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!
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Apples· steve urow© 2014 -
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steve urow's garden not· steve urow© 2014
“My dream world was that someone would put us on reality TV and show us doing all these different projects to make a sustainable farm, and then at the end of it, I’d have biodiesel, and I’d have a windmill, I’d have all of these different things. How to pay to do those things… I haven’t figured that out yet.”
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With a climate changing faster than most crops can adapt and food security under threat around the world, scientists have found hope in a living museum dedicated to a staple eaten by millions daily: the humble potato.
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Agave plants (the best known of which are blue agave, used to produce tequila), along with nitrogen-fixing, companion trees such as mesquite, huizache, desert ironwood, wattle and varieties of acacia that readily grow alongside agave, are among the most common and prolific, yet routinely denigrated or ignored plants in the world.
Now, a new, agave-based agroforestry and livestock feeding model developed in Guanajuato, Mexico, promises to revitalize campesino
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They are working to repair harm inflicted over the past 400 years, with an eye toward reparations. “Imagine your neighbor stole your cow. A few weeks later the neighbor comes over, laden with remorse, to offer a sincere apology and a promise to make it right. The neighbor offers to atone by giving you half a pound of butter every week for the rest of the cow’s life. What do you think of that?”
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President Donald Trump on Sunday hailed the new round of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to help struggling farmers survive his trade war with China. But his praise follows a troubling report that the trade aid — a total over two years of $28 billion — is being disproportionately doled out to farmers in Trump-supporting Southern states, and being paid to the largest, wealthiest farms and foreign corporations.
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Local foods, along with organic and sustainably produced foods, have demonstrated that the market can drive change towards health and ecological sustainability. However, it’s equally clear that the pace of this change is too incremental to seriously impact climate change or foster broadly based—and desperately needed—economic revitalization in rural communities.
For that, we need major investment, along with policy changes that
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Sir Albert Howard made a radical observation. When farmers returned all the agricultural wastes to their fields and grew cover crops to maintain the organic matter in the soil, the crops were healthier.
As Howard observed even more carefully, he saw that the animals that ate those crops were also healthier. And in his final burst of
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Most grass-fed beef labeled “Product of U.S.A.” is actually imported from overseas.
But you wouldn't know that, thanks to a U.S. Department of Agriculture labeling policy.
It’s time to change that policy—for the sake of both consumers and U.S. producers of grass-fed and grass-finished beef.
TAKE ACTION: Tell Congress to Stop the Labeling Fraud! Support the U.S. Beef Integrity Act!
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The olive oil industry wants more government oversight. On Monday, the American Olive Oil Producers Association (AOOPA) formally requested the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) set and enforce quality standards for different kinds of olive oil. In a citizens’ petition, it argued that the current dearth of industry regulation is causing “widespread mislabeling of grades, adulteration, consumer mistrust, and unfair and unethical industry business practices.”
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When countries run short of food, they need to find solutions fast, and one answer can be urban farming. That was the remedy Cuba seized with both hands 30 years ago when it was confronted with the dilemma of an end to its vital food imports.
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