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From over half a million plant species on the planet, we currently rely on just four crops (wheat, rice, maize and soybean) for more than three-quarters of our food supply. These `major’ crops are grown in a limited number of exporting countries, usually as monocultures, and are highly dependent on inputs such as fertiliser and […]

The Gazette, and Iowa City newspaper, recently published a story mentioning the "struggling farm economy" being the cause of the cancellation of a $90,000,000 Monsanto seed corn plant. The story can be found here, but one must ask the question: Is consumer awareness prohibiting the expansion of these GMO giants? Keep putting your money where […]

[vimeo 108598502 w=500 h=281] Evan Marks - Local Legendz We all have a vague sense that humans have a negative impact on the environment, but many of us push the thought to the backs of our minds and continue on with our days. When Evan Marks made that realization, he decided it was time to […]

We're reposting this message from Michelle in California, as sent by Mom's Across America. It's powerful and important. Please take the time to visit, read, and consider signing and sharing the petition at the bottom. Trigger warning: content about birth defects, miscarriage, and infant death. "I lost my baby due to anencephaly.  I was exposed to […]

Right now the Islands of Hawaii are in a food fight of global consequence. Although Hawaii has a rich history as a self-sufficient agricultural society, Hawaiians now import 90% of their food. Hawaii is also ground zero for the world's biotech companies, which capitalize on the tropical climate and lax environmental laws to test experimental […]

This could be any small diversified farmer. Greenhorns far and wide, stay updated on this situation. Share it broadly. Make a fuss. Start a conversation. SPREAD THIS FAR AND WIDE. SOCIAL MEDIA NEEDS TO COME TO HIS RESCUE.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z20CjCim8DM]

The $130 billion Dow-DuPont merger announced last week has rekindled ChemChina’s $44.6 billion bid for Syngenta which, in turn, may provoke a fourth takeover try by Monsanto. If ChemChina prevails, Monsanto is likely to look for a deal with either BASF or Bayer. If they get their way, the world’s Big Six agricultural input companies […]

After months of negotiations, OFFC and the Center for Food Safety have reached a proposed settlement with the two GE alfalfa growers that had sued to overturn Jackson County’s ban on genetically engineered crops. The settlement still needs to be approved by the County and federal court, but we expect it will be. Under the […]

Time to submit to the NEW FARMER’S ALMANAC vol. III Agrarians and stewards of all types, young and old, seasoned and greenhorn, we want to hear from you! We’ve begun the process of compiling submissions to the New Farmer’s Almanac: vol III. Awash in fascinating content, we want more! The upcoming Almanac will explore the […]

Maybe you heard that the Climate Summit in Paris had lead to an "landmark deal," and you were as skeptical as we were. Maybe you also wondered how often the word "agriculture" appeared in the climate deal or how indigenous groups were responding to the agreement. Feed your skepticism! Danny Chivers and Jess Worth of The New […]

Does your work connect to land and food? The Harvard Just Food Forum seeks proposals that focus on issues of land justice in the food system. We encourage proposals that highlight entrepreneurial initiatives and insights, lessons learned, successes, and opportunities to create a more just food system. We are especially seeking panels and workshops that […]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHwJ6PoE19s] Following a successful theatrical release in fifty cities nationwide, the acclaimed documentary OCCUPY THE FARM is now available to stream or download on iTunes, Google Play, Amazon Instant Video and VUDU.

By Casey C. Sullivan, Esq. If I'm going to spend extra on organic produce and products, they better well be fully organic. We're talking pesticide-free, earth-friendly, non-synthetic organic here. If I get a product labeled organic that doesn't meet those standards, I'm going to feel cheated. And, as of today, I could sue. In an […]

Somaliland's harshest drought is decimating the herder way of life and displacing thousands. By Ashley Hamer Hargeisa, Somaliland  - Swaths of Somaliland, a fragile, internationally unrecognised nation-state in the Horn of Africa, have been racked by one of the harshest droughts in two decades which is destroying livelihoods and pushing families into destitution. When a […]

http://explorewithjoseph.com/images/jospeh-simcox-nara-melon%20acanthosicyos%20horridus%20namibia.jpg Are you are interested in working with Joseph Simcox, The Botanical Explorer, as a select gardener to share in his special seed grow-outs? Do you wish to participate in this coast to coast effort to stitch America together with garden networks? Are you good at keeping a garden journal or documenting your progress with […]

http://www.technologyreview.com/sites/default/files/images/monsanto.beesx299.jpg In 2011 Monsanto, the maker of herbicides and genetically engineered seeds, bought an Israeli company called Beeologics, which had developed an RNA interference technology that can be fed to bees through sugar water. The idea is that when a nurse bee spits this sugar water into each cell of a honeycomb where a queen […]

Is Big Ag squelching research showing its new RNAi GMOs may be dangerous? By Caitlin Rockett After nearly 30 years studying how plants use their genes to defend against viruses, Vicki Vance, a professor at the University of South Carolina, doesn’t see genetically modifying plants as a malevolent or arrogantly God-like endeavor. “There’s DNA in […]

This video is hiding a LOT of information. We greenhorns ask the viewing audience to question the motives of National Geographic for posting this video about the "blue revolution."  It's an input-intensive industrial fish farm which spells out: Antibiotics Sea Lice Genetic Pollution Dead Zones Several pounds of wild-caught fish go into feeding every pound […]

The evidence base is growing: strengthening women’s land rights contributes to women’s empowerment and household welfare. Evidence is also showing that women who have more secure land tenure are more likely to plant trees or make other investments to improve the land and generate ecosystem services. This means efforts to improve women’s land rights can […]

Earlier this year, 45 year-old Matt Black embarked from Santa Maria, Calif., his birthplace, and drove 18,000 miles across the country and back again, stopping every 200 miles to photograph cities, towns, and rural areas, where like Santa Maria, more than 20 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. That is the point […]

From: John Brown Lives! The research is clear: Education reduces recidivism, improves job prospects for individuals once they leave prison and strengthens communities. Since 1995, though, New York has blocked incarcerated individuals from receiving this aid. Our goal is to restore it.​ You can help - sign this petition today! Next month, John Brown Lives! will […]

As we approach the holidays ever deeper, we must question what we are buying and gifting to our loved ones. Where did your gift come from? Who made it? Does it have a story? Is it a story that you want to be telling? I went to The Mall yesterday with my mother, bless her, […]

Sit back, friends. I've got a story for you. (Spoiler alert, it involves pesticides, pollinators, USDA protection of Big Ag interests, and the failure of the US government to protect whistleblowers.) “Politics inside USDA have made entomology a high risk specialty.” In early 2015, USDA scientist, Dr. Jonathon Lundgren submitted his research on pesticides and pollinators […]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NT05qEJxUk] Trailer for 2013 film More Than Honey about colony collapse in honey bees. The film has won a number of international awards and is rated 100% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. 

Imagine if all the young farmers who scale up their pop corn, millet, broom corn, chestnuts or filbert crops could find a buyer that adds value, champions our diversity, and guarantees a great price… Yes, I think this can happen! Ventura-based Patagonia, a brand best known for its outdoor apparel, is getting into the buffalo […]

The last antibiotics begin to fail... http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/files/2015/11/Clemson-pig-e1448140337896.jpg   On Thursday, researchers from several Chinese, British and US universities announced in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases that they have identified a new form of resistance, to the very last-ditch drug colistin—and that it is present in both meat animals and people, probably comes from agricultural use of […]

We are nearing a serious crisis. If the present strained relations between wealth owners and wealth producers continue much longer they will ripen into frightful disaster. This universal discontent must be quickly interpreted and its causes removed. It is the country’s imperative Call to Action, and cannot be longer disregarded with impunity.   So begins […]

https://youtu.be/1PbtZeH3aIo Imagine regional textile communities. Rebecca Burgess did and has created something amazing. Check out the website for Fibershed here and watch more of their videos HERE!

[vimeo 143568165 w=500 h=209] Help change the conversation on GMO! Attend a screening of a new movie thriller about GMOs in a theater near you! Consumed is an amazing film, so let's fill every seat to make sure the world knows how Monsanto controls our food supply! "Very entertaining, relatable, suspenseful and informative and a […]

[vimeo 107305950 w=500 h=281] What we eat does more than just fill our stomachs and nourish our bodies; good food lifts our spirits and helps us understand the world a little better. We aim to make the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and perhaps most important, inspire solutions to the environmental crisis. And nowhere […]

We are here to call out this bogus fish farming article from the April 2014 issue of National Geographic on a "pioneering" fish farmer in Panama. "The Other White Meat" follows Brian O’Hanlon, who's working to make Cobia, a little-known species native to mid-atlantic and indo-pacific waters, a challenger to the dinner paradigm of salmon and sea bass. Why? […]

Our Tours Food Sovereignty Tours offer you an opportunity to travel to international destinations to experience local food systems and the food sovereignty movement first-hand. Through one- to two-week educational tours, you will learn how you are connected to the global food system and acquire knowledge and strategies you can use to create just, sustainable […]

USDA has a new website and you can see it here.  Its purpose is to support new farmers and is pretty awesome. We are thankful for the websites, USDA! What we'd like is a national land bank that holds land in transition and allows young farmers to buy their way into ownership over the course of 30 […]

In their call for signatories, the organizers of the World Forum on Access to land write: "The current situation – persistence of hunger, population growth, exclusion, massive unemployment, environmental crisis and loss of food sovereignty – as well as the persistence of acquisitions, leases and land concessions, invite us all to revisit the issue of access […]

Keep The Soil In Organic began as a petition started by Dave Chapman, the owner/grower at Long Wind Farm, and David Miskell of Miskell's Premier Organics. Why are we doing this? We are doing this because of our deep concern about a failure to maintain the integrity of the national organic standards. The way that the national standards work is that a […]

The first thing Violet Branch does when she wakes up is to inhale through her nose to see whether the smell of hog excrement from across the street has seeped into her home again. “Sometimes when I wake up the odor is in the house. Sometimes before I go to bed, the odor is in […]

Propagandists.org posts information about propaganda, its history, and dossiers of known government and industry propagandists that operate today. Each year, the US Government and industries spend hundreds of millions of dollars to promote propaganda (now called “social marketing”), assigning government- or industry-funded propagandists (also known as social marketers, social scientists, and thought leaders) who use […]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rtySUhuokM] In 13:22 gloriously-illustrated minutes, Berkeley professor Ananya Roy takes our assumptions about welfare and poverty to task.