Essays
What do you know about the worldwide chemical fertilizer industry? If you’re like most people, not much.
For instance, did you know that in 2010, Koch Industries was named “the world’s third-largest maker and marketer of nitrogen fertilizer,” according to the Wichita Eagle? Koch, infamous for its support of extreme right-wing politicians and climate deniers, is part of a large system “of buying, leasing, upgrading and expanding fertilizer manufacturing, trading and distribution facilities worldwide.” Koch even has a separate fertilizer unit, called Koch Agronomics.
Did you know that two-thirds of the U.S. drinking water supply is contaminated at high levels with carcinogenic nitrates or nitrites, almost all from excessive use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer? Some public wells have nitrogen at such a high level that it’s dangerous and even deadly for children to drink the tap water.
And what about this? According to ETC Group, synthetic fertilizers are a major contributor to climate-destroying greenhouse gases, and the estimated cost of environmental damage from reactive nitrogen emissions is between $70 billion and $320 billion in the European Union alone?
Whatever you know or don’t know about the chemical fertilizer industry, we bet you could have guessed this: Even though the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) acknowledges the severe harm nitrogen fertilizer does to waterways, including to marine life and humans, the agency mostly turns its back. In place of enforcement, private farming operations are allowed to “self-monitor.”
We all know how well that works.
The world’s largest food corporations have spent hundreds of millions of dollars (some of it illegally) to avoid being required to label the genetically engineered ingredients in their products.
But with the July 1 deadline for complying with Vermont’s GMO labeling law on the horizon, a handful of the largest multinational food corporations have announced they will now label GMOs—not solely because they will be forced to, but because as General Mills claims they believe “you should know what’s in your food and how we make ours.”
Have consumers won the GMO labeling battle? Have these food companies that so fiercely fought to keep labels off their products really split with the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), the multi-billion-dollar lobbying group that is still trying to overturn Vermont’s law in the courts, and preempt it in Congress?
Or is there something more to these recent announcements than just the need to comply with Vermont’s law? As in, a strategy to lull consumers into complacency, while at the same time forcing Congress to give food companies what they’ve wanted all along—a free pass on labeling?
On March 8, 2016, Mexican farmers, consumers and activists scored a major victory when a federal appeals court ruled that genetically engineered corn can’t be grown in Mexico until a class action lawsuit, filed by scientists, consumers, small farmers and activists has been resolved.
The March 8 ruling allows the biotech industry to continue experimental trials of GM corn, but with a new twist—the Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food (SAGARPA) will now require regular assessments of the impact of the of the test crops on neighboring non-GM fields and human health.
This recent victory follows a seven-year battle to protect the integrity of Mexico’s most popular agricultural crop. OCA’s Mexico-based team, working through our sister organizations, Vía Orgánica and Asociación de Consumidores Orgánicos, is proud to have played a role in achieving this victory. We also know that this is just the first of many legal hurdles we will have to overcome in our continued battle to defend the integrity and diversity of Mexico’s corn and its connection with an entire culture. So far, OCA has contributed $30,000 to this critical legal battle.
The lead crisis in Flint, Mich. has drawn national attention to deadly and often underreported risks in the public water supply. Thanks to the chemical, agricultural and pharmaceutical industries, and antiquated water systems, Americans are imbibing a witch's brew of drugs and chemicals often without realizing it.
These contaminants get into the water through human drug waste in sewage, medicines flushed down toilets, agricultural runoff and the wide use of endocrine disruptors like pesticides, flame retardants and plastic-related compounds like phthalates and BPA. (BPA has ironically been used in bottled water that people drink to avoid tap water risks!)
When it comes to pharmaceuticals in the water supply, both drug industry and water treatment professionals say traces are so small they probably pose no public health risk. Yet they also admit that testing has begun so recently that no one really knows the long-term effects.
"There's no doubt about it, pharmaceuticals are being detected in the environment and there is genuine concern that these compounds, in the small concentrations that they're at, could be causing impacts to human health or to aquatic organisms," noted Mary Buzby, director of environmental technology for Merck.
We advocate that consumers buy certified organic products whenever possible.
But for consumers in Minnesota and other states, where you can’t walk into your grocery store and buy raw milk, we feel it’s time to explain why we believe grass-fed raw milk and dairy products, whether certified or not, are actually better for you, better for the animals, and better for the planet than any other dairy products.
One of the most significant events at the recent UN climate summit in Paris went largely unnoticed.
On December 1, the French government launched the 4 per 1000 Initiative: Soils for Food Security and Climate, a plan to fight climate change with soil carbon. The initiative’s goal is this: to increase global soil carbon stocks by 0.4 percent per year by drawing down atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) via the increased photosynthesis of regenerative farming and land use.
On the surface, that may not sound like a lot of carbon, (it amounts to 10 billion tons of carbon per year sequestered in global soils), but French scientists say it’s enough to halt human-induced annual increases in CO2 globally.
France, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the U.K., Germany and Mexico are among the more than two dozen countries that have so far signed on to what one day will likely be recognized as the most significant climate initiative in history.
France’s 4/1000 Initiative: Soils for Food Security and Climate puts regenerative food and farming front and center in the climate solutions conversation. This is why the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), our Mexico affiliate, Via Organica, IFOAM Organics International and more than 50 of our other activist allies across the globe have signed on in support of the Initiative.
Unfortunately, the U.S. government is not yet on board with the plan—even though our country’s toxic, fossil-fuel-based, heavily subsidized (with taxpayer money), degenerative industrial agriculture system is a primary driver of global warming.
The French Initiative is the most direct, most practical, and only shovel-ready plan for reversing climate change. The U.S. should get on board.
Twenty-three years after the first United Nations Earth/Climate Summit in 1992, in the wake of a savage terrorist attack on November 13 that traumatized Europe, a multinational contingent of activists and stakeholders are gathered here for the COP 21 Climate Summit.
A growing number of us here in Paris are determined to change the prevailing gloom and doom conversation on climate, and instead focus on practical solutions. Frustrated by the slow pace of global efforts to address climate change, angered by the “business-as-usual” arrogance of Big Oil, King Coal, industrial agribusiness and indentured politicians, a critical mass of the global grassroots appears ready to step up the pace and embrace a new solutions-based message and strategy that we in the organic movement call Regeneration.
Ten thousand of us took to the streets of Paris on November 28, peacefully defying the government ban on street demonstrations. I, along with a delegation of North American and Latin American Regeneration activists, joined the protest, holding hands with our French and European comrades in a human chain stretching for miles. Our section of the animated chain, punctuated with colorful homemade signs, T-shirts and banners, was designated “Solutions.” Lined up at the corner of Boulevard Voltaire and Allée du Philosophe, our boisterous group’s most popular chant, repeated over and over again in Spanish, English and French, drawing smiles and thumbs-up reactions from Parisians on the streets, was “El pueblo unido, jamas sera vencido” (“The people united will never be defeated).”
QR codes are special barcodes that a smart phone or a grocery store scanner can read on a package or a display shelf that can then direct you to a company’s promotional web site, where no doubt after telling you how great they are, they might tell you somewhere in small print that yes Coca–Cola uses genetically engineered high fructose corn syrup in its drinks, or yes, Pepsi-Frito Lay corn chips have GMO corn in them.
As USDA Secretary Vilsack points out, QR bar codes could “solve the issue” of GMO food labels “in a heartbeat.” The “issue” of course that big food companies have is this: If they tell you clearly with a mandatory label on the package that their processed junk foods and beverages contain GMOs, a critical mass of consumers will boycott them.
Just about every corporation, including Monsanto, now calls itsel "sustainable. What does that mean?
On October 26 (2015), the paywalled site PoliticoPro reported that the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture wants “farmers and agricultural interests to come up with a single definition of sustainability in order to avoid confusing the public with various meanings of the term in food and production methods.”
We agree with Secretary Tom Vilsack that the word “sustainability” is meaningless to consumers and the public. It’s overused, misused and it has been shamelessly co-opted by corporations for the purpose of greenwashing.
But rather than come up with one definition for the word “sustainable” as it refers to food and food production methods, we suggest doing away with the word entirely. In its place, as a way of helping food consumers make conscious, informed decisions, we suggest dividing global food and farming into two categories: regenerative and degenerative.
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