NewsTrust - Farming - Most Recent Stories: News (Independent)

5 Things Corporations Are Trying to Hide From You

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By David Sirota - Mar. 15 (Special Report) - as Businessweek recently noted, regulations are hardly job killers. Instead, the magazine points out, they typically “wind up creating about as many jobs as they kill.” In the process, they also mitigate major social problems, as Coca-Cola and Pepsi just proved.

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Monsanto Guilty Of Chemical Poisoning Of French Farmer

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Catherine Lagrange , Marion Douet - Feb. 14 (News Report) - ..A French court on Monday declared U.S. biotech giant Monsanto guilty of chemical poisoning of a French farmer, a judgment that could lend weight to other health claims against pesticides. In the first such case heard in court in France, grain grower Paul Francois, 47, says he suffered neurological problems including memory loss, headaches and stammering after inhaling Monsanto's Lasso weedkiller in 2004. He blames the agri-business giant for not providing adequate warnings on the product label. The ruling was given by a court in Lyon, southeast France, which ordered an expert opinion of Francois's losses to establish the amount of damages. "It is a historic decision in so far as it is the first time that a (pesticide) maker is found guilty of such a poisoning," François Lafforgue, Francois's lawyer, told Reuters.

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Parkinson's Alley

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Sierra Club - By Joy Horowitz - Dec. 20 (News Report) - Recent studies have found statistical links between pesticide use and an outbreak of Parkinson's disease in California farm towns. Researchers even know which chemicals are the likely culprits. What's the government doing about it? Not much.

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Theft in progress: Big Ag raids the treasury—with help from Congress

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Grist - By Tom Laskawy. - Nov. 17 (News Analysis) - by Tom Laskawy. If the straight-up taxpayer swindle taking place in the supercommittee isn’t making you angry, you’re probably not paying attention. I’m talking about the attempt by agribusiness and a group of willing farm-state representatives to put billions of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of industrial farmers during the ongoing super committee Farm Bill negotiations. According to The Hill , the moment of truth is upon us: The supercommittee is indeed poised to rewrite the Farm Bill behind closed doors and with no input from reform-minded congresspeople, let alone the public. Many of us have knew this was going on, but the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found some new developments that are nothing short of shocking. EWG reports that the new “shallow loss” subsidy which would protect commodity growers from small price drops via a “taxpayer-paid guarantee of getting no less than 90%[!!] of their income.” This new subsidy is now considered ...

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Attack of the Monsanto Superinsects

Sat, 03 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Tom Philpott - Sep. 03 (News Report) - insects are developing resistance to Monsanto's insecticide-infused crops, reports the Wall Street Journal. Fields planted in Monsanto's Bt corn in some areas of the Midwest are showing damage from the corn rootworm—the very species targeted by Monsanto's engineered trait. An Iowa State University scientist has conclusively identified Bt-resistant root worms in four Iowa fields, the Journal reports.

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Breeding crops with deeper roots could 'slash CO2 levels'

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

ScienceDaily - Aug. 03 (News) - Writing in the Annals of Botany, Professor Douglas Kell argues that developing crops that produce roots more deeply in the ground could harvest more carbon from the air, and make crops more drought resistant, while dramatically reducing carbon levels.

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Violence, Potential Job Losses Hang Over Colombia Free Trade Agreement

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Dave Jamieson - Jul. 20 (News Report) - As U.S. lawmakers inch closer to enacting a long-stalled free trade agreement with Colombia, the deal's proponents have cited the safer atmosphere for finally pushing the deal through. But for Juan Cambindo, a Colombian sugar cane worker and union leader, the news of significant progress has come as a great surprise. Like many other Colombians, Cambindo says he has had his life threatened because of union ties. He first learned of his new and improved lot while watching television. "The United States was talking about how our situation has gotten better," Cambindo, who visited Washington last week to voice his opposition to the deal, told HuffPost through a translator (video below). "But that's not true. Our situation continues to be bad, and it's getting worse."

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Horse welfare declines after closing of U.S. slaughter plants

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

billingsgazette.com - By Jan Falstad - Jun. 25 (News Report) - The closure of the last U.S. horse slaughter plants in the fall of 2007 has failed to reduce the number of horses shipped to slaughter.

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An environmental journalist's lament

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Breakthrough Journal - By Hannah Nordhaus - Jun. 25 (News Analysis) - Dying bees have become symbols of environmental sin, of faceless corporations out to ransack nature. Such is the story environmental journalism tells all too often. But it's not always the story that best helps us understand how we live in this world of nearly seven billion hungry people, or how we might square our ecological concerns and commitments with that reality. By engaging in simplistic and sometimes misleading environmental narratives -- by exaggerating the stakes and brushing over the inconvenient facts that stand in the way of foregone conclusions -- we do our field, and our subjects, a disservice.

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Roundup: Scientists Say World's Top-Selling Weedkiller Causes Birth Defects

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Lucia Graves - Jun. 24 (News Report) - The chemical at the heart of the planet's most widely used herbicide -- Roundup weedkiller, used in farms and gardens across the U.S.-- -- is coming under more intense scrutiny following the release of a new report calling for a heightened regulatory response around its use. Critics have argued for decades that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup and other herbicides used around the globe, poses a serious threat to public health. Industry regulators, however, appear to have consistently overlooked their concerns. A comprehensive review of existing data released this month by Earth Open Source, an organization that uses open-source collaboration to advance sustainable food production, suggests that industry regulators in Europe have known for years that glyphosate, originally introduced by American agricultural biotechnology giant Monsanto in 1976, causes birth defects in the embryos of laboratory animals.

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Harvard, Vanderbilt, Spelman Exposed For Taking Part in “African Land Grab”

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jun. 20 (News Report) - A new report raises questions about the connection of Harvard, Vanderbilt and other U.S. universities to European financial interests buying or leasing vast areas of African farmland. Called “Understanding Land Investment Deals in Africa,” the report by the Oakland Institute claims farmers in Africa are being driven off their lands to make way for new industrial farming projects backed by hedge funds seeking profits and foreign countries looking for cheap food. We speak with Anuradha Mittal, the executive director of the Oakland Institute. “We have heard about the role of these private hedge funds in food speculation and speculation of food prices because they control commodities” says Mittal. “But when they start buying even the means of production, they control labor, large tracks of land, they control water, it is the kind of vertical integration of the food system we have never seen before.”

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Tree rings record changing snowpack, research finds

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Billings Gazette - By Brett French - Jun. 18 (News Report) - Greg Pederson sees the recent publication of his research on snowpack declines in the West as a prime opportunity to reiterate the difference between climate and weather in this record-setting wet spring. Pederson, an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Bozeman, was the lead author of a paper published last week in Science magazine detailing the decline in snowpack observed by examining tree rings from the watersheds of the Columbia, Missouri and Colorado river basins dating back more than 800 years. His findings: Not only has snowpack declined compared to past climate fluctuations, but there's also been a "decoupling" of precipitation in the Colorado River basin and that of the Northern Rockies.

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Factory Farms Produce 100 Times More Waste Than All People In the US Combined and It's Killing Our Drinking Water |

Wed, 25 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Jill Richardson - May. 25 (Special Report) - These are not hypothetical scenarios. Just ask Rick Dove, an ex-Marine who serves as a Riverkeeper on his beloved Neuse River in North Carolina. After retiring from the Marines, he lived his dream of becoming a small-scale commercial fisherman on the river briefly -- until enormous hog operations moved in, each producing as much waste as a town of 20,000 people, and their waste killed the fish.

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Soil Erosion Far Worse Than Reported In American Farmlands

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Joanna Zelman - Apr. 13 (Special Report) - If the American classic song is right and â€œthis land was made for you and me,â€* then why are we paying to have it destroyed?...

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Wisconsin State Senate Republicans Took Hundreds Of Thousands In Government Farm Subsidies

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Sam Stein - Mar. 09 (News Report) - At least three of the Wisconsin state Senate Republicans currently demanding that public workers sacrifice benefits, wages and even collective bargaining rights for the sake of the budget have applied for and received hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal farm subsidies, a Huffington Post review of state and federal records shows. From 1995 through 2009, state Sens. Luther Olsen, Dale Schultz and Sheila Harsdorf all had stakes in farms that received between them more than $300,000 in taxpayer funds.

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State and municipal governments fertilize local food craze

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

hcn.org - By Nathaniel Hoffman - Mar. 08 (News Report) - Over the last 80 years, federal policy has increasingly put small farmers at a disadvantage by massively subsidizing a centralized, industrial agriculture system that produces cheap food. Activists have spent decades pushing federal reforms, such as organic standards, with incremental success. Now, a surge of state and local government policies that promote local food and small farms as engines of economic development is making waves in Washington, D.C., (see map at right). In 2008 and 2009, for example, at least 13 state legislatures passed bills encouraging the growth of farmers markets. Arizona removed barriers to selling beef and lamb at market, while New Mexico, Washington and other states made it easier for those on public assistance to buy food at farmers markets. Some states directed limited funding toward the infrastructure and promotion of such markets.

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Google Ventures, Khosla Make Rain For WeatherBill

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

blogs.wsj.com - By Deborah Gage - Feb. 28 (News) - Google Inc.'s venture capital arm is backing a start-up founded by ex-Googlers that insures farms and other business against the whims of Mother Nature.

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USDA Approved Monsanto Alfalfa Despite Warnings of New Pathogen

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

truth-out.org - By Mike Ludwig - Feb. 25 (News Report) - Just two weeks before the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) fully deregulated Monsanto's Roundup Ready alfalfa, a senior soil scientist alerted the department about a newly discovered, microscopic pathogen found in high concentrations of Roundup Ready corn and soy that researchers believe could be causing infertility in livestock and diseases in crops that could threaten the entire domestic food supply.read more

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Big Win for Biotech: USDA Deregulates Monsanto Alfalfa

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Mike Ludwig - Feb. 07 (Special Report) - , the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has fully deregulated Monsanto's Roundup Ready alfalfa that is genetically modified (GM) to be resistant to Roundup herbicide. The decision squashed a proposed compromise between the biotech industry and its opponents that would have placed geographic restrictions on Roundup Ready alfalfa to prevent organic and traditional alfalfa from being contaminated by herbicide sprays and transgenes spread by cross-pollination and other factors.read more

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Brazil Elects Dilma Rousseff, First Female President

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, Michael Fox - Nov. 01 (News Report) - Brazil has reached a new milestone with the election of its first-ever female president. On Sunday, Dilma Rousseff defeated rival José Serra with 55 percent in a runoff vote. Rousseff was outgoing Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's chosen successor after serving the last five years as his chief of staff. During the 1960s and 1970s, she was involved in the armed struggle against Brazil's military dictatorship. She was imprisoned for nearly three years and tortured. Among her pledges, Rousseff vowed to eradicate chronic poverty in Brazil affecting 20 million people. We talk with Michael Fox, an independent journalist and documentary filmmaker based outside Porto Alegre. "She's a fighter," Fox says.

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FarmVille vs. Real Farms

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Mashable - Sep. 10 (Special Report) - Have you ever wondered how virtual farming and actual farming stack up? We break it down by the numbers in this infographic.

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A Debate on Geoengineering: Vandana Shiva vs. Gwynne Dyer

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, Vandana Shiva, Gwynne Dyer - Jul. 08 (News Analysis) - Supporters of geoengineering have proposed radical ways to alter the planet to decrease the level of greenhouse gas emissions. Proposals include creating artificial volcanoes to pollute the atmosphere with sulfur particles, fertilizing the oceans and placing sun-deflecting aluminum foil in the sky. But opposition is growing to geoengineering. We host a debate between Indian environmentalist, scientist, philosopher and eco-feminist, Vandana Shiva, and geopolitical analyst and columnist, Gwynne Dyer.

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Raw Milk Drink-In, AKA Boston Teat Party: Photos, Videos, News Coverage

Wed, 12 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

organicconsumers.org - By Alexis Baden-Mayer - May. 12 (News) - "Raw-milk advocates rally for access to their drink," Brian R. Ballou, Globe Staff, May 11, 2010. This article includes a VIDEO.

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Romaine Lettuce Recall Details: E. Coli Linked To 23 States' Romaine Supply

Fri, 07 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Mary Clare Jalonick - May. 07 (News) - An E. coli outbreak possibly linked to tainted lettuce has sickened at least 19 people in Ohio, New York and Michigan, including students on three college campuses, prompting a recall throughout much of the country. Freshway Foods of Sidney, Ohio, said it was recalling romaine lettuce sold under the Freshway and Imperial Sysco brands in 23 states and the District of Columbia because of a possible link to E. coli.

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The Humane Society and Big Ag slug it out over animal rights

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

pitch.com - By Kristen Hinman - Apr. 15 (Special Report) - Around lunchtime on February 5 in Vale, South Dakota, a 33-year-old cattle rancher finished a morning of blogging, then stepped outside with a bottle of wine and a video camera. "Hello, my name is Troy Hadrick. I'm a fifth-generation United States rancher in South Dakota," he ad-libbed. "I recently found out that Yellow Tail wines is going to be donating $100,000 to the wealthiest animal-rights organization in the world, the Humane Society of the United States — a group who is actively trying to put farmers and ranchers out of business in this country." Hadrick said he couldn't support such a company. "This is the only thing I know to do now with this last bottle of Yellow Tail wine that was in our house."

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