Think Your Food’s Organic? Think Again

CAFOs require heavy doses of antibiotics to keep the animals alive

By Jim Hightower 

USDA allows factory farm cattle milk to be called organic. With the phenomenal growth in consumer demand for organic products, such giants as Kraft and Dean Foods have rushed to capture this multibillion-dollar market, except they don’t want to play by the rules. Big Food found its enabler in Barbara Robinson, who was chosen to administer the organic program during the George W. Bush years.

More Women Managing US Farms

Jeanne Dietz-Band raises more than 200 goats on her Many Rocks Farm in Keedysville, Maryland

By June Soh

Traditionally in the United States, women played important roles on the family farm helping their father or husband. But a recent Census shows the number of farms run by women is rising. Many of these women were drawn to farming from totally different careers. They now enjoy bringing healthy and flavorful foods to local markets.

GM Crop Failure Petition 2009

By African Centre for Biosafety

Three varieties of Monsanto’s genetically modified maize failed to produce crops during the 2008-09 growing season, leaving up to 200,000 hectares (~500,000 acres) of fields barren of cobs and crop losses across several provinces in South Africa.

Good Farming Was More Advanced a Hundred Years Ago

By Gene Logsdon

Working from the premise that we will eventually run out of plentiful supplies of manufactured fertilizers, I have been reading old farming books written before artificial fertilizers became easily available. I am amazed at the sophistication with which science approached the subject of soil fertility once it become evident in the mid-1800s that farmers were rapidly depleting the native richness of their soils and had to find ways to restore it using livestock manure and green manure crops. In some ways, what science advocated then was more advanced than farming practices are today.