Food and Agriculture

Toledo Passed A “Lake Erie Bill of Rights” To Protect Its Water

August 18, 2019 Mari Margil and Ryan Dickinson, In These Times. Create! Clean Water, Community Rights, Food and Agriculture, Lake Erie

For three days in 2014, the people of Toledo, Ohio, couldn’t drink the water. A massive blue-green algae bloom producing a toxin known as microcystin was poisoning Lake Erie, the city's primary source of drinking water. Algae blooms are increasingly common in Lake Erie, caused in large part by runoff from industrial factory farms and warming waters. Things have become so bad that there are now algae “forecasts” predicting how large the algae bloom will be each year. Large-scale toxic blooms are once again afflicting the lake, in summer 2019. In the face of this growing crisis, and seeing little help coming from their state or federal representatives, residents of Toledo determined that they needed to take steps themselves.

‘Fridays For Future’ Movement Takes To Swiss Streets

August 11, 2019 Telesur English. Resist! climate crisis, Ecosocialism, Food and Agriculture, Fridays for Future

Thousands of environmental activists from 38 European countries brought their “Fridays for Future” movement to the Swiss city of Lausanne, calling for swift action from politicians and businesses to reduce emissions linked to global warming. "We are all united coming from different countries and, despite the fact it's holidays, we are ready to sacrifice our time to have politics change, to raise awareness about what's happening but also about what is not happening,” 29-year-old French woman, Lise Tourneboeuf, said. Let’s display “our will to change this system which is not functioning. We want to show there are people of all ages, of all nationalities, and even on holidays the crisis continues. We expect action from politicians."

When Will We Start Applying The Precautionary Principle To Chemicals Killing Our Kids?

August 4, 2019 Katherine Paul, Organic Consumers. Organize! Food and Agriculture, health, Pesticides, Youth

The first car my parents carted me and my siblings around in, in the 1950s, didn’t have seatbelts. Not one of us was ever strapped into a car seat. No kid I knew donned a helmet before hopping on her bike. When I was a kid, there were no government-regulated safety standards for cribs or playpens or strollers. There were no “choking hazard” warnings on the packages containing the toys we played with, regardless of how many small, potentially detachable parts came with those toys. After decades marred by child deaths in car accidents, and what were determined to be preventable deaths if only baby equipment manufacturers had thought to make this crib safer, or that stroller less dangerous, the federal government stepped in. Taxpayer-funded government agencies, like the Consumer Product Safety Commission, founded in 1972, told corporations they had to make products safer.

Herbicide Warfare Against Gaza Farmers

August 1, 2019 Maureen Clare Murphy, Portside.org Educate! Farmers, Food and Agriculture, Gaza, Herbicides, Poison

Israel’s military propagandists are at it again. A video recently tweeted by COGAT, the bureaucratic arm of Israel’s military occupation, celebrates its efforts to teach Palestinian farmers in the West Bank about hybrid fruits and vegetables. What the military doesn’t boast of in its cheerful short video is its systematic poisoning of besieged Gaza’s most fertile agricultural land. Since 2014, the Israeli military has used crop-dusting planes to spray herbicide along Gaza’s eastern boundary. It has long razed agricultural and residential land along the so-called “buffer zone” to increase its soldiers’ field of vision.

The 9-Percent Lie: Why Are The USDA And EPA Hiding The Fact That Half Of All US Greenhouse Gas Emissions Come From Industrial Food, Farming And Land Use?

July 30, 2019 Ronnie Cummins, Organicconsumers.org Educate! EPA, Farming, Food and Agriculture, greenhouse gases, Land, USDA

The Climate Emergency is finally getting the attention of the media and the U.S. (and world) body politic, as well as a growing number of politicians, activists and even U.S. farmers. This great awakening has arrived just in time, given the record-breaking temperatures, violent weather, crop failures and massive waves of forced migration that are quickly becoming the norm. Global scientists have dropped their customary caution. They now warn us that we have to drastically reduce global emissions—by at least 45 percent...

Indigenous Food Security Is Dependent On Food Sovereignty

July 30, 2019 Andy Murphy, Civileats.com Create! Food and Agriculture, Indigenous Peoples, Land

New research shows that hunting, fishing, and foraging for traditional Native foods help nourish tribal members—but first they need access to their ancestral lands. Several times a year, the locals at Orleans, California see a surge of sport fishermen and trophy hunters come through town, driving big trucks decked out in camouflage and sporting polarized fishing sunglasses. The locals, including some of the Native people from tribes in the Klamath Basin, have to enter the same lottery and buy the same hunting permits as the outsiders ...

USDA Opens The Door To New Untested, Unlabeled GMOs

July 27, 2019 Pat Thomas, Organicconsumers.org Resist! Food and Agriculture, GMOs, Labeling, USDA

On June 6, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) proposed to overhaul longstanding regulations governing genetically modified organisms (GMO). The proposed new rule would revise the agency's current method for regulating genetically modified plants, and would exclude newer so-called “gene-edited” GMOs. In a statement, the USDA said the new rule came "in response to advances in genetic engineering." A week later, in the political equivalent of a one-two-punch, President Trump bolstered the USDA’s proposal by signing an executive order directing the USDA...

Iowa Crops Look Like Food — But No One’s Eating

July 26, 2019 Mark Bittman, Portside.org Educate! Commodification, Farming, Food and Agriculture, Iowa

Iowa is unrecognizable from centuries ago, when Europeans took the land for themselves. What were prairie and wetlands are now neatly partitioned grids of intensely cultivated land: the model for the farm as factory. I was in Iowa last week shooting for the PBS NewsHour Weekend “Future of Food” series. There are some good things going on — and you’ll see them in the segment, which will run later this summer or fall — but I left feeling depressed as hell.

The Green New Deal Must Transform Agriculture & Food Systems To Combat Climate Crisis

July 20, 2019 The Center for Food Safety Educate! Food and Agriculture, Green New Deal

Eight environmental, farmworker, public health, and food safety advocacy organizations delivered a petition—signed by more than 100,000 people—to Congress. The petition champions solutions to urgent food and agriculture issues that should be addressed in Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Ed Markey's (D-MA) Green New Deal. The food and farming sector is the largest overall employer in the United States and a top contributor to climate change. For the Green New Deal to be truly effective, the working people who drive our food and agriculture system to make our meals possible—who are among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change—must be at the negotiating table.

Co-Operative Farms: Past, Present, And Future

July 18, 2019 Aasa Marshall, Cooperativesfirst.com Educate! Cooperatives, Farms, Food and Agriculture, New Economy

Agriculture’s not an easy industry to break into. Start-up costs can be insurmountable; the cost of land alone puts farming out of reach for those who aren’t already in the sector. Most people who farm can do so because they inherited land or had the support of family to purchase it. The co-op model, though, has been providing ways to make farming accessible for generations. Chris Bodnar is a farmer and the owner, with his wife Paige, of Close to Home Organics in southern British Columbia.

100 Years: The Bank Of North Dakota Story (Part I)

July 14, 2019 the Bank of North Dakota. Create! Food and Agriculture, New Economy, Nonpartisan League, Public Bank

The credit system of the United States and the northern plains was not structured to meet the needs of North Dakota farmers in 1915. National banks could not lend money on farm mortgages. State banks could make farm loans, but they were under-capitalized, often dependent on money from out of state. Farmers were heavily dependent on store credit—buy food and hardware on credit now, pay for it after harvest—and insurance companies. Farmers needed money to purchase equipment, buy seed and livestock, and pay for such necessities of life as they could not produce for themselves on their farms.

We Have The Money To Fix Our Food System

July 12, 2019 By Brian Wakamo, Otherwords.org Create! Farming, Food and Agriculture, Labor, New Economy

Poverty is expensive, but fixing it doesn’t have to be — at least not compared to the status quo. The Institute for Policy Studies and the Poor People’s Campaign recently released a Moral Budget, and it’s a veritable treasure trove of illuminating data proving that point. They propose we could easily cut $350 billion from the annual military budget — which would still leave us with a bigger budget than China, Russia, and Iran combined — and raise $886 billion by enacting fair taxes on the rich and corporations.

Man Builds Pantry Outside His Home To Feed The Hungry

July 4, 2019 Mayukh Saha, Activist Post. Create! Food and Agriculture, Hunger, Mutual Aid, Poverty

To all those people claiming humanity is in shambles and moral values are dead — you have no idea what you are talking about. Yes, humanity has certainly taken some hits to the chest, but it is still very much out there. People still believe in kindness, and people still engage in civility. This is a true event from Watertown, New York, where a citizen named Roman Espinoza has built a ‘blessing box’ — essentially a pantry for people to pick up and food at any point of the day. The box is built in the lawn facing their house; and just like Little free libraries, there are no restrictions for these either. The concept is extremely simple — the box contains food that people donate — the same food others might want. To put it even more simply, the box was simply a donation box where the poor ate, and the not-so-poor donated.

Unfair Food Pricing Is Killing Family Farms And Regenerative Farming

July 2, 2019 By Elizabeth Henderson, Truthout.org Create! Farmers, Food and Agriculture

In February, a dairy farmer friend sent me a note confiding that a few farmers she knows are living on cereal until their milk checks arrive. Yet, the recently released census of agriculture shows that the number of young farmers is growing even as the average age of farmers also increases, and there are uplifting articles about young Black farmers connecting with the land and enjoying the self-empowerment that comes with being an independent farmer. Meanwhile, voices are rising about the central role that regenerative and organic farming can play in a Green New Deal...

10 Ways Farmers Can Fight Climate Change

July 1, 2019 Brie Mazurek, Cuesa.org Create! Climate Change, Farmers, Food and Agriculture, Renewable Energy

As the largest agricultural producer in the U.S., California is on the frontlines of the fight against climate change. Our state also feels the impacts of climate change acutely through increased drought, extreme weather events, and wildfires. The time to take action is more urgent than ever. In anticipation of the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco next week, we’ve listed (with credit to the California Climate & Agriculture Network)...

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

assetto corsa mods

Daily movement news and resources