Food and water go hand in hand as two of the most basic requirements for life. Yet, both our public water systems and our community food security have become subject to serious and growing threats from toxic contamination, corporate control, and lack of community ownership and oversight. This panel, developed in collaboration with a national coalition of water rights advocates, will explore the interactions between food security and water security from several perspectives, and offer models for action to protect these public goods.
A representative from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy will describe how industrial agriculture threatens our water supplies, and what kinds of policy initiatives can protect us from these threats; the National family Farm Coalition will help us envision a National farm bill that will protect both small family farmers and local water supplies; a representative of the Community Water Center in California’s Central Valley will discuss the impacts of dairy farming on a water-poor community and how they have organized to take back their water; and a member of the New Mexico Acequia Association will discuss traditional water rights for irrigation, how the state government is impinging on those rights, and what community activists have done to preserve both their cultural heritage and their food sovereignty.

* Upstream/Downstream: How big agribusiness wastes water and pollutes the environment (Heather Schoonover, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy)
* Case study: The Agribusiness threat to community water supplies in California (Susana de Anda, Community Water Center, Central Valley, CA)
* Farm security and water security, hand in hand: How a good farm bill can protect our farmers AND our water (National Family Farm Coalition)
* Preserving Tradition: Protecting Water Rights in Northern New Mexico (Harold Trujillo, New Mexico Acequia Association)
* Taking action (each speaker focuses on positive steps for action)
* Question and Answer and audience interventions