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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steve urow's garden not· steve urow© 2014
Grants made by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to promote agricultural development in Africa and other parts of the world overwhelmingly went to research institutes rather than farmers. They were also mainly directed at shaping policies to support industrial farming, not smallholders.
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Wine grape growers in Texas and surrounding states filed a lawsuit last week against drug-maker Bayer-Monsanto and chemical giant BASF for the damage their cotton herbicide has caused to vineyards. Attorneys for the grape growers say the highly volatile herbicide called dicamba is drifting to nearby vineyards and crippling the nonresistant grapes.
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Farmers of color are set to get some unprecedented debt relief starting this month from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The latest federal COVID aid package includes an estimated $4 billion for the USDA to wipe away these farmers' debts.
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Fair Trade USA released a new “Fair Trade Dairy” label in partnership with Chobani. It’s a program that has been opposed by farmworker and human rights organizations since it was first announced. Now that there is yogurt on the shelf, but still no final standard released, this report looks at the label claims and evaluates “Fair Trade Dairy” based on the available standards.
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In late January last year, dairy farmers filled a pub in the tiny town of Greenwald, Minnesota (population 238). Organisers from the Land Stewardship Project – a sustainable agriculture nonprofit – expected 50 people to attend, but 130 showed up from all corners of the state.
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Biden administration environmental officials say they will consider restrictions on the world’s most widely used herbicide because of concerns about potential harm to monarch butterflies and other species. The manufacturer of the weedkiller Roundup, Monsanto, has been hit with multimillion-dollar jury verdicts in suits by cancer victims.
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The chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee called on Thursday for a $50 billion increase in funding for the USDA’s stewardship programs to combat climate change on farms and ranches. And a USDA report said forests could absorb an even larger share of U.S. carbon emissions than the current 14 percent
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There are proven and profitable agricultural practices that have the power to draw excess carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
But, before agriculture can be a climate change solution, it has to deal with its own greenhouse gas pollution.
Synthetic fertilizers and factory farms must be phased out, while regenerative organic practices that sequester carbon are ramped up.
There’s certainly a lot of potential, especially on grasslands where ruminant animals can forage for the entirety of their lives instead of being fattened on synthetic-
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Imports of cheap, fake honey from Asia are pushing American beekeepers to financial collapse, according to a lawsuit. Thousands of commercial beekeepers in the US have taken legal action against the country’s largest honey importers and packers for allegedly flooding the market with hundreds of thousands of tonnes of counterfeit honey.
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This week Switzerland’s small farmers announced their support for a nationwide ban on synthetic pesticide use. Switzerland’s association of small farmers, which represents around 8,000 farmers, says that it is possible to farm profitably without pesticides in a way that protects public health and the environment.
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