The Cornucopia Institute, through research and investigations on agricultural and food issues, provides needed information to family farmers, consumers and other stakeholders in the good food movement and to the media. We support economic justice for the family-scale farming community – partnered with consumers – backing ecologically produced local, organic and authentic food.
90 different pesticide formulations.
Sprayed 2 to 3 times a week.
Up to 16 times a day.
No mandatory disclosure or notifications.
No regular monitoring.
LAWSUITS against three counties to protect their right to spray.
These are the dangerous pesticide practices detailed in Center for Food Safety’s new animated video Pesticides in Paradise. Read Full Article »
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The first wave of acquisitions of organic processors was concentrated between December, 1997 and October, 2002. This period coincides with the initial release of the draft USDA organic standards and its full implementation in October, 2002. A second wave of acquisitions in the organic sector has been occurring since 2012. Surprisingly few major corporate agribusinesses note ownership ties on their acquisitions’ product labels. Read Full Article »
Inter Press Service News Agency
by Christopher Pala
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A major new study has revealed that the global seafood catch is much larger and declining much faster than previously known.
The study, by the University of British Columbia near Vancouver, reconstructed the global catch between 1950 and 2010 and found that it was 30 per cent higher than what countries have been reporting to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome since 1950.
In the Caribbean islands, the catch was more than twice as large as previously reported and declining at a rate 60 per cent faster than the official rate, the Canadian study found.
“This trend needs to be reversed urgently, or else a lot of people who depend on the sea for affordable protein are going to suffer,” said Daniel Pauly, a fisheries scientist who led the study. “And climate change is just going to make things worse.”
Called the “Sea Around Us” and funded by the Pew Environment Group, the study involved more than 400 collaborators over more than a decade. Read Full Article »
The Seattle Times
by Elizabeth Zach
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Source: USDA |
According to the USDA, the women who identify themselves as farmers or ranchers run the gamut from those who raise cattle, sheep, poultry, pigs and goats in the West and Midwest to viticulturists who nurture malbec and pinot noir grapes in California, Washington and Oregon.
RUIDOSO, N.M. — Although Laura Jean Schneider comes from four generations of Midwest farmers, she is uncertain sometimes about her agricultural acumen.
For the past two years, she has ranched cattle across 100,000 acres on the Mescalero Apache Reservation in southern New Mexico with her husband. It is, she said, dangerous work, compared with the farming she once did in Minnesota with her family. For one thing, should either she or her husband need immediate medical care, it would be a hard ride over 27 miles of uneven dirt roads that flood during monsoon season.
And at 31, she suffers from debilitating migraines, back pain and ongoing dental work after a near-fatal car accident a decade ago. There are bank loans and the West’s ongoing drought that weigh on her. Yet she has learned the ropes, as it were, keenly observing how cattle learn the landscape they live in, and how not all of them are naturally good at rearing their young.
“I rope, ride and build fence,” she says matter-of-factly. “This is what I do. It’s my job.” Read Full Article »
Digital Journal
by Karen Graham
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Monsanto’s genetically engineered (GE) Roundup-Ready alfalfa has already cost farmers millions of dollars, and now, a new study by the USDA, the same agency that re-approved it, has found that GE alfalfa has really gone wild, literally.
In a study published in December 2015, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) verified that genetically engineered alfalfa had gone wild in our western states, in a very big way.
The study lends confirmation to and explains the number of transgenic contamination episodes over the past few years that have cost American alfalfa farmers and exporters millions of dollars. More telling is that the study exposes the failure of the USDA’s “coexistence” policy, says EcoWatch. Read Full Article »
