Program and strengthens the food-stamp program. Specifically, we need at least $250 million a year in mandatory funding for TEFAP, with the amount indexed for inflation to ensure that we can continue meeting the increased need for emergency food assistance in the New Mexico.

The U.S. House passed its version of a farm bill in July that would provide more than $4 billion in new investment in federal nutrition programs. The Senate is expected to resume debate on its version of the bill following the current Thanksgiving recess.

Hunger is a solvable problem, but the charitable sector cannot do it alone. Government commodities are among the most nutritious and needed food products that we distribute.

Please contact New Mexico's U.S. senators, Pete Domenici and Jeff Bingaman, and urge them to pass a Farm Bill and bring home a victory for our hungry neighbors in New Mexico.

Laurel Wyckoff

Executive director

N.M. Association of Food Banks

Albuquerque

On the issues and our political reps

The Tribune's Nov. 17 Insight & Opinion page raised an urgent need to tackle issues, including the commentaries "Locally grown" by V.B. Price and "Flush with success" by Martin Heinrich.

Perhaps they should have looked over each other's shoulders a bit, because some of us are using more water for awhile to establish new xeriscaping or to grow some of our own food to save resources wasted in transportation and packaging.

We, at our street-corner farm, . . . have taken note of a recent article on a veggie-grower and his container gardens and have built a box that is almost ready for planting a winter crop. Our 1-year-old grandbaby is still eating zucchini and cherry tomatoes fresh off the vine.

Our favorite forms of transportation are now a folding bike that can go almost anywhere with us and a red, wooden wagon that holds two tykes and a week's worth of groceries. As we trundle from place to place, we are developing a broader understanding of community, seeing hopeful signs of social regeneration and often hearing birds chirping.

We notice, however, that talking about what needs to change is much easier than making it happen. While we might applaud the steps Mayor Martin Chavez has taken toward a greener Albuquerque, we see the sprawl, the pavement through the petroglyphs and the bring-it-on addiction to growth and business profits that are overwhelming this dry and fragile habitat.

Too many voters still believe that clear-skies and healthy-forest legislation will bring us either one, that we are in Iraq for the sake of democracy rather than oil, or that any of the four candidates for New Mexico's U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici's Senate seat offer us any hope for changing from our war - and waste-based economy to one that is both humane and sustainable.

We see, too, that U.S. Rep. Tom Udall has not noticed that the vast majority of Americans want out of Iraq now, understand the need for an immediate end to the foolishness of new nuclear weapons at Los Alamos and know the importance of rapidly expanding investment in existing renewable energy technology.

An even greater majority want super-military zealots, Steve Pearce and Heather Wilson to stop and smell a few flowers and hold a few babies before our wars destroy them all.

Democrats and Republicans have become adept at promising what voters want and need while delivering the opposite. No Child Left Behind sounds wonderful but leaves as many educational casualties in its wake as Operation Iraqi Freedom leaves corpses behind.

When our soldiers come home to kill themselves at almost twice the rate as those who died in combat, they express the same despair as the little guys who have to be medicated to keep them in school. Both point to the deadly gulf between U.S. preaching and its practices.

Why is it not obvious that we need to care for the health of our children and vets, to use existing technology to conserve fuel, water and other natural resources and build a renewable energy infrastructure, to give up the notion that anything nuclear solves more problems than it creates and that aggression breeds anything but violence?

Can we remember leaders who betray our trust long enough to impeach them, as letter-writer Sally-Alice Thompson suggested (in "Udall, vote against impeachment? No!" Tribune, Nov. 17)? Can we find candidates who follow the Constitution rather than the money?

Maybe we should rethink having Wilson-Pearce-Udall-Chavez face themselves in the election and pick someone who will face us, answer our questions and concerns and vote in a way that gives our children less poverty and Ritalin and more future. Maybe voters need the Ritalin so they can start paying attention.

Astrid Webster

Albuquerque

Our awful system needs to be fixed

In a bad system, bad people rise to the surface, and bad conditions prevail.

Health care, education and the general welfare are in shambles. The separation between the rich and everyone else continues to grow. A marginalized, targeted citizenry has its collective head filled with manufactured desires and violent images.

We are an apathetic, ignorant and misguided people - a nation of consumers.

So-called leaders, who have only their own interests and those of their masters in mind, frighten us with the specter of terrorism, capitalizing on our anxiety and lack of knowledge to rob our freedoms.

Domestic spying is widespread and passively accepted. A dwindling number of huge corporations, whose only allegiance is to making money, control the media. Reality is multifaceted - the fewer the voices that reflect this complexity, the greater the distortion.

The United States locks up more of its citizens than any other country, the majority for non-violent drug offenses. A disproportionate number of these citizens are people of color. The environment is dangerously degraded and worsening.

Lonely, isolated and divided into groups that hate and fear each other, we fill the void in our inner selves with drugs, alcohol, consumerism and entertainment. Psychological depression is widespread.

It is the rich against everyone else. Much of the world's turmoil can be attributed to the struggle for dominance and control of resources. The rich control the media, the corporations, the police and military. They own the courts and the politicians. They are consumed with greed and power, squeezing the noose tighter around our necks. They want it all and will stop at nothing to get it.

We are deceived into wanting to be like them, desiring what they have.

Corporate capitalism has created this horrific and rapidly deteriorating situation. It is destroying the world and threatening our survival as a species. This terrible system must be scrapped and replaced by a new one that restricts selfish impulses, creates community, manages and shares the world's resources and instills responsibility for the future.

Richard Ward

Albuquerque