Farm Issues
Farm Bill: Healthy Food, not Corporate Welfare!
Unless you are a diehard policy wonk, it's tough to get excited about the Farm Bill. But consumers have a bigger stake in this mammoth piece of federal legislation than we may realize. Big Ag's lobbyists fight hard to protect corporate interests, almost always at the expense of consumers. The OCA is here to help you fight for for healthy food and against corporate welfare!
-
apples-2698-OCA.jpg
Apples· steve urow© 2014 -
peas-4784-OCA.jpg
steve urow's garden not· steve urow© 2014
The impact may not yet be obvious in grocery stores and greenmarkets, but behind the organic apples and bags of rice and cans of cherry pie filling are hundreds of thousands of farmers, plant breeders and others in agriculture who are scrambling to keep up with climate change.
Read more
As a kid growing up on a Montana wheat and cattle ranch in the 50s and 60s, I was raised farming with chemicals. I never questioned our use of fertilizer and herbicide: these were new tools that my dad quickly adopted after a little experimentation, as he thought they could help us be better farmers and make more money.
Read more
The meatpacking mogul Jonathan Ogden Armour could not abide socialist agitators. It was 1906, and Upton Sinclair had just published The Jungle, an explosive novel revealing the grim underside of the American meatpacking industry. Sinclair’s book told the tale of an immigrant family’s toil in Chicago’s slaughterhouses, tracing the family’s physical, financial and emotional collapse.
Read more
Could the dismal state of the U.S. food & farming system finally be getting the attention it deserves? From high-profile politicians?
In the last two months, as they hit the campaign trail, two presidential candidates—Sens. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—have floated proposals to take on Big Agribusiness and start rallying support for America’s small family farmers.
If we let Sens. Warren and Sanders know that we approve, maybe other presidential candidates will start talking about food & farming.
Read more
Appearing at a county fairgrounds in Osage, Iowa, Sanders made the case that liberal policies in Republican strongholds are what’s needed to save a slumping farm economy and distressed communities. “Some people are writing off rural America,” said Sanders, one of the leading contenders for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. He was introduced by several local farmers before taking the stage.
Read more
Back on the campaign trail in Iowa over the weekend, 2020 Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders is set to unveil a major policy vision that will include breaking up powerful agriculture conglomerates as a way to save small farmers and rural communities he says are facing a "major, major crisis."
Read more
Unless we stop allowing factory farms to routinely feed medically important antibiotics to animals, for “preventive” reasons, we’ll see a continued increase in foodborne illnesses that can’t be treated by one or more antibiotics.
That's what the World Health Organization WHO)
Read more
A group of plaintiffs led by Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA) on Tuesday filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that a group of U.S. meatpackers engaged in a vast conspiracy to artificially depress cattle prices—resulting in lower prices for producers and record profits for the industry.
Read more
Bob Quinn and Liz Carlisle believe there’s a way to revive Montana’s struggling rural economies, preserve good soil and save lives at the same time: organic, sustainable farming of nutritious foods. It involves removing the costs of inputs like fertilizer and pesticides sold by multinational corporations, and boosting profit margins by selling organic foods that are in high demand and low supply.
Read more
for Farm IssuesAlerts
Downloads
Videos
Scientific Studies
Get Local
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
