What’s wrong with my stomach? Can the pain in my hand go away? How do I feel better? While nurses and doctors are there to solve those problems, they’re also working to prevent future ones. Simplified, a hospital’s job is twofold: react and prevent. On the roof of the Boston Medical Center, they’re preventing by growing.

Think consumers don’t have much power? Think again. 

It may have taken a few years, but consumers can take the lion’s share of credit for bringing down Big Food’s $2-billion lobbying group.

Back in the day before Congress killed consumers’ right to know about GMOs, the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) spent millions of dollars in California to defeat a citizen ballot initiative in 2012 that would have required labels on GMO foods.

That made the GMA and its members—including organic and natural brands owned by Big Food corporations—favorite targets of pro-labeling consumers. 

Brands weren’t too happy about that. So when a similar initiative came on the ballot in Washington, the GMA tried to protect Big Brands by illegally laundering donations to the anti-labeling campaign.

From then on, it was all downhill for Monsanto’s Evil Twin.  

Amidst various news cycles of absurd demands and hateful reactions in the U.S., I was recently struck by some hopeful news of civility and constructive engagement from Mexico. Adelita San Vicente Tello, director of the non-governmental organization Semillas de Vida(Seeds of Life) and a leader in the Mexican Sin Maíz No Hay País (No Corn, No Country) campaign, wrote to say that she would be moving on from her organization to take a position in the progressive López Obrador administration.

In 2018, Ray German, a working chef in Hawaii, questioned the kind of food he wanted to cook. Although his parents were born in Jalisco, Mexico, it nagged at him that he didn’t know more about Mexican food. So the San Diego-born German, who had only traveled to Mexico once before, decided to take a sabbatical in Oaxaca.