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
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez orders a pastrami taco, hold the guac. It’s a cloudy Monday in late August and we’re sitting at a four-top near the back of Flats Fix, a narrow Manhattan taqueria sidled up next to Union Square. This isn’t just another random interview-in-a-quiet-restaurant selection, though—and not just because this place isn’t quiet.
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The regenerative food and farming movement didn’t get everything we wanted out of the 2018 elections—either in terms of candidates or, as Greg Palast documented, in terms of fair elections. Clearly, our democracy is far from perfect.
But thankfully, that hasn’t stopped the movement for health, justice and regeneration.
On November 6, the country elected several inspiring new leaders, some of whom are already getting to work at the local, state and federal level. On the ballot initiative front, voters in Portland, Oregon, passed a progressive initiative that will, among other
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America’s farmers have been shut out of foreign markets, hit with retaliatory tariffs and lost lucrative contracts in the face of President Trump’s trade war. But a $12 billion bailout program Mr. Trump created to “make it up” to farmers has done little to cushion the blow, with red tape and long waiting periods resulting in few payouts so far.
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“Clear and fair rules are needed for lobbying,” said TI Germany Chair Edda Muller. “The new federal government and parliament should counteract the impression that just a small number of interests, together with those in government power, determine the fate of people in Germany.”
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After Democratic leaders signaled in the lead-up to last week's midterms that they have no plans to pursue the kind of bold climate agenda that the latest science says is required to avoid planetary catastrophe, environmental groups are ramping up pressure on the incoming House Democratic majority to show real leadership by investigating the corporations that caused the climate crisis and pursuing an ambitious green agenda to combat it.
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At the end of September, the House and Senate missed their deadline to agree on a Farm Bill, leaving in limbo the $100 billion worth of programs we spend annually on food assistance and agriculture. That delay opens the possibility for the country to change course and help avert a global meltdown with policies that could transform the "Corn Belt" into a climate cooling "Carbon Belt."
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“If a mammal doesn’t produce it, it isn’t ‘milk’,” says Lisa Engelbert, one of the farmers at the sixth-generation Engelbert Farms in Nichols, New York. Engelbert is referring, somewhat wearily, to the plant-based beverages and other products made from soy, rice, nuts, and oats—she calls them “plant juices”—that currently account for 13 percent of the U.S. milk market and $1.6 billion in sales.
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Patricia Nelson was eager for a fresh start when she moved her family from Louisiana back home to Weld County, Colorado, in 2016. Soon after, Nelson’s friend encouraged her to come out to a meeting where Lisa McKenzie, an environmental chemist and epidemiologist at the Colorado School of Public Health, was presenting her research on the health impacts of oil and natural gas drilling.
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The Supreme Court on Friday refused to halt the trial in a lawsuit brought by 21 young people seeking to force the federal government to take action to address climate change.
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Donald J. Trump's inaugural crowd may not have been the biggest ever, but his parade drew lots of tractors that rumbled past the presidential reviewing stand in a farm lobby phalanx. Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, wearing the trademark red Trump campaign cap, drove one of them down Pennsylvania Avenue, just across the mall from his organization's headquarters.
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