NAMA Newsletter

November 20, 2009

National Ocean and Fisheries Policies: Trickle Up or Trickle Down?

By Boyce Thorne Miller
NAMA’s Science & Policy Coordinator

“Fire! Aim! Ready!” A quote attributed to Gloucester fisherman Vito Giacalone in reference to fisheries management in New England, handily describes the processes to develop national policies and their regional implementation strategies — “Fire! Aim! Ready!” Without a carefully selected target, ‘ready’ and ‘aim’ efforts are useless anyway, and we are left with firing at random with no guarantee that the intended targets will be reached.  A chaotic battleground is hardly new for fisheries, but we would like to hope new policies and management under the Obama Administration can move away from that scene rather than perpetuate it.  Read More >>

Meet Brett Tolley

By Brett Tolley

NAMA’s Community Organizer and Policy Advocate

Five years ago I met Ramon near the deadly Sonora desert in Nogales, Mexico.  Ramon was a sixth-generation corn farmer from Southern Chiapas.  In recent years multi-national corporate farm interests systematically pushed middle-class farmers, like Ramon, off the land.  Ramon, along with millions of others, was displaced from his livelihood and traveled North desperate for work.  Ramon was 54, the same age as my father.   Read More >>

Changing Food Discussions to Include SEAfood

By Andrianna Natsoulas

NAMA’s Market Transformation and Food Justice Coordinator

Over the past several years, the food justice and local food movements in the United States have been growing. But, often when people think about local foods, they only think farmers and agricultural products. NAMA is working to bring SEAfood into this growing movement.  Read More >>