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ESSAY OF THE WEEK
Save Our Soil
Food Forward SOS: Save Our Soil
For the first time in modern history, an entire year has been dedicated to dirt.
The 68th United Nations General Assembly has declared 2015 the International Year of the Soils. And not a minute too soon, if you put any stock in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1937 warning: “The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.”
For decades, we’ve been poisoning our soils with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. We’ve been overgrazing and over-farming our soil to the point that what were once prairies and grasslands teeming with life, are now lifeless dust fields.
Scientists warn that the top six inches of soil are the most precious, yet least understood ecosystem on Earth. Unfortunately, we’ve allowed conventional and GMO agriculture, which rely on tilling and monocrops, to decimate our topsoil—so much so that some predict that most of the topsoil in the U.S. will be lost in the next two generations.
In order to appreciate the role healthy topsoil plays in our survival, you first have to understand the role carbon plays in maintaining the ecological balance of our entire planet. A good place to start? This article on Mercola.com, which highlights the PBS documentary “SOS: Save our Soil,” part of the PBS Food Forward series.
ACTION ALERT
Poisonous Fields Forever?
The words “methyl bromide” went mainstream this week (April 7, 2015), with the news that a Delaware family had been poisoned by the pesticide while on vacation in the Virgin Islands. In its report on the story, NBC news pointed out that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) doesn’t allow exterminators to use methyl bromide in the U.S.—but the agency does grant a “critical use exemption” to certain farmers, including strawberry farmers.
What better opportunity to call on Driscoll's, the largest organic and "natural" strawberry company in the world, to stop using methyl bromide on strawberry seedlings that the company then sells to organic farmers, so they can raise “organic” strawberries.
Driscoll's uses toxic fumigants, including methyl bromide, on all of the company’s strawberry seedlings. The company then sells those seedlings, to, among others, organic farmers, who raise the plants organically and sell them under the organic label.
How does Driscol'sl get away with this scam? The company has convinced its organic certifier, California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF), and the USDA National Organic Program (NOP), that there are no “commercially available” sources for legitimately organic strawberry seedlings.
But that’s just not true.
ACTION ALERT
Organic Egg on their Faces
Buying organic eggs is a good way to fight factory farming—but only if you buy eggs from organic farms that raise their hens on pasture.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of so-called “organic” eggs on grocery shelves that come from farms that operate more like factories, than farms—despite the pretty pictures on their labels.
Which national organic brands are the worst offenders? Egg-Land’s Best® and Land O’ Lakes® brands, along with many organic private-label store brands, according to a recent Cornucopia Institute investigation of the organic egg industry.
Based on animal welfare issues, and the fact that these brands come from farms that feed their chickens synthetic methionine, we’re calling on all consumers to boycott Egg-Land’s Best and Land O’Lakes organic eggs. We also advise consumers to steer clear of store brand organic eggs.
Check out our action alert on how to avoid these brands, and also for a detailed exposé on the big organic producers that own the brands—their crimes against animals, and their dismal track records when it comes to following the USDA’s National Organic Program’s rules for organic egg production.
SUPPORT THE OCA & OCF
Right before Our Eyes
It would be unbelievable. If it weren’t true.
Just 15 days after the World Health Organization said that glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, is a probable human carcinogen, our friends at the EPA signed off on additional uses of a new herbicide containing glyphosate. Dow’s Enlist Duo, concocted from a deadly mix of 2,4-D and glyphosate, can now be used in nine additional states. That makes 16 states whose citizens will be directly exposed to more glyphosate (with a dash of 2,4-D, a chemical used to make Agent Orange).
Dow rejoiced at the news. And immediately said it would seek approval of the product in even more states.
This is what we’re up against. Corporations willing to poison everything in sight with impunity, in order to line their CEO’s pockets and enrich their shareholders. Government agencies blinded and bedazzled by “technology” at any price. And politicians so beholden to their corporate donors they’re willing to sell their constituents down the polluted river to keep those corporations happy.
The notion of a “corporation” isn’t inherently evil. But the corporation that has no purpose other than to enrich a few, at the cost of many, and fulfills that purpose by peddling poisons under the false pretense of “helping farmers” or “feeding the world,” is.
Fortunately more and more scientists, more and more journalists, and more and more consumers are seeing through the lies and the fraud. And speaking out.
We are making progress, even if it sometimes seems too slow. With your help, we will keep moving toward a sane world, where prosperous farms and farmers enrich their communities, rather than poison them, by producing real, healthful, non-toxic food.
Donate to the Organic Consumers Association (tax-deductible, helps support our work on behalf of organic standards, fair trade and public education)
Donate to the Organic Consumers Fund (non-tax-deductible, but necessary for our GMO labeling legislative efforts)
SAVE ORGANIC STANDARDS
Taking a Stand
It’s been almost a year since the OCA organized a protest at the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) meeting in San Antonio, Texas, to voice our opposition to a September 2013 change made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Organic Program (USDA NOP) to the program’s “sunset” process for reviewing non-organic materials allowed in organic.
This week, we joined about a dozen other groups in a lawsuit against the USDA to overturn that change and restore the original “sunset” process.
What did the NOP do that triggered our protest and launched a lawsuit?
Since its origins, the sunset provision has been interpreted under the USDA organic rule to require allowed synthetic materials to cycle off the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances every five years unless the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) decisively votes by a two-thirds majority to relist them. In making its decision, the NOSB is charged with considering public input, new science, and new information on available alternatives. In September, 2013, without public comment, and in a complete reversal of the customary public process, USDA announced a change in the rule it had been operating under since the inception of the organic program, now allowing synthetic materials to remain on the National List unless the NOSB votes them off.
Why does it matter?
We are deeply concerned that the decision-making process on allowed synthetic materials in organic production and processing is being undermined by USDA. The lawsuit we are filing challenges the unilateral agency action on the sunset procedure for synthetic materials review, which represents a dramatic departure from the organic community’s commitment to an open and fair decision making process that is subject to public input. Legalistically, the agency’s decision represents a rule change and therefore must be subject to public comment. But equally important, it is a departure from the public process that we have built as a community.
It all comes down to this: As consumers, and consumer advocates, we have to protect the integrity of organic standards. If we don’t, if we allow industry to pressure the USDA's NOP into allowing weaker and weaker standards, we risk the loss of consumer confidence in a label we have worked for, and relied on, for decades.
VIDEO OF THE WEEK
Reversing Climate Change, Feeding the World
OCA’s Ronnie Cummins, along with Vandana Shiva and leaders from the Rodale Institute and Via Campesina are featured in this new video, “Small-Scale Farmers Cool the Planet,” just out from the Fair World Project (a project of OCA).
From the devastating impact climate change has already had on parts of the world, to the role industrial agriculture plays in destroying the soil and warming the planet, to the simple solution—organic, regenerative agriculture—this new video explains where we are headed if we continue on our current path, and what we can do to avert a global climate disaster.
NEW STUDY
Climate Change Is Making Us Sick
Climate change is making people sicker, according physicians surveyed by the American Thoracic Society (ATS).
The ATS, in collaboration with George Mason University, surveyed a random sample of its members to assess their “perceptions of, clinical experiences with, and preferred policy responses to climate change.”
From the journal abstract:
A majority of respondents indicated they were already observing health impacts of climate change among their patients, most commonly as increases in chronic disease severity from air pollution (77%), allergic symptoms from exposure to plants or mold (58%), and severe weather injuries (57%). A larger majority anticipated seeing these climate-related health impacts in the next 2 decades.
President Obama took up the “climate change affects public health” conversation withCNN this week. What was left out of the conversation? The impact of industrial, chemical-intensive, GMO monoculture ag on the climate and, ultimately, your health.
LITTLE BYTES
Essential Reading for the Week
EPA Restricts Use of Pesticides Suspected of Killing Bees
Hormone Therapy: Revelations from the Women's Health Initiative
Media and NGO Comments on WHO Classification of Glyphosate as Probable Carcinogen
Portland Bans Insecticide to Protect Declining Honey Bees
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