The recent decision by Danone North America, owner of Horizon Organic, to terminate contracts with 89 organic dairy farmers in Northeast states has angered organic and consumer groups, who say the decision will devastate small family farms in the region and runs counter to the company’s Certified B Corporation commitment. In response to the criticism, Danone says it remains committed to buying milk from small organic dairy farms.
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Everything you need to know to eat healthily, even when money is tight.
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The path to an ecological civilization is paved by reclaiming the commons—our common home, the Earth, and the commons of the Earth family, of which we are a part. Through reclaiming the commons, we can imagine possibility for our common future, and we can sow the seeds of abundance through “commoning.”
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Danone, a multinational food company and the owner of Horizon Organic, announced it will terminate contracts next year with all of its organic dairy farmers in Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and parts of New York. They are replacing these farms with huge Western CAFOs capable of producing milk more cheaply. This will leave the New England farmers without buyers for their milk. And without hope.
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In a victory for organic farmers, advocates, and animal welfare, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced today that it will be reinstating animal welfare standards on farms producing organic meat that were withdrawn during the Trump Administration. Secretary Vilsack announced that the USDA will "reconsider the prior Administration's interpretation that the Organic Foods Production Act does not authorize USDA to regulate the practices that were the subject of the 2017 Organic Livestock and Poultry Practices (OLPP) final rule," including meaningful outdoor access for organic chickens and other animal welfare improvements.
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The Rockefeller Foundation has just published a report, True Cost of Food: Measuring What Matters to Transform the U.S. Food System, which identifies the real-but-under-recognized downsides of the U.S. food system. The report notes that, for all its reputed bounty, the food system “comes with hidden costs — to our health, to our climate,” and to the many people who make sure that food reaches the population. The report calls for a true accounting of the costs of food in the U.S.
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As Tom Brown leads a pair of young, aspiring homesteaders through his home apple orchard in Clemmons, North Carolina, he gestures at clusters of maturing trees. A retired chemical engineer, the 79 year old lists varieties and pauses to tell occasional stories.
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Alarming toxic PFAS levels revealed in new report raise concerns that the chemicals are contaminating vegetables
Sewage sludge that wastewater treatment districts across America package and sell as home fertilizer contain alarming levels of toxic PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals”, a new report has revealed.
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I got an article this week. It appeared in Civil Eats, and it had quotations from Linley Dixon, Kathleen Merrigan, and others about COVID, farm scale, and feeding people. It raised very important questions.
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A new study published Tuesday found that after switching to an organic diet for just a few days, people could cut the levels of a pesticide linked to cancer found in their urine by more than 70 percent.
The researchers collected a total of 158 urine samples from four families –seven adults and nine children – and examined the samples for the presence of the weed killer glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in Roundup and other popular herbicides. The participants spent five days on a completely non-organic diet and five days on a completely organic diet.
“This study demonstrates that shifting to an organic diet is an effective way to reduce body burden of glyphosate… This research adds to a growing body of literature indicating that an organic diet may reduce exposure to a range of pesticides in children and adults,” states the study, which was published in the journal Environmental Research.
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