Vermont Becomes First to Have Mandatory GMO Labeling

Will oth­er states dive in by 2016? After months of con­sumer and activist com­ments, pick­et­ing at the Attor­ney General’s Office, and win­ning a law­suit against Mon­san­to who tried to over­turn the orig­i­nal law, Ver­mont has just become the first state to have manda­to­ry GMO label­ing. Ver­mont became the first state to become GMO-labeled (a step toward […]

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 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 […]

House Bill Would Give Land Trusts Power Over Private Forestlands

Unsus­pect­ing prop­er­ty own­ers may find them­selves on the out­side look­ing in A seem­ing­ly innocu­ous, bipar­ti­san House bill intro­duced in late March could sub­ject unsus­pect­ing landown­ers to the whims of pow­er-hun­­gry envi­ron­men­tal groups, eager to usurp the prop­er­ty rights of those who fall into their clutch­es. At risk are own­ers of pri­vate forest­lands, who may soon […]

Contract Extension Could Leave Landowners Flapping in the Breeze

Crit­ics say a pro­posed leg­isla­tive fix vio­lates the spir­it of the law against spe­cial leg­is­la­tion for cor­po­ra­tions and under­cuts options for landown­ers who may rethink their involve­ment with wind devel­op­ers. The con­tro­ver­sy focus­es on the 82-megawatt Black Oak wind farm — on the draw­ing board in Stearns Coun­ty since 2008. State law requires that wind ener­gy projects […]

Using the Global Warming Hoax to Destroy America

When Pres­i­dent Oba­ma announced on March 31 that he intends to ensure that the U.S. will slash its “green­house gas emis­sions” 26% below 2005 emis­sions lev­els by 2025 in order to keep pledges made to ful­fill the U.N. Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change, he failed to men­tion that such lev­els would be com­pa­ra­ble to what […]

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 […]