News regarding the dangers of GMOs and biotech, and the advantages of organic sustainable agriculture.
U.S. subsidizes Brazilian cotton to protect Monsanto’s profits
by Emelie Peine
Think Forward
On February 18, Republicans in the House of Representatives defeated an obscure amendment to the House Appropriations bill by a 2-to-1 margin. The Kind Amendment would have eliminated $147 million dollars that the federal government pays every year directly to Brazilian cotton farmers. In an era of nationwide belt tightening, with […]
Honeybees ‘entomb’ hives to protect against pesticides, say scientists
‘Entombed’ pollen is identified as having sunken, wax-covered cells amid ‘normal’, uncapped cells. Photograph: Journal of Invertebrate Pathology
by Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk
Honeybees are taking emergency measures to protect their hives from pesticides, in an extraordinary example of the natural world adapting swiftly to our depredations, according to a prominent bee expert.
Scientists […]
Iowa organic farmer says non-GMO corn outperforms GMO
By Ken Roseboro
The Organic & Non-GMO Report
Jason Wells, a farmer in Milton, Iowa, who grows both non-GMO and organic corn, says that the non-GMO corn variety he grows produces higher yields than genetically modified varieties.
Other farmers prefer non-GMO
Wells has grown a Pioneer Hi-Bred non-GMO corn variety called 34YO2. In 2009, Wells says the corn […]
The Dangers of Roundup Ready food
Graze
By Joel McNair, Belleville, Wisconsin —For a few years now — basically since his retirement from Purdue University — plant pathologist Don Huber has been telling people that there are serious problems with glyphosate (Roundup).
To date most of the discussion has taken place within the world of soybeans. Based on two decades of his […]
Is a Pesticide Harming All Those Bees?
By FELICITY BARRINGER
New York Times
For several years, Tom Theobald, a beekeeper in Boulder, Colo., has been trying to check out his suspicions that a relatively new class of pesticides has been interfering with the normal breeding and development of his stock. The pesticides, based on the chemistry of nicotine, are generically called neonicotinoids. They […]
GMOs Have Never Been Proven Safe, Nor Beneficial
by Dr. Mercola
Dr. Philip Bereano is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington and an actively engaged activist against genetically modified (GM) foods. His academic work is within Technology and Public Policy, and over the past 30 years,
Dr. Bereano’s work has focused on genetically engineered organisms (GMOs) in foods, crops and animals, as […]
International Seed Day advocates for patent-free seeds, organic food, and farmers’ rights
by Ethan A. Huff
NaturalNews
(NaturalNews) The fight to preserve food freedom is taking place all over the world as multinational biotechnology companies like Monsanto continue to push for total domination of the world’s food supply. Access to heirloom and organic seeds, contaminant-free organic food, and even one’s own farmland is threatened by various types […]
Colombia: Indigenous Communities Protect their Food Security
by Juliana Rincón Parra
English Global Voices
Indigenous communities in Colombia are taking steps to protect their food security. Not only are they educating their communities to eat what they grow on their vegetable gardens instead of buying expensive food brought from outside but they are also protesting new laws and regulations limiting their access to […]
Garden Provides Organic Produce to Low Income and Disabled People
by Angela Hart
Rohnert Park Patch
Rohnert Park mom Beverly Hammond delivers fresh, organic produce to her neighbor Deborah Creech, 53, once a week — well, sometimes more, depending on what’s growing.
Hammond is the garden coordinator for the community garden tucked back behind Cross and Crown Lutheran Church in Rohnert Park, a job she does for […]
Monsanto Uses Latest Food Crisis to Push Transgenic Corn in Mexico
by Alfredo Acedo
Upside Down World
Monsanto has turned the drop in international corn reserves and the havoc wreaked on Mexican corn production by an unexpected cold snap into an argument for speeding up commercial planting of its genetically modified (GM) corn in Mexico. The transnational is claiming that its modified seeds are the only solution […]
US Farmers Sue Monsanto Over GMO Patents, Demand Right To non-GMO Crops
by Catherine Saez
Intellectual Property Watch
The Public Patent Foundation filed suit yesterday against Monsanto’s patents on genetically modified seeds with farmers asking to be protected against the biotechnology giant’s potential lawsuits in case of accidental contamination from plants grown with its seeds.
On behalf of 22 agricultural organisations, 12 seed businesses and 26 farms and farmers, […]
Join the CFS Virtual Rally for the Right to Know and demand that Congress label GMOs
by Ethan A. Huff
NaturalNews
(NaturalNews) On Saturday, March 26, 2011, the Center for Food Safety (CFS), a human and environmental health advocacy group, held its “Virtual Rally for the Right to Know” campaign. Tens of thousands of Americans rallied together both online and at events nationwide, and sent letters to Congress demanding that it pass […]
Right to Know Rallies Against GMOs held Across the US
This past Saturday (March 26, 2011) people in Washington DC and across the country in many cities rallied to protest the lack of labeling in genetically modified foods. It didn’t exactly make headlines in the mainstream media. Here is one video from the rally in Los Angeles:
Right to Know Rally, Los Angeles 3.26.11 from […]
Turning backyards into Urban Farms – A Successful Model Feeding People in the City!
By Jared Page
ksl.com
Excerpts:
24-year-old Sharon Leopardi is the owner of Backyard Urban Garden (BUG) Farms, a community-supported agriculture (CSA) business that uses Salt Lake City residents’ backyards as places to grow, tend and harvest fresh produce to sell to consumers. Her goal in starting the business a little more than a year ago was to prove that […]
Sustainable Winter Agriculture in Colorado
Health Impact News Editor Comments:
Kudos to Frank Stonaker of Colorado State University for understanding how unsustainable our current agricultural system is with less than 1% of our population providing our food. Mr. Stonaker recognizes the importance of small-scale farming and local sustainable agriculture, and he is actually DOING SOMETHING about it with this great […]
The Real Cause of Revolution in the Middle East? Food Subsidies can no longer Provide Cheap Bread
Health Impact News Editor Comments: If you read the mainstream media covering events in the Middle East where regimes are quickly being toppled, you come away feeling that the people just all of a sudden developed a taste for democracy and wanted a better government. The real truth, however, is something more basic. Food. […]
Rodale data show organic just as productive, better at building soil than conventional agriculture
by Tom Philpott
Grist
Organic agriculture is a fine luxury for the rich, but it could never feed the world as global population moves to 9 billion.
That’s what a lot of powerful people — including the editors of The Economist — insist, but the truth could well be the opposite: it might be chemical-intensive agriculture that’s the frivolous luxury, […]
Welcome to Maine – the way farming should be
By Avery Yale Kamila
Portland Herald Press
Quotes from this article:
“According to the latest statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Maine is home to 8,100 farms, and more than 90 percent of them are classified as small operations. Maine is also ahead of the curve in the organic farming movement, with the number of […]
Apple group opposes Canada’s genetically engineered apples imported to US
by Coral Beach
The Packer
Joining the Northwest Horticulture Council in opposing genetically engineered, non-browning apples from Canada, the board of the U.S. Apple Association voted unanimously at its March 12 meeting to ask the USDA to not allow the fruit into the U.S.
Nancy Foster, president of the association based in Vienna, Va., said the vote to […]
Europe has GM Food Label Law, but Consumers Concerned About Food Produced with GM Soy Feed
Health Impact News Editor Comments: Europeans are way ahead of the United States when it comes to genetically modified foods. They have had a food labeling law in place since the 1990s, while the US still has none. They also ban GM products imported from the US. But now consumers in Europe are going […]