The Cornucopia Institute

Center for Food Safety
Kevin Golden

Washington, D.C. - In a decision handed down today, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has upheld a nationwide ban on the planting of genetically-engineered (GE) Roundup Ready alfalfa pending a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). The Court determined that the planting of genetically modified alfalfa can result in potentially irreversible harm to organic and conventional varieties of crops, damage to the environment, and economic harm to farmers. Read the rest of this entry »

Cattle Producers Disappointed in Court’s Creekstone Decision

Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund
Shae Dodson

Billings, Mont. – R-CALF USA was disappointed to learn that a federal appeals court – in a split decision – on Friday sided with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in its efforts to ban Creekstone Farms Premium Beef (Creekstone) from testing cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). USDA argued that it must control the BSE-testing kits, even though Creekstone had previously spent a great deal of money to build a USDA-compliant testing lab at its facility in Arkansas, Kan. Read the rest of this entry »

Dairy’s battle reflects conflicting views as organic ‘locavore’ movement gains ground

Colorado Biz Today
By Mike Taylor

Forty miles north of Denver where residential real estate has yet to completely overrun agriculture, Mark Retzloff shows a visitor around his 400-acre Platteville facility. It’s the hub of Aurora Organic Dairy’s operations even though only about 1,000 of the company’s more than 12,000 milking cows are here.

“This is a landlocked farm,” the Aurora Organic chairman says, referring to encroaching residential construction in the distance. “They’re not growing crops here anymore. They’re growing houses.”

Retzloff founded Aurora Organic along with CEO Marc Peperzak in 2003. Retzloff is a self-described organic expansionist: Larger organic enterprises, he believes, allow for greater economies of scale, making organic foods affordable for more people and prompting more pesticide- and fertilizer-riddled farmland to be converted to organic.

Not everyone sees it this way, least of all Mark Kastel, the head of a family-farm nonprofit advocacy group in Wisconsin that has dogged Aurora Organic since the day Retzloff launched the dairy five years ago. Read the rest of this entry »

USDA
Joan Shaffer

The Agricultural Management Assistance Program, authorized by the Federal Crop Insurance Act (7 U.S.C. 1524), will allocate funds to the 16 states in proportion to the number of organic producers in each state. The states, in turn, will reimburse each eligible producer for up to 75 percent of its organic certification costs, not to exceed $750. Read the rest of this entry »