Farm Issues

Consider, for example, the fact that in the past few decades, eight cases of slave labor have been brought against employers in Florida’s tomato fields. Or the fact that as recently as October, six people who were forced to work on cocoa farms as children without pay won an appeal to sue Nestlé and Cargill on the basis that the companies knowingly condoned slave labor.

Concerns about pesticide drift are nothing new in agriculture, but the issue has taken on new gravity for Oregon farmers with marijuana-growing neighbors. Due to Oregon's pesticide testing regime for marijuana and its high value, growers of more conventional crops worry about getting blamed for contamination that renders the mind-altering flowers unsalable.

Since becoming law a year ago, the number of Maine towns and small communities with a food sovereignty ordinance has grown to more than 40. And according to those behind the movement, it’s showing no signs of slowing down.

This was the year that longtime dairy farmer Jim Goodman decided to call it quits. The third-generation farmer from Wonewoc, Wisconsin, milked cows for more than four decades.  He loved the animals and the work, and had endured hard times, but the most recent downturn in dairy farming – now in its fourth year — was one of the worst he'd seen.