20 Places to Find Local Food and Family Farms Near You

Heather Callaghan
Activist Post

As demand for local and raw goods continue to rise, more people are asking - where do I find local organic? Where do I find raw milk and join a herd share? Where are the farmers markets, co-ops and stands?

Search engines are actually terrible at locating these underground hubs, which makes it so frustrating to try and opt out of corporate chains, save money, and build your family's health. If you've ever gotten a bunch of 'Yelp' listings for weight loss pills while searching, you know what I'm talking about. I've helped a few people find a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) but I found it by accident. So where are they all hiding?

As it turns out, many of the farmers and markets you're looking for have teamed up with certain websites to be mapped. Use this easy list to find yours today. They won't all be on the same map, but you will be sure to find markets and family farms in your area that were previously invisible.

Why you should bookmark and try them all - not all the hubs will be organic, some are just local. Some don't provide raw milk but could lead you there. Some have other resources like healthy body care, organic delivery or restaurants serving your favorite farm finds worth looking into. Some of the websites don't share your political perspective or stance on health and were possibly supported by agencies and organizations you don't care for. But that's okay, take only what you need and leave the rest.

20 Quick Resources to Find Local Food, Farms, Markets, Stands, Co-ops and more!

Farmerspal - Click the map or your state to find organic, markets, grocers, online shopping and more. Make sure you like their Facebook page for other great resources.

FarmMatch - Unique because whoever you are, you can put yourself on the map to be matched with producers in your area. Create your food profile today.

 LocalDirt - Helps you buy right from the farm. It's also a marketplace that allows you to sell and trade. Got eggs? Sell them to your neighbors here. It also allows groups and co-ops to set up bulk orders right there. This one is worth revisiting time and again to check out all its features.

Weston A Price Chapter Leaders - This is my favorite, because it puts you in touch with passionate people who give their time to connect you to your CSA and quite possibly raw milk and dairy. They will have the latest sources. Weston A. Price Foundation is a wealth of knowledge for traditional foods and health.

Real Milk Finder - Also from Weston A. Price, this locator could help you to your raw milk and dairy herd share source. Please keep in mind, raw milk availability really depends on your state laws. And not all of the herd share programs are listed there so be sure to read the next important list item.

Meetup - This seems like a weird place to get the connections but it makes sense. Meetup allows groups to safely connect online and publicly meet to enjoy hobbies, clubs, politics, education - anything. It's just people meeting up, doing what they love, learning or just having fun - I attribute so many happy, life-changing times to this website. This is how I found my CSA! I went to a nutrition wholefoods meetup to take free natural food classes. The woman running it was a Weston A. Price chapter leader who graciously led me through the entire process and got me connected to raw milk and pasture-fed foods. Wherever people who are passionate about their lifestyle meet, you are sure to pick up a wealth of resources and support. You should check it out to find like-minded people and get out there. I've made great friends this way. Some people find their soul mate!

Eat Wild - #1 website for all things grass fed. Their map includes Canada and connects you with grassfed wild foods, even companies who ship directly to you.

LocalHarvest - Another mapping site that allows you to find CSAs, Co-ops, open farms, markets, delis, stores and more. Thankfully, it's been around for awhile. Unfortunately, that could mean some of the info is outdated. Always good to call ahead - don't be afraid to talk to farmers and ask questions.

Homegrown.org - Created by FarmAid (another educational farm source), offers lots of education and provided some of the links in this article. It also has its own map to find local fare. FarmAid also has a list of open Winter Markets worth checking. They also list two maps to find wild catch and pastured cattle and dairy farms. Local Catch and HomeGrownCow.

Organic Consumers Association - Plug your zip code in and you'll be in touch with not just healthy GMO-free food sources but all kinds of natural health businesses - even skin care, acupuncture and more.

RealTimeFarms - Nicely designed, simple to use map shows farmers, artisans, restaurants, markets and more right in your town. Also search by ingredient or certified organic. Very eye-opening!

FarmPlate - Holy cow! Find everything in your area including apiaries, bakeries, stands, herbalists, confectioners and more. They've got it all.

Market Maker - Is another cool marketplace to buy and sell healthy homegrown.

EatWellGuide - Find local sustainable food. Is supported by lots of big partners so you know the locator will work great.

Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food - This comes from the USDA in an effort to be more "sustainable" and local. Maybe it's to deflect from the tens of billions of dollars going into Big Agri subsidies, the small farm crushing fines of the Food Safety Act, or the GMO deregulation that will run roughshod over local and organic fare. It makes me nervous that the federal government wants to get super cozy with local and have it compassed on a map. But, it does offer a stunning visual of a variety of farms and markets, not just USDA supported ones. You can also find markets near you here. Enjoy it - you paid for it.

EatLocalGrown - Wouldn't it be great to know if your food has GMOs or not? Eat Local Grown agrees and locates sources near you. They also have informative beginner's articles, new food provider listings, and over 50,000 Likes on Facebook.

Food Routes - Has an outreach called Buy Fresh, Buy Local with chapter leaders who will help you do just that.

WWOOF - World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms is a buddy to Permies.com (awesome permaculture resource) and a volunteer exchange. People volunteer to learn and work an organic farm and they can get room and board in exchange. Some would call it a free vacation. It's an opportunity to travel, see what it takes to cultivate, and...find a farm!

So there you have it - 20 places to locate local food and the farmer right in your area. Did I leave out an important resource? Do you have any questions? Please share your resources and questions below and please let us know if any of the links above helped you with your search.

Hen image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The NATO Economy, the solution to the U.S. crisis

by Thierry Meyssan

New Secretary of State John Kerry’s first contacts were not devoted to the Asia pivot (transfer of U.S. forces to the Far East) or the partition plan for the Middle East, but to the creation of a NATO economy, without arousing the slightest concern in Europe. However, should it be implemented quickly, this project would solve the economic crisis in the United States at the expense of Europeans.

Press Conference of John Kerry and Guido Westerwelle in Berlin, February 26.

During his annual State of the Union address, President Barack Obama unilaterally announced the opening of negotiations for a Transatlantic Global Trade and Investment Partnership with the European Union (12 February). A few hours later, the scoop was confirmed by a joint statement from the U.S. President and the Presidents of the European Council, Herman van Rompuy and European Commission, José Manuel Barroso.

The transatlantic free trade area project was officially launched on the sidelines of negotiations for the North America Free Trade Zone (NAFTA) in 1992. Following a process of growth, Washington wanted to expand this area to the European Union. However, at the time, voices were raised in the United States to postpone this same absorption until the World Trade Organization was established and stabilized. There was fear that the two projects might collide rather than reenforce one another.
The creation of a transatlantic market is only part of a larger project, including the creation of a real government with a supra-institutional transatlantic economic council, a transatlantic policy council and transatlantic parliamentary assembly. These three bodies have been created in embryo without any publicity.
Their architecture harkens back to a very old project of creating a vast capitalist bloc uniting all States under Anglo-American influence. We can find traces of this in the secret clauses of the Marshall Plan and especially in the North Atlantic Treaty (Article 2). That is why no differentiation is made between the transatlantic union and the NATO economy.
From this point of view, it is significant to note that, on the U.S. side, this project is not monitored by the Commerce Department but by the National Security Council.
We have a glimpse of the transatlantic union’s mode of operation by observing how conflicts were resolved concerning the sharing of personal data. Europeans have very demanding standards for the protection of privacy, while American officialdom can do anything it wants using the fight against terrorism as a justification. After shuttling back and forth, Europeans are laying down as the Americans have imposed their one-way model: the Americans copy European data, while the Europeans have no access to US data.
In economic matters, the idea is to repeal tariffs and non-tariff barriers, that is to say local standards that render certain imports impossible. Washington wants to quietly sell its GMOs in Europe, its chickens treated with chlorine, and its hormone-laced beef. It wants to mine data from Facebook and Google etc. without being hampered by privacy protections.
To this long-term strategy are added medium term tactics. In 2009-2010, Barack Obama had set up a Committee of economic advisers chaired by Christina Romer, historian. This specialist of the Great Depression of 1929, had developed the idea that the only solution to the current crisis in the United States would be to cause a shift of European capital to Wall Street. To this end, Washington has barred most non-Anglo-Saxon tax havens, then played with the euro. Capitalists in search of stability encountered difficulties in transferring their money to the United States, however. The NATO economy will make it easier. The USA will save their economy by attracting European capital, thus to the detriment of Europeans.
Beyond the uneven nature of this project and the trap it represents in the immediate future, the most important thing is that the interests of the United States and those of the European Union are in reality divergent. The United States and the United Kingdom are maritime powers who have a historical interest in transatlantic trade. It was even their goal expressed in the Atlantic Charter during the Second World War. In contrast, continental Europeans have common interests with Russia, especially in energy. By continuing to obey Washington as during the Cold War, Brussels does a disservice to Europeans.

Malaysia Invaded - 100's of Terrorists Land on Beaches, Western Media Mute

Source: Tony Cartalucci, BLN Contributor

Hundreds of heavily armed terrorists have crossed from the Philippines and landed in the eastern Malaysian state of Sabah. Dozens are already dead, and the Malaysian military has brought in aircraft and armor to confront the audacious, bizarre invasion, scattering militants into the jungles of Borneo island. A seemingly headline news event, the invasion has been downplayed and spun by the Western media, many calling militant Al Qaeda-linked terrorists, an "armed Filipino clan."

Image: Malaysia has called in air support and armor to confront a bizarre terrorist invasion in its eastern state of Sabah.

....

The West's woeful, irresponsible coverage of a burgeoning region-wide destabilization, fits in nicely with its coverage of US-Saudi funded/armed terrorism around the world, including in Syria where US-funded terrorists of the so-called "Free Syrian Army" have just taken dozens of UN peacekeepers hostage in the Golan Heights - just days after the US announced it would fund the terrorists further, to the tune of $60 million and the West's Arab partners have just granted the terrorist faction Syria's seat at the "Arab League."



Terrorists are US-Saudi Funded Extremists - Part of Engineered Destabilization.

While the West pleads ignorance over the identity of the militants held up in the jungles of Malaysia's Sabah state, the militant organizations themselves have declared thousands more in reinforcements are being arranged in the Philippines to join and exasperate the conflict. The Free Malaysia Today newspaper reported in its article, "10,000 Tausugs to sail to Sabah," that :

Thousands of Tausug from Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi have sailed to Sabah to reinforce members of the so-called royal army of the sultanate of Sulu who are fighting it out with Malaysian security forces, a Moro National Liberation Front official said Tuesday.

The Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) of course, is one of several of Al Qaeda's franchises in Southeast Asia, and spun off the notorious terrorist organization, Abu Sayyaf, a US State Department-listed foreign terrorist organization with direct ties to Al Qaeda.

The Philippines' terrorist organizations, located amongst the country's southern islands have long held ties to Al Qaeda and receive funding and support from Saudi Arabia. AFP reported in their 2010 article, "WikiLeaks: US suspected Saudi ambassador to the Philippines of terror link," that:

The United States suspected a Saudi Arabian ambassador to the Philippines of potential involvement in funding terrorists, according to US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks this week.

The report would also state:

Francis Townsend cited Waly’s intervention to secure the release of two members of an Islamic charity detained in the Philippines, the cable showed.

The group was suspected of funnelling funds to Al-Qaeda-linked groups based in the southern Philippines.

It continued stating:

The February 24, 2007, US embassy cable named the charity suspected of terror financing in the Philippines as IIRO, which stands for the International Islamic Relief Organisation.
Intelligence agencies have said IIRO was set up by Muhammad Jamal Khalifa, a brother-in-law of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.

The report concluded by stating:

Overall, the WikiLeaks cables singled out Saudi Arabia as the key source of funding for radical Islamist groups including Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hamas.

Saudi Arabia is of course is the chief financier of Al Qaeda, and is currently leading efforts to fund, arm, and fill the ranks of Al Qaeda's franchises from Mali and Libya, to Syria and Iraq. A multitude of reports from across the West have identified Saudi Arabia as the lynch pin in Al Qaeda's global terror campaign, including the US Army West Point Combating Terrorism Center.

Its reports "Al-Qa'ida's Foreign Fighters in Iraq" and "Bombers, Bank Accounts and Bleedout: al-Qa'ida's Road In and Out of Iraq," identify a vast terrorist network maintained by the Saudis that recruits, arms, and funds terrorists from across the Muslim World, and can funnel a mercenary army into any desired nation. At the time, the desired nation was Iraq. In 2011, it was Libya. Today it is Syria. The same network that US soldiers fought in Iraq is verifiably in use today, in support of US regime-change operations in Syria.

And while it is acknowledged across even the Western mainstream media that Saudi Arabia is a notorious state-sponsor of terrorism, including the terrorists allegedly behind the September 11, 2001 attacks that left 3,000 Americans dead, the US has had a decades-long, deep economic and military relationship with the despotic Arabian autocracy.

The US maintains permanent military bases inside Saudi Arabia, funds the Saudi military, and has recently concluded the largest arms deal in US history with the Saudis. Additionally, Saudi Arabia's brutally repressive internal security apparatus is a creation of US advisers and operators.

The Saudi royal family and the elite amongst the US corporate-financier Fortune 500, have maintained deep financial and political ties as well. Saudi Arabian corporate-financier interests (run by the royal family) are tied directly to Wall Street and London via conglomerations like the US-Saudi Arabian Business Council and representation upon the JP Morgan International Council (Khalid Al-Falih of Saudi Aramco, amongst the highest valued companies on Earth).

This also includes the Bin Laden family, whose multi-billion dollar Saudi Binladin Group is an active member of the US-Saudi Arabian Business Council and plays a central role in deciding bilateral policy for the benefit of collective US-Saudi corporate-financier and corresponding geopolitical interests. At one point, the Bin Ladens and the Bush family sat around the same table, as both families were involved in the equity firm, Carlyle. In fact, Bush and Bin Laden family members were clicking champagne glasses together in Washington on 9/11, an event that would make both families immensely rich in the coming decade.

It is clear, most acutely in Libya and Syria, that the use of Saudi Arabia's global Al Qaeda mercenary army serves both Saudi Arabia's interests as well as Western geopolitical ambitions, including to exact regime change around the world. And it just so happens that the West and Saudi Arabia both seek regime change in currently Russo-Iranian-Chinese friendly Malaysia.

West Attempts to Install Client Regime in Malaysia

The West has been propping up Malaysian opposition candidate Anwar Ibrahim for years.

Anwar Ibrahim, head of Malaysia's opposition coalition, which includes the Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), has spent a lifetime in the service of Western interests. Anwar Ibrahim was Chairman of the Development Committee of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1998, held lecturing positions at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, was a consultant to the World Bank, and a panelist at the Neo-Con lined National Endowment for Democracy's "Democracy Award" and a panelist at a NED donation ceremony - the very same US organization whose subsidiaries are funding and supporting Bersih, a faux-pro-democracy Western-funded street movement that in fact was created by, and in the service of Anwar Ibrahim's political ambitions.

Bersih's street activism fits into a global pattern of Western-backed "color revolutions," where meddling in sovereign nation's political processes to install Western-client regimes is disguised as "democracy promotion."

Anwar Ibrahim's affiliations with Malaysian "Islamists," the already active political subversion his US State Department-funded Bersih movement is sowing in Malaysia's streets, and his Western backers' habitual support for terrorism internationally as a geopolitical tool, raises the possibility that his opposition movement is complicit in the conveniently timed militant destabilization Malaysia now faces, only months before 2013's general elections.

This may be why the Western media refuses to properly cover an otherwise very noteworthy conflict. The fact that these militants are emanating from long-time US ally, the Philippines, and the Philippines' current role in assisting the US "pivot" towards Asia, and more specifically facilitating a proxy confrontation with China, illustrates the greater regional implications at play. The US intends to install client regimes in Myanmar led by Aung San Suu Kyi, Thailand led by Thaksin Shinawatra's despotic political dynasty, and in Malaysia led by Anwar Ibrahim. Together, this front will then be turned against Chinese interests as part of a long-planned desire to encircle and contain China.

It will be done so under ASEAN and at the cost of Asia's stability and prosperity.

The future of Asia hangs in the balance, and therefore conflicts like Malaysia's battle against armed extremists in Sabah may not be covered by the Western press, but it must be covered by the alternative press. The unhinged insanity that is now spilling blood on Malaysia's shores, also represented by the West's proxy Anwar Ibrahim and his attempts to provoke street protests against the ruling government, illustrates just how dangerous the current Anglo-American international order is, and how far its reach extends.

We must identify the corporate-financier interests driving this agenda, - interests we most likely patronize on a daily basis, and both boycott and permanently replace them to erode the unwarranted influence they have used, and will continue to use against people the world over.

At the open: Dow hits record but jobs report euphoria soon fades

The Dow Jones industrial average sprinted to a record intraday high at the open to above the 14,400 mark, but the rally soon fizzled out as celebration over a strong February jobs report was replaced by worries that stocks may have been bid up too quickly this week.
The inevitable concern that the improvement in the U.S. labour market may cause the U.S. Fed to ease back on its stimulus measures was also taming enthusiasm for stocks. U.S. financials were particularly under pressure.
The TSX was lower in early trading, hurt by sinking gold prices that have been pressured by the flight of money to higher-risk assets such as stocks. The lacklustre TSX performance came despite Canadian job creation showing remarkable strength last month, helping the loonie to recover some of this week's losses against the greenback. 
At 1017 a.m. (ET), the Dow was up 15 points, or 0.1 per cent, at 14,344 after earlier hitting an intraday record high of 14,413.
The broader S&P 500 index was nearly unchanged after hitting a high of 1,552 near the open, closing in on its record closing high of 1,565.15 from October of 2007.
The S&P/TSX composite index was down 7 points, or 0.05 per cent, at 12,819. Gold was down $11.30 at $1,563.80 (U.S.) per ounce. Other commodities weren't doing great either: crude oil was down 21 cents at $91.35 and copper was down 0.2 per cent at $3.51 per pound.
The U.S. non-farm payrolls report showed the net creation of 236,000 jobs last month. Economists were looking for 165,000 jobs. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate fell to 7.7 per cent, its lowest level since 2008 and also a better reading than what was expected.
In Canada, February's job figures were much stronger than anticipated, with net employment gains of 50.700 more than five times what economists had called for. The unemployment rate, as expected, held at 7 per cent. The loonie is trading up about one-third against the greenback.
Among stocks moving on news this morning was Pandora Media Inc., with its shares are up 24 per cent after it reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter results late Thursday and announced its CEO plans to step down.
On the TSX, SNC-Lavalin Group hiked its dividend by 4.5 per cent as it reported an increase in profit and revenue in the final quarter of 2012. But investors weren't impressed by the numbers; the stock opened down 6 per cent at $43.10.
Overnight, Japan's Nikkei rallied 2.6 per cent, climbing for the seventh day in a row and reaching a fresh multi-year high as the yen fell against the U.S. dollar. The country released a revision to fourth-quarter gross domestic product to show an annual 0.2-per-cent increase, much better than last month's initial reading of a 0.4-per-cent contraction. It also said its current account deficit rose in January.
Traders also absorbed more data from China overnight. Its exports rose 21.8 per cent in February, down slightly from January's 25 per cent but beating low expectations given that the period encompasses the Lunar New Year holidays, when manufacturers traditionally close. Imports plunged 13.8 per cent, but that was met with little concern because of the impact of the holidays.

Foreign Lottery Scam Costs 81-Year-Old Nearly Half A Million Dollars

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — A scam targeting the elderly causes a man to give away $400,000 in six years after he says he was told he’d receive more than a million dollars in prizes.
Rochelle Ritchie explains that man is warning others not to follow in his footsteps.
The question that comes to mind when you hear these kinds of stories is “Why would anyone do that?” Well, this elderly man says he saw it as an opportunity to pay for his wife’s medical expenses.


A growing lottery scam out of Jamaica is costing Americans millions.

“We see these almost on a daily basis,” said Frank Schissler, U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
The U.S. Postal Inspection Service says lottery fraud out of Jamaica and Canada are growing more prevalent by the day, and targeting the elderly with promises of big bucks.
“We’re estimating losses at over $42 million in the last three years,” said Schissler.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, in 2008, just under 3,700 scams were reported. In 2012, that number jumped to almost 30,000.
Norman Breidenbaugh, 81, is hoping what happened to him won’t happen to anyone else.
“I don’t have a pot to go in or a window to heave it out of, I lost everything,” he said.

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BRICS Development Bank Could Break Dollar Hegemony

Source: BDL
South Africa’s chances of playing a significant role in the mooted Brics bank now depend on President Jacob Zuma’s negotiation skills.
International Relations Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane says that while the country will not say no to a chance to host the bank, it was now up to negotiations at the level of president among Brics member countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and SA).
South Africa will host the fifth Brics summit in Durban from March 26-27 as it looks to stake its claim on this body of emerging economies, which aspires to be an alternative economics and politics club.
While South Africa is the smallest of the Brics economies, it has set its sights on hosting the bloc’s planned development bank. Pretoria diplomats feel that the country’s distinguished financial services sector — hailed in 2008 for its sophistication at a time when US and UK banks were at the centre of a global financial crisis — stood South Africa in good stead.
However, as a “junior” partner to countries like China, it maybe wishful thinking to expect its financial services glamour to guarantee it host status.
Pretoria, with backing from the African National Congress, has been lobbying for the right to have the bank based in South Africa.
The option of having the bank co-hosted in two countries has also been considered, as technocrats and diplomats in these countries trash out preliminary issues ahead of the Durban summit, where the development bank will be launched.
Diplomats and leaders from the Bricks countries are also thrashing out details on the proposed currency swap mechanism — a potentially game-changing idea that could take on the dollar, euro and other currencies.
Brics countries are looking at ways to establish a foreign-exchange reserve pool, along with a currency-swap arrangement, meant to insulate these emerging economies against the economic woes faced by developed economies.
Ms Nkoana-Mashabane says she envisages a conclusion of the discussion on the currency swap to happen in Durban. The idea behind a currency swap was meant to keep trade among the Brics countries within the confines of this league’s currencies, so that “you don’t have to go through other countries that are not involved in the transaction”.
Intra-Brics trade is more than $300bn and is expected to reach the $500b n mark by 2015.
Together with the proposed development bank, intra-Brics trade and currency pooling are some of the key issues ahead of the Durban summit. It is hoped the bank, with a $50bn starting capital, would rival the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, which are dominated by established economies.
Brics countries will pool resources to fund development projects within their countries but these would not exclude other states. The bank would also fund projects in developing countries that are outside the Brics league.
Pretoria diplomats are determined in their campaign to host the bank. “Of course hosting it will be good,” says Ms Nkoana-Mashabane. “But not just good because it’s good to host an institution, (but) because SA has something to offer. We … have the capacity to run the best financial services in the world. We are a very sound, dependable democracy, with an independent foreign policy,” she says.
It would also be wise for South Africa to be ready to settle for nominating a citizen to run the bank, in the event that Brics presidents don’t agree on South Africa hosting it.
South Africa is gearing up to be the chair country for the whole year after the summit. That will put Pretoria in the driving seat in the implementation of the Durban declaration, the minister says.

French workers accused of 'being lazy' by U.S. tycoon riot on streets as last ditch protest to save 1,200 jobs descends into violence

Workers from the Amiens Goodyear plant gathered at the company offices

They were told at the end of January that the plant would close imminently

As union bosses met with managers the protest in Paris turned violent

New figures show French unemployment levels at their highest since 1999

Workers at a French tyre-making factory clashed with riot police today as last-ditch protests aimed at saving their jobs turned violent.
Staff from the Goodyear factory in northern France gathered outside the company's offices near Paris as they continued to rally against attempts to restructure or close the Amiens plant which employs 1,200 people.
But as union representatives met with company management inside, protestors fought with police on the streets outside, setting fire to piles of tyres.
The trouble flared as it was announced that unemployment figures in France had reached their highest for more than 13 years in the last quarter of 2012.
It also comes after American tycoon Maurice Taylor - chairman of U.S. tyre giant Titan International -  refused to rescue the Goodyear tyre factory because its workers are 'lazy, overpaid and talk too much'.
Scroll down for video

Clashes: Riot police are pictured near Paris today as a last ditch protest by workers to save a Goodyear plant that employs 1,200 staff descended into violence

Anger: Tyres can be seen burning in the foreground as Goodyear staff clash with police in Paris today

Riot: Police form a line to drive protestors back as a fire rages close by. The workers were told in January that their factory in Amiens is to close imminently

Maurice "Morry" Taylor delivered the crushing summary of how some outsiders view France's work ethic in a letter

In the letter released on Feburary 19, Mr Taylor said his company would not be buying a Goodyear tyre plant in Amiens that is threatened with closure and the loss of 1,170 jobs, telling French industry ministry Arnaud Montebourg: 'I have visited the factory several times.
'The French workforce gets paid high wages but works only three hours.
'They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three hours and work for three. I told the French union workers this to their faces. They told me that's the French way!'
The letter sent by Mr Taylor sparked a row with the government, with Mr Montebourg branding the description ‘ridiculous’, saying that he would instruct government agencies – including the tax office – to examine Mr Taylor’s business with ‘redoubled zeal’.
Goodyear said on January 31 that it would be closing its main French plant and cutting its workforce in France by 39 percent amid labor disputes and plunging car demand in Europe.
The issue is now creating unrest in Paris as one demonstrator tore away a policeman's shield while another hit the officer on the head.
Only a spray of tear gas pushed the mob back.
The tyre firm announced that it was to close the plant at the end of January.

 

Today's meetings between unions and management are said to be to discover the findings of an independent report into the social and economic impact that the closure of the plant will have.
The French Government is proposing to reform the labor regulation that has held up the factory's closure after five years of attempts by the company to restructure the plant.

French workers clash with riot police in protest over jobs 

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2289625/French-workers-burn-tyres-clash-riot-police-ditch-protest-save-1-200-jobs-descends-violence.html

Line of defence: Police sprayed tear gas at demonstrators in a bid to drive them back

Burning rubber: Officers look on as a demonstrator wearing a Goodyear protest slogan T shirt throws another tyre onto a raging fire

Running battles: Protestors attempt to storm a barricade as police fend them off outside the Goodyear offices in west Paris

The workers were infuriated last month when tyre executive Taylor, CEO of Titan International, said the plant was 'not worth saving'.
The fortunes of the Goodyear plant are in stark contrast to that of a Dunlop plant just across the road which is going from strength to strength.
The two plants, whose shared parent is Goodyear Dunlop, chose different destinies four years ago when Dunlop's unions accepted tougher labour conditions and Goodyear's rejected them.
Now Goodyear faces closure, while Dunlop has received more than 50 million euros in investment.

Union leaders at the two plants on the outskirts of Amiens, where riots erupted last August, were friends before a management request to merge the plants and switch to four daily work shifts from three previously tore them apart in 2009.

Scuffle: One worker is seen kicking out at a riot policeman who tries to use his shield to protect himself

Violence: One protestor was seen taking a policeman's shield while another threw a punch at him

Defending the country's work ethic a fortnight ago, Mr Montebourg said that America was in fact the top foreign investor in France, with 4,200 US companies employing nearly half a million people within the country.
Haviland & Co. has been present in France since 1842, IBM since 1914, Coca-Cola since 1933 and General Electric since 1974, while last year companies including Massey Ferguson, Mars chocolate and 3M chose to invest further in France.
Mr Montebourg added: ‘But most importantly, in contrast to your ridiculous and derogatory comments, all these companies know and appreciate the quality and productivity of the French workforce and the commitment, know-how, talent and skills of French workers.’
Apparently warning Mr Taylor against further attacks, Mr Montebourg wrote: ‘In the meantime, rest assured that you can count on me to have the competent government agencies survey your imported tyres with a redoubled zeal.’
But the government is now facing a growing problem to find a rescuer for the troubled plant.

Heated: A plume of black smoke billows high into the air as riot police stand close to the flames generated by the burning tyres

The trouble erupted as it was announced today that French unemployment figures had reached their highest for more than 13 years.
The sixth consecutive quarterly increase means that 10.6 per cent of French residents were unemployed in the last quarter of 2012, according to the national statistics institute Insee.
It also means that unemployment in the country is at its highest since the second quarter of 1999 and is the latest bad news for a government that has admitted it will fall far short of growth and public deficit targets this year.
The French economy also contracted by 0.6 per cent in the last three months of the year.
Other data published on Thursday showed a widening trade deficit.
The figures prompted renewed calls from the French Government for action at a European level to help improve the Euro Zone's second largest economy.
The European commission has predicted that unemployment in the country will reach 10.7 per cent this year, nearly double the unemployment rate in Germany and only slightly behind Italy's 11.6 per cent.
But France's unemployment rate is still far better than in Greece and Spain.
President Francois Hollande took power last May promising to halt a relentless rise in unemployment which has left one in four youths out of work and vowing to restore France’s industrial competitiveness.
The president’s approval ratings have slumped to around 30 percent since then as his government battles against a tide of factory closures.
After backtracking last month on growth and deficit targets, he conceded the unemployment goal would now be harder to reach.