Politics & Globalization
International trade agreements force the U.S. and other participting countries to "harmonize" food and envrironmental safety standards to the lowest common denominator. Often these agreements are negotiated behind closed doors, shutting out Congress and the public, while granting corporations and trade associations a seat at the table. It's no surprise that these agreements give transnational corporations "special rights", allowing companies to challenge individual countries' environmental, worker and food safety laws and regulations.
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Rose and Ronnie· Joe volunteer© 2008
Something you might have missed amid all the horserace and app-failure coverage of the Iowa caucuses: a deep discussion took place over the past year about the climate crisis and agriculture that could change the way our food system operates. Every leading Democratic campaign now endorses an aggressive approach to conservation that could dramatically reduce greenhouse gases, improve water quality and enhance rural prosperity.
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Last year, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) introduced a resolution to Congress calling for an ambitious re-imagining of the U.S. economy―one that would tackle both climate change and inequality. Now with broad support among democratic presidential hopefuls, the Green New Deal resolution highlights the transformation of energy, transportation, health care and employment systems in our country, while briefly mentioning food and agriculture.
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As we hurtle into the 2020s, the future of our food economy (and food itself) remains a fiercely contested competition between diametrically opposed visions: a negative pole consisting of the concentrated forces of corporate agriBusiness, which view the dinner plate strictly in terms of their own profit margins, and a positive polarity of family farmers, consumers, food artisans, environmentalists and other grassroots advocates of agriCulture, who envision our food future from the ethical perspective of sustainability and democratic control.
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We’ve investigated each of the 2020 Presidential candidates to learn where they stand on GMOs by looking into who is funding their campaigns, what their records are as elected officials and what the candidates have said in their platforms and public statements.
We know where several of the Presidential candidates stand on GMOs because they were in the House or Senate in 2016. That was the year Congress
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The majority of people still equate the words “Green New Deal” with a plan to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy technologies. Very few people who hear or read those words think “food and farming.”
But the
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NewsGuard, a self-appointed internet watchdog that sells a browser plugin to rate websites on their credibility and transparency, has received much funding from Big Pharma giants through the company Publicis. NewsGuard threatens to allow Publicis and Big Industry to maintain their undisputed reign as shapers of public opinion about health-related issues.
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"Why is it that farmworkers feed the nation but they can't get food stamps?" This comment by Dolores Huerta, a labor rights leader, resonates with me. Growing up in a farming village in Pakistan, the sight of yellow mustard fields on a cold morning with a backdrop of dense fog meeting a rising sun is engraved in my mind.
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The Trump administration is set to continue its corporate friendly assault on U.S. environmental regulations Thursday by finalizing a rule that will allow companies, landowners, and property developers—including golf course owners like the president—to dump pesticides and other pollutants directly into many of the nation's streams and wetlands, potentially threatening the drinking water of millions of Americans.
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Continuing a trend well established by prior Republican and Democratic administrations, the five new members recently appointed by USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue to the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) all have a current or past relationship with the industry’s major lobby group, the Organic Trade Association (OTA).
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On Friday, USDA Deputy Under Secretary Brandon Lipps proposed new rules for the Food and Nutrition Service that would allow schools to cut the amount of vegetables and fruits required at lunch and breakfasts while giving them license to sell more pizza, burgers and fries to students. The agency is responsible for administering nutritional programs that feed nearly 30 million students at 99,000 schools.
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