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
Demand for locally grown food is on the rise, as consumers take more interest in how their food is produced, and how food production affects their own health, and the health of their communities.
That’s a positive trend. But if consumers want more local food, shouldn’t we do more to ensure the economic success of the independent farmers who grow that food?
TAKE ACTION: Tell your members of Congress to support the Local Food and Regional Market Supply (Local FARMS) Act.
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Despite its congenial climate, the Indian state of Kerala is not agriculturally self-sufficient. Relying on produce from neighboring states wasn't a problem for Keralans, who have high literacy rates and tend to choose better paying jobs over farm positions.
But then chemicals on imported food were blamed for high cancer rates. This, in turn, has sparked a revolution: A push by the state government to ensure its agriculture is 100 percent organic by 2020.
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A buzz has been generating in California agriculture circles over the possibilities of carbon ranching. It’s not about producing carbon, as it might sound, but about putting more carbon back into the ground, naturally, through grasses. The theory goes like this: Native grasses send roots as deep as six feet underground, breathing in carbon dioxide as they breathe out oxygen.
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What if there were one solution that could fix a lot of the world’s problems?
That’s how organic farmer Ben Dobson began his TEDxHudson talk a few years ago. “Appropriate organic farming techniques and properly planned grazing can reverse climate change,” Dobson told his audience.
Dobson has been a farmer his entire life. But it wasn’t until six years ago that he made the connection
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The Main Street Project aims to change the way poultry is produced by establishing a new system design for poultry-centered regenerative farming and a new industry standard. The poultry-centered regenerative standard fully integrates the environment for the chicken, the social foundation for the system deployment and the economics of farming and food industry management. Shifting the process by how grain is turned into eggs or meat, and how farmers, farm and food-chain workers benefit from the system is critical to redesigning any sector of the food industry. A farm is a project that if
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“If we lose the insects then everything is going to collapse.” - Dr. David Goulson, Sussex University, UK
Victory for bees in Europe! As reported in the Guardian, the world’s most widely used insecticides will be banned from all fields in the E.U. within six months to protect both wild and commercially raised honeybees that are vital to crop pollination.
The neonicotinoid insecticides now banned in the E.U are sold by Bayer and Syngenta and used by Monsanto to coat its genetically engineered seeds. They are the cause of the massive bee die-offs that
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In tune with the rhythms of the moon and the earth, Black female farmers in the East Bay are growing food in the learned tradition of their ancestors — not only to sustain the environment, but to sustain and uplift their communities. Their mission was recently highlighted in the East Bay Express.
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Although some consumers say they want eggs from happy chickens, their buying habits indicate they want eggs that are cheap. Now some states are taking sides.
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Wendell Berry hates screens. The 83-year-old novelist, poet, environmental activist, cultural critic, and Kentucky-based farmer is of the mind that TV and technological devices serve to degrade the imagination and threaten literature. His distaste for idolatry is part of why he’s turned down several requests to be featured in documentary projects. Tomorrow evening, however, a cinematic portrait of America’s foremost “prophet of rural America” hits the PBS airwaves. Look & See: Wendell Berry’s Kentucky, part of the Independent Lens series, portrays the changing landscapes and shifting
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Probably no other plant has played such a vital role in the ecologies, and among the human populations of the arid and semiarid regions of Mexico and the US, as the multifunctional mesquite tree. This extremely resilient and adaptable tree has a rich ethnobotanical history and holds great potential to become a major staple food crop for drylands throughout the world, while supporting climate change mitigation efforts and providing food security in the face of desertification, water stress, and climatic instability.
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