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Economic Analysis Reveals Organic Farming Profitable Long-Term

ScienceDaily Organic farming is known to be environmentally sustainable, but can it be economically sustainable, as well? The answer is yes, according to new research in the Sept.-Oct. issue of Agronomy Journal. In an analysis of 18 years of crop yield and farm management data from a long-term University of Minnesota trial, an organic crop […]

EU Bans GM-Contaminated Honey From General Sale

Bavarian beekeepers forced to declare their honey as genetically modified because of contamination from nearby Monsanto crops The Guardian Leigh Phillips The European Union’s highest court on Tuesday ruled that honey which contains trace amounts of pollen from genetically modified (GM) corn must be labeled as GM produce and undergo full safety authorization before it […]

Monsanto Biotech Corn Not Killing Pests, Research Finds

St. Louis Today BY GEORGINA GUSTIN Scientists sounded the alarm years ago, but now their predictions appear to be an encroaching reality: Monsanto’s biotech corn is showing signs, they say, that it no longer repels the pests it is engineered to kill. Last month, researchers from Iowa State University published a study showing that the […]

U.S. Researchers Find Roundup Chemical in Water, Air

Reuters By Carey Gillam KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) – Significant levels of the world’s most-used herbicide have been detected in air and water samples from two U.S. farm states, government scientists said on Wednesday, in groundbreaking research on the active ingredient in Monsanto Co’s Roundup. “It is out there in significant levels. It is out […]

Dust Flying in Countryside Over USDA Animal ID Proposal

Contact: Judith McGeary, Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, 512-484-8821 Bill Bullard, R-CALF USA, 406-252-2516 Gilles Stockton, Western Organization of Resource Councils, 406-366-4463 Mark Kastel, The Cornucopia Institute, 608-625-2000 Farmers and Ranchers Appeal to Vilsack for Adequate Time to Respond Austin, TX:  Forty-nine advocacy groups representing the interests of family farmers, ranchers, and consumers have formally […]

Working to Save Endangered Northwest Organic Farmland

PCC Farmland Trustis believed to be the only trust in the country dedicated to preserving organic farmland, a resource that’s steadily shrinking even as demand for local and organic foods is on the rise. Seattle Times By Rebekah Denn DAN AND KIM Hulse grow some 60 different vegetables and fruits on their family farm in […]

Canada’s New Organic Products Office Fields Beefs Over Transparency

The Gazette (Montreal) By Lynn Moore MONTREAL – Not so long ago, Canada’s organic products sector was fertile ground for freewheeling opportunists, if not outright fraudsters. While some farmers stuck to organic protocols and other industry players followed voluntary standards or certification programs, the overall situation was so iffy that key trading partners didn’t want […]

No Gold in Golden Rice, Says GMO Expert

All Voices By Gerry Albert Corpuz, Dorcas Yee-Bee and John Lloyd Hoffman MANILA, Philippines-Gold is absent in golden rice. Dr. Michael HansenMichael Hansen, Senior Scientist of the Consumers Union (USA) stressed this concern during a forum on the controversial Golden Rice staged recently at the NCAS Auditorium, University of the Philippines Los Banos in Laguna […]

GMOs Won’t Save the World – Sorry NY Times

Tucson Citizen (link is unavailable) by Kate Kaemerle But local, sustainable agriculture will. Here’s a piece from Anna Lappe on Grist.org taking on a NY Times editorial piece from a GMO drum-beater. They’ve had fifteen years to prove their point. Time’s up – ding, ding ding!

Farmers to Monsanto: Save Our Seeds

Crosscut (Seattle, WA) By Amy Pennington Eastern Washington farmers are increasingly worried about agricultural invasion from Monsanto’s unwanted genetically modified and patent-protected seeds, which can threaten a farm’s organic status and land them in court. Now a national coalition of independent farmers is fighting back. Lazy R Ranch sits just outside of Spokane and raises […]

Not Your Grandma’s Strawberries

Grist by Natalie Jones In 1950, your parents, grandparents, or a perhaps a younger version of you could eat a handful of string beans — about three-and-a-half ounces — and get about 9 percent of the calcium you needed for the day. Almost 50 years later, in 1999, the amount of calcium in string beans […]