Food and Agriculture

Freeing The Seed

January 5, 2019 Michael S. Carolan, Earthisland.org Create! Food and Agriculture, Seeds

There were no Stokes Seeds catalogues for early US immigrants. Settlers used what they brought with them from the Old Country or what they acquired through trade with others. But this was a new land, with a different climate and soils. Many of those early crops failed as the seed proved ill-suited for the realities of their new home. Affluent landowners pooled their resources to overcome these hurdles, importing seed and adapting it to the New World’s environment. These seed saving and sharing networks were called “societies.” Seed did not become widely available to farmers, other than through their personal networks, until 1819.

Southern Illinois To Revive Economy With Industrial Hemp

January 4, 2019 Southern Illinois Growers Network, Popular Resistance. Create! Food and Agriculture, Hemp, New Economy

Last May Illinois passed legislation to remove restrictions on industrial hemp, and in August Governor Rauner signed the bill into law. We are grateful to our elected officials who worked to pass the law, and we’ve been waiting patiently for the first draft of the rules. On Friday the rules were made public, on the heels of the Federal Farm bill which removed industrial hemp from the Controlled Substance Act. Industrial hemp and hemp derived products including cannabidiol, “CBD”, are now legal to grow, transport and sell. The federal law prohibits interference with interstate transport of hemp or hemp products.

Russia’s Clear GMO Labeling Rules Reach The Shelves Across Eurasian Economic Union

January 3, 2019 Staff, Sustainablepulse.com Create! Food and Agriculture, GMOs, Labeling, Russia

The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), including the countries of Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Belarus, has introduced clear GMO labeling on all food and supplement products containing genetically modified organisms, starting from last week. Russia’s Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Protection and Welfare (Rospotrebnadzor) announced in 2016 that it was inviting all EAEU countries to apply a “GMO” label on the packaging of food products that contain genetically modified organisms. The Rospotrebnadzor and the EAEU confirmed the proposed amendments to the technical regulations on the labeling of food products in the EAEU, despite objections from some European Union food manufacturers...

Why Sustainable Agriculture Should Support A Green New Deal

January 2, 2019 Elizabeth Henderson, Thepryingmantis.wordpress.com Create! Environment, Farming, Food and Agriculture, Sustainability

“For Sale” signs have replaced “Dairy of Distinction” on the last two dairy farms on the road I drive to town. The farm crisis of the 1980’s that never really went away has resurfaced with a vengeance. In 2013, aggregate farm earnings were half of what they were in 2012. Farm income has continued to decline ever since. The moment is ripe for the movement for a sustainable agriculture to address the root causes. Just as in the 80’s, a brief period of high commodity prices and cheap credit in the 2010’s resulted in a debt and asset bubble. Then prices collapsed. Meanwhile, ever larger corporations have consolidated their dominance in the food sector resulting in shoppers paying more, and a shrinking portion of what they pay going to farmers.

Small Farmers In Mexico Keep Corn’s Genetic Diversity Alive

November 27, 2018 By Emiliano Rodríguez Mega, Scientificamerican.com Create! Farmers, Food and Agriculture, Mexico

Like his parents and grandparents before them, Edilberto “Beto” García Cuenca started farming the land when he was just a kid. The descendant of a long lineage of “campesinos”—a Spanish term for family farmer—he still grows maize in the small, five-acre plot his mom left him in their hometown of Santa María Zacatepec in the Mexican state of Puebla. He also plants beans to keep the soil fertile and relies on rain to irrigate his crops. During the rainy season, García Cuenca selects the seeds he stored the previous cycle, plants them and cares for the seedlings. Multiply that process by the millions of other campesinos in Mexico and you get billions of genetically different maize plants...

A Trans-Atlantic Cooperative Of Dairy Farmers

October 31, 2018 Staff, Agupdate.com Create! Cooperatives, Europe, Farmers, Food and Agriculture, New Economy, United States

Foremost Farms USA and Arla Foods, a European dairy cooperative, are in advanced discussions about forming a strategic partnership. Representatives recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding formalizing the possibility of future partnership. Henrik Andersen, Arla Foods Ingredients group vice-president, said the two farmer-owned cooperatives share many of the same values, plus their whey-market ambitions are compatible. Arla Foods wants to secure access to whey in the U.S. market, he said.

New Study: Eating Organic Foods Reduces Your Risk Of Getting Cancer

October 24, 2018 Alexandra Jacobo, Nationofchange.org Educate! Cancer, Food and Agriculture, Organic

According to a groundbreaking study published this week in JAMA Internal Medicine, an American Medical Association journal, eating organic foods that are free from pesticides is strongly correlated with a dramatic reduction in the risk of cancer. For the study, a team of French scientists, led by epidemiologist Julia Baudry, tracked the diets of 68,946 French adults, more than three-quarters of which were women. The participants, all volunteers, were then categorized into four groups depending on how often they reported eating 16 organic products, including fruits and vegetables, meat and fish, ready-to-eat meals, vegetable oils and condiments, dietary supplements and other products.

Why It’s Time To End Factory Farming

October 21, 2018 Jacy Reese, Quillette.com. Educate! Factory Farming, Food and Agriculture

Fortunately, many people in 2018 see the writing on the wall. In fact, around 47 percent of US adults support a ban on slaughterhouses. Everyone wants to stand on the right side of history. Take it from Tom Hayes, CEO of Tyson Foods, the world’s second-largest meat processor. He said, “Plant protein is growing faster than animal protein. For us, we want to be where the consumer is.” Or as business magnate Richard Branson said, “I believe that in 30 years or so we will no longer need to kill any animals and that all meat will either be clean or plant-based, taste the same and also be much healthier for everyone.”

The Creator Of GMO Potatoes Reveals The Dangerous Truth – Exclusive Interview

October 11, 2018 Staff, Sustainablepulse.com Educate! Food and Agriculture, GMOs, Science

It is amazing that the USDA and FDA approved the GM potatoes by only evaluating our own data. How can the regulatory agencies assume there is no bias? When I was at J.R. Simplot, I truly believed that my GM potatoes were perfect, just like a parent believes his or her children are perfect. I was biased and all genetic engineers are biased. It is not just an emotional bias. We need the GM crops to be approved. There is a tremendous amount of pressure to succeed, to justify our existence by developing modifications that create hundreds of millions of dollars in value. We test our GM crops to confirm their safety, not to question their safety.

Supermarket Chains Ignored This Black Community, So Residents Opened A Co-Op

September 26, 2018 By Eric Ginsburg, Munchies.vice.com Create! Cooperatives, Food and Agriculture, New Economy, Ownership

“This home had belonged to a white family,” said Graves, a Black woman who previously lived one county east. “I fell in love with the house, even though I missed Alamance County.” It was the early 1980s, and white residents were leaving the vicinity en masse. Homeowners who couldn’t sell started renting their houses, she said, and within about five years, almost all of the white residents had fled. Graves—who held “a really good management job” at a telephone company—liked her new home. She lived near a branch library and a city rec center, and just one block from a Winn-Dixie grocery store. But the neighborhood started to decline, a trend Graves blames on a lack of public investment and renters who she said didn’t care as much about the community. At the end of 1998, Winn-Dixie announced it would close the store, and other tenants of the shopping center quickly followed.

If You Think Education Is Expensive, Try Ignorance

September 22, 2018 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Education reform, Food and Agriculture, health, Youth

Such important news from the Korean peninsula. The heads of government of North and South Korea have agreed not only that ‘the era of no war has started’, but they have come up with a series of proposals to strengthen ties across the peninsula. Military drills will end, missile sites will close down, mines will be dug up, road and rail lines will link the two halves of Korea, and North and South Korea will put in a joint bid to host the 2032 Summer Olympic Games. No-one could have anticipated the speed of these developments.

Gene Editing In Agriculture Poses New Risks To Health, Environment

September 14, 2018 Staff, Foe.org Educate! Environment, Food and Agriculture, GMOs, health

With the breakneck speed of recent developments in genetic engineering that could be used to alter DNA in plants, animals, bacteria, and even humans, the report examines the growing body of scientific studies highlighting the risks and unintended consequences from the use of genetic engineering techniques like gene editing in agriculture. “Increasingly, scientific publications are revealing the genetic errors that gene-editing can create. It’s becoming clear that, if gene-edited GMOs are to be used in U.S. agriculture, they need to be carefully scrutinized for any unexpected effects,” said co-author Dr. Janet Cotter of Logos Environmental. “The real question is whether GMOs are needed in agriculture at all. Advanced conventional breeding is now highly effective at producing the traits in plants and animals that both farmers and consumers desire and entails less risks to the environment and human health.”

Millions Still Struggling To Afford Food

September 11, 2018 Brynne Keith-Jennings, Cbpp.org Educate! Food and Agriculture, New Economy

Some 15 million households with 40 million people struggled to afford enough food at some point in 2017, new Agriculture Department data show. That’s about 11.8 percent of households that experienced food insecurity — those in which some members struggled to afford adequate nutritious food at some point during the year. These data are an important reminder to lawmakers drafting the final 2018 farm bill of how many Americans continue to struggle and why SNAP (formerly food stamps) is so important. Studies have shown that SNAP reduces food insecurity, which can have important impacts on health and well-being. Cutting SNAP, as the partisan House-passed farm bill proposes, would only put low-income households at greater risk of food insecurity.

Guerrilla Grafting: Public Trees Spliced To Bear Edible Fruit

September 9, 2018 Kurt, Web Urbanist. Create! Cities, Food and Agriculture

A subversive urban agricultural group in San Francisco is turning ornamental trees into fruit-producing surprises for the local population but while technically breaking the law. A simple incision allows industrious grafters to add living branches to the mix; these scions heal in place then effectively become part of the existing tree. A fresher form of guerilla gardening, traditionally carried out through seed bombs and other surreptitious planting techniques, this approach makes existing plants yield free produce.

If You Care Nothing Of Starvation, You Are Not A Socialist

September 8, 2018 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute of Social Research. Educate! Argentina, Food and Agriculture, India, LGBTQ

Sentiments whip back and forth – a museum with ancient artefacts burns to the ground in Brazil as India’s Supreme Court decriminalises homosexuality. The first - the fire in Brazil - should never have happened (as the journalist Mário Augusto Jakobskind notes) but did – partly because the government has neglected the infrastructure needed by fire-fighters (hydrants near the 200-year-old museum were dry, which is why Rio’s fire chief Roberto Robadey said, ‘Yesterday was one of the saddest days of my career’). The burnt museum is a metaphor for the political events in Brazil, where the ‘judicial coup’ against the people continues.

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