Happy Birthday to the great Willie Nelson! This world-class musician is an amazing person due to his songwriting talent and his many humanitarian pursuits. He has supported many issues, especially those dealing with farming practices. Willie Nelson also established Farm Aid back in 1985, an organization which raises awareness of families losing their farms and encourages donations to help these families keep their land.
More recently, he fought to keep a local farm in downtown LA from being bulldozed for a warehouse, as presented in the documentary, Welcome to Eden. In the doc, Willie Nelson, Joan Baez, Daryl Hannah, and other celebrities try unsuccessfully to save the farm from being evicted by Ralph Horowitz, a land developer, who bought the land from the Los Angeles City Council through questionable back-room deals.
The public has the power to protect farms by giving input by December 14th, 2014 on the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), a first step towards modernizing food regulations since 1938. The FDA currently regulates farms that grow fresh produce and provide the facilities to process food for consumption, to make sure they aren’t going to kill anyone, but they don’t prevent care about foreign contamination. In this new resolution they shift priority, for the FDA, from regulation to preventing contamination as well.
Willie Nelson is a great man who continues to do good in the world and provide soul soothing music.
Welcome to Eden is distributed by World Wide Motion Pictures Corporation.
