Certifier Guide Full Report Executive Summary News Release The Cornucopia Institute’s report, The Gatekeepers of Organic Integrity: Guide to Organic Certifiers, will help producers choose Accredited Certifying Agents (ACAs, aka certifiers) with values that align with their own. It will also clarify the role of certifiers in organic certification for interested consumers. Although all certifiers employ… Read more »
Cornucopia’s Take: Conventional and GMO crop farming and concentrated animal feeding operations create runoff of excess pesticides and fertilizers into watersheds and, ultimately, wells in rural America. The runoff contains nitrates from manure, bacteria from sick animals, and a host of toxic chemicals and antibiotics. Learn more about the crisis below. Sustainable farming practices prevent… Read more »
Sustainable Cities Collective by David Thorpe Parks and city green spaces and school grounds are safe, pleasant and healthy places, right? Perhaps not, if they are sprayed with dangerous pesticides and herbicides. Cities are gradually waking up to the idea that they may be putting their populations at risk by using these chemical-containing pesticides and… Read more »
Real Food Media The winners are in from the Real Food Media contest. Go to http://realfoodmedia.org/films/ to view the top judged films, a mix of information and cleverness rolled into short films designed to broaden our understanding of food from farm to fork. Here’s a sample of the winners: Growing Good Bugs | 2015 Real… Read more »
Speed read: The industrial model of producing both food and knowledge is faulty Sustainable intensification presents ‘technification’ as an undeniable scientific truth Food supply systems and R&D should be reorientated towards real needs SciDev.net Food needs can be met with a new vision for agriculture and science, say Brian Wynne and Georgina Catacora-Vargas. In mainstream… Read more »
The Guardian by Peter Melchett All through the main bird migratory season last autumn, and during this winter, the U.K. government has been testing wild birds for avian flu. They found evidence of the low pathogenic variety of bird flu, which seems to have been present in wild bird populations for a long time, without… Read more »
By Dairy Herd staff Sales of fat-reduced organic fluid milk were up nearly 20 percent last year, according to data released by the Agricultural Marketing Service. Organic fat-reduced milk sales totaled 1.3 billion pounds in 2008 — up 19.7 percent versus 2007, according to the USDA agency. Organic whole milk sales were up 23 percent… Read more »
Roger Blobaum: Organic Policy Pioneer Speaks Out on Organic Controversy PRWatch by Rebekah Wilce Alexis Baden Mayer arrested and removed from NOSB Meeting When organic activist Alexis Baden Mayer of the Organic Consumers Association was arrested after leading a “spirited protest” against watering down organic standards last month, she wasn’t at a rally on the street… Read more »
The New York Times by Neil MacFarquhar Market in Krasnador Source: Geir Halvorsen MOSCOW — Boris Akimov’s cellphone, which quacks like a duck, started to sound like a whole flock soon after President Vladimir V. Putin imposed sweeping food sanctions barring many Western imports last August. Major Russian grocery chains, desperate to find new suppliers, tracked down Mr. Akimov,… Read more »
The New York Times, Opinionator By MARK BITTMAN In the scheme of things, saving the 38 billion bucks that Congress seems poised to agree upon is not a big deal. A big deal is saving a trillion bucks. And we could do that by preventing disease instead of treating it. For the first time in… Read more »
