
Fair Trade & Social Justice
OCA's New Fair World Project
The Organic Consumers Association launched the Fair World Project (FWP) in September 2010 to promote fair trade in commerce, especially in organic production systems in developing countries as well as at home, and to protect the term "fair trade" from dilution and misuse for mere PR purposes. FWP fills the critical need for a watchdog of misleading fair trade claims, and a cheerleader for dedicated fair trade mission-driven companies.
India’s supreme court has suspended a series of controversial new agriculture laws that had prompted hundreds of thousands of farmers to stage a months-long protest in Delhi over fears their livelihoods were at stake.
Read moreWhen the documentary Kiss the Ground was released on Netflix earlier this year, it introduced the concepts of regenerative agriculture and soil health to a mainstream audience. Produced by the nonprofit organization of the same name, the film has won a slew of awards. And the trailer alone has been viewed over 8 million times.
Read moreThe expansion of Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline is a breathtaking betrayal of Minnesota’s Indigenous communities — and the environment.
My daughter and I are walking along the fast-flowing stream of pure darkness that is the young Mississippi River. We are two hours north of Minneapolis, in Palisade, Minn., where people are gathering to oppose the Line 3 pipeline. Patches of snow crunch on pads of russet leaves as we near the zhaabondawaan, a sacred lodge along the river’s banks. It is here that
Read moreSeeds need to be brought back into public ownership, rather than belonging to a small group of agrochemical companies, say campaigners, after a year in which seed-swapping and saving has reached new heights of popularity.
Read moreCOVID-19 has been called the great equalizer, but nothing could be further from the truth. The disease clearly affects certain groups far worse than others, and the countermeasures implemented to quell the outbreak have been a phenomenal boon for wealthy globalists while decimating the livelihood, and perhaps even the will to live, of the average person.
Read moreWith just one cabinet appointment, President-elect Joe Biden could tackle economic inequality, the rural/urban divide, climate change, the growing mistrust of science, systemic racism and even the coronavirus.
Read moreEarlier this year, Americans learned what it looks like when a food system reliant on industrial agriculture, near monopolies and exploited laborers breaks down. Just two months into the pandemic, the meat industry in the most powerful nation in the world was buckling.
Read moreWith the coronavirus pandemic driving millions of people into poverty, no stone should go unturned in the search for income opportunities for the most vulnerable. That’s why protecting forests and trees—a natural and underrated ally in efforts to reinforce the livelihoods of rural communities around the world—should rise to the top of the agenda.
Read moreAfter the US Civil War, newly emancipated Black growers won a share of the agricultural landscape. They did so despite fierce backlash and the ultimately failed promises of Reconstruction. By the 1910s, around 200,000 Black farmers owned an estimated 20 million acres of land, mostly in the South.
Read more"World Agriculture Towards 2030/2050" is a major report predicting global agricultural trends (Alexandratos & Bruinsma, 2012). It was produced by the economics division of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). In its abstract the FAO authors make a prominent disclaimer. Its projections, they stress (both on p. i and p. 7), are not to be used for normative purposes; that is, their report is not a prescription of how the global food system should develop.
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