Minnesota Takes Aim at Egg Farmer Co-op Member for Third Time

FA Note — Anoth­er barage by the unholy alliance between Big Ag and gov­ern­ment, designed to erad­i­cate your free­dom to grow/buy your food as you will, put­ing the lie to  “sus­tain­able” agri­cul­ture. Min­neso­ta sim­ply can­not get enough of Alvin Schlangen. An egg farmer who tends to and vol­un­teers with a fresh food co-op. Two coun­ties in par­tic­u­lar (MDA) have tried […]

The USDA Is Taking On Agriculture’s Huge Contribution To Climate Change

The Unit­ed States Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture plans to announce a set of vol­un­tary ini­tia­tives aimed at help­ing farm­ers, ranch­ers, and for­est land own­ers respond to cli­mate change by increas­ing car­bon stor­age, reduc­ing car­bon emis­sions, and sup­port­ing resilience in the face of extreme weath­er. Sec­re­tary of Agri­cul­ture Tom Vil­sack is expect­ed to make the announce­ment Thursday […]

The Free Market is Solving the GMO Problem

When Justin Dammann enters his south­west­ern Iowa corn­field this month, the 35-year-old farmer will sow some­thing these 2,400 acres have not seen in more than a decade — plants grown with­out genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied seeds. The corn, which will head to a proces­sor 20 miles down the road this fall, will like­ly make its way into tortilla […]

Editorial — The Incredible Raisin Heist

Steal­ing is ille­gal, unless the gov­ern­ment is the thief. On Wednes­day the Supreme Court will hear a case on whether the gov­ern­ment can seize a chunk of a business’s prod­uct to reg­u­late prices. This is a big one. Like much gov­ern­ment mis­chief, Horne v. USDA has its roots in the Great Depres­sion and fed­er­al pro­grams to […]

What is Monsanto Hiding in Secret Documents?

What is Mon­san­to hid­ing in secret doc­u­ments? A sci­en­tist offers shock­ing com­ments. “Let’s have a fed­er­al court where the judge pre­tends the lawyers for the defense are ful­ly informed about the facts of the case. The plain­tiff, a giant cor­po­ra­tion, pre­tends it’s con­cerned about the safe­ty of the pub­lic. The press pre­tends it’s cov­er­ing the […]

Revealed: A Secret Monsanto Document In The Maui GMO Case

Imag­ine you are a lawyer argu­ing a case before a judge. There is no jury. The judge will decide the out­come. The judge tells you, “Look, the oth­er side, your oppo­nents in this case, have filed doc­u­ments with me. These doc­u­ments are at the heart of their argu­ment. I can’t allow you to read the […]

Seed Laws that Criminalise Farmers: Resistance and Fightback

Peas­ant seeds – the pil­lar of food pro­duc­tion – are under attack every­where. Under cor­po­rate pres­sure, laws in many coun­tries increas­ing­ly lim­it what farm­ers can do with their seeds. Seed sav­ing, which has been the basis of farm­ing for thou­sands of years, is quick­ly being crim­i­nalised. What can we do? A new book­let and poster […]

US Agribusiness, GMOs and The Plundering Of The Planet

Small family/peasant farms pro­duce most of the world’s food. They form the bedrock of glob­al food pro­duc­tion. Yet they are being squeezed onto less than a quar­ter of the planet’s farm­land. The world is fast los­ing farms and farm­ers through the con­cen­tra­tion of land into the hands of rich and pow­er­ful land spec­u­la­tors and agribusi­ness corporations. […]