CBS News

(AP) TOPPENISH, Wash. — Call it a hops revolution.

Northwest farmers have begun planting new varieties of the key flavor ingredient in beer and working with researchers to develop ways to grow the crop without pesticides. The movement stems from a federal decision last year requiring brewers who label their beer as organic to use organic hops beginning in 2013.

Some say the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s new rule could force organic craft brewers to tweak longtime recipes. Others believe the change will spark even more creativity among producers of organic beer, an industry that continues to gain speed. Read Full Article »

Posted in Media/News

The chair of Cornucopia’s board Steve Sprinkel is profiled in this story, along with his wife Olivia Chase.

Los Angeles Times
By David Karp

Reporting from Ojai— Most native-born French recoil from chiles as if from snakes, but in the Basque country of the Pyrenees foothills, five miles from the Spanish border, the citizens of Espelette adore a unique local pod called the Espelette, conical, 3 to 4 inches long and medium hot, with thin flesh and many seeds. After harvest in late summer and fall, the vermilion pods are strung in ristra-like cordes, dried in the sun, roasted in bread ovens and ground into richly perfumed red-orange powder, with hints of hay, ripe tomatoes and toast.

It’s rare to find anyone in the United States who produces a local version of this distinctive powder, but in Ojai, that hotbed of local, artisanal and organic agriculture, Steven Sprinkel and his wife, Olivia Chase, make an excellent version, with just the right balance of flavor and heat. Read Full Article »

Posted in Media/News

CNBC

WASHINGTON – Monsanto Co. spent $1.71 million in the second quarter to lobby the federal government, according to a disclosure report.

That’s much less than the $2.18 million Monsanto spent a year earlier but slightly more than the $1.44 million it spent during previous quarter.

The world’s largest seed company lobbied Congress and the U.S. Department of Agriculture over regulations that would affect the distribution of genetically engineered crops like the company’s Roundup Ready sugar beets and alfalfa, according to the disclosure the company filed July 20 with the House clerk’s office. Read Full Article »

Posted in Media/News

The results are in from a 30-year side-by-side trial of conventional and organic farming methods at Pennsylvania’s Rodale Institute. Contrary to conventional wisdom, organic farming outperformed conventional farming in every measure.

The 30 year trial: http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/fst30years Read Full Article »

Posted in Media/News

The Nation
Vandana Shiva

We are in a food emergency. Speculation and diversion of food to biofuel has contributed to an uncontrolled price rise, adding more to the billion already denied their right to food. Industrial agriculture is pushing species to extinction through the use of toxic chemicals that kill our bees and butterflies, our earthworms and soil organisms that create soil fertility. Plant and animal varieties are disappearing as monocultures displace biodiversity. Industrial, globalized agriculture is responsible for 40 percent of greenhouse gases, which then destabilize agriculture by causing climate chaos, creating new threats to food security.

But the biggest threat we face is the control of seed and food moving out of the hands of farmers and communities and into a few corporate hands. Monopoly control of cottonseed and the introduction of genetically engineered Bt cotton has already given rise to an epidemic of farmers’ suicides in India. A quarter-million farmers have taken their lives because of debt induced by the high costs of nonrenewable seed, which spins billions of dollars of royalty for firms like Monsanto. Read Full Article »

Posted in Opinion/Editorial