2011 worst U.S. tornado year on record; Texas drought breaks all records

Meteorologist Dr Jeffrey Masters compiled Top ten global weather events of 2011 showing some shocking statistics, including the tornado super outbreak of 343 tornadoes April 25 – 28, 2011 in the Midwest and Southeast U.S.  He ranks the Southern U.S./Northern Mexico drought as the eighth worst weather event in 2011 for the entire planet. Topping his list of worst weather events in 2011 is the East Africa drought and famine which has claimed the lives of over 30,000.

Importing Disaster: India to ape US industrial farming

By Latha Jishnu
Down to Earth (India)

Excerpts: One of the oddest things about the Indian establishment is the complete mindlessness with which it has been lapping up practically anything hawked by Western governments, corporations, financial institutions and other snake oil salesmen. And unlike adolescent whims, this kind of aping is far from being harmless; they can have deleterious effects on economies, livelihoods and societies.

Nowhere is this determination to import disaster more evident than in agriculture. Farming in the US and India are as different from each other as the atmosphere in Jupiter is to that of Earth.

Multidrug-resistant meat contaminations spoil holiday meals; prompt recalls

Tyson recalls 41,000 pounds of ground beef; Hannaford nearly all

By Rady Ananda
Food Freedom

Per the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, on Dec. 20, Tyson Meats, Inc. recalled 41,000 pounds of its ground beef from 16 states, suspecting an E. coli O157:H7 contamination.  Last week, Hannaford Stores, a Scarborough, Maine-based grocery chain, recalled an unspecified amount of fresh ground beef products that may be contaminated with a multidrug resistant strain of Salmonella Typhimurium.

The Great Culling releases air and fluoride trailers

By Chris Maple & Paul Wittenberger
Framing The World Productions

As of yesterday we were able to release our AIR trailer just in the nick of time for Christmas.  With the completion of the trailer we are turning our all of our attention to the final edit of the film.

Mutated vegetables | Fukushima Diary

By Fukushima Diary
(Source)

Having the harvesting season, more and more mutated plants are found.

↑ From Sankei newspaper, Ibaraki 12/17/2011. The man who runs his Soba shop grew these “carrots”. He is “happy” to find them. He thinks it looks like paper, scissors, rock. He has no question to serve them at his shop.

Toxic botulism in animals linked to RoundUp

Dr Mercola recently interviewed Dr Don Huber, whose letter to the USDA warning that Monsanto’s RoundUp, a broad-spectrum “herbicide” that has been linked with spontaneous abortion in animals, continues to be ignored by food and environmental safety authorities. In this important hour-long discussion, Huber, a plant pathologist for over 50 years, explains how RoundUp is destroying our healthy soils by killing needed microorganisms.

Not only did his team discover a new soil pathogen, but he reports that animals are coming down with over 40 new diseases, like toxic botulism. Huber explains that before the widespread use of herbicides, pesticides and genetically modified food and feed, natural probiota would have kept Clostridium botulinum in check.

Frito-Lay sued for labeling its GMO-filled snacks as “All Natural”

By Rady Ananda
Food Freedom

Less than a year after Frito-Lay announced plans to make half their products without “any artificial or synthetic ingredients,” the $13 billion company was sued last week in federal court for fraudulently marketing the snacks that contain genetically modified ingredients.

Somehow, “artificial” and “synthetic” doesn’t include “genetically modified” in Frito’s mind.

Transition Town: Incredible Edible Todmorden

Intro by NextWorldTV

Todmorden is an old mill town in England where there is a community wide, massive investment in growing their own produce. Vegetable gardens have sprung up everywhere. They’ve planted several orchards and are working with public bodies in the town to use their land to grow food, like the fire station and the railway station. EVERY school there is now involved in growing.

FDA Escalates War Against Amish Dairy Farmers

By Deborah Stockton
National Independent Consumers and Farmers Association

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) apparent war on Amish raw dairy farmers increased on December 6 when they filed a “motion for summary judgment,” with Pennsylvania judge Lawrence Stengler asking for a permanent injunction against dairy farmer Dan Allgyer to forbid him from selling fresh milk out of state. FDA regulation 21 CFR §1240.61 criminalizes any selling of milk intended to cross state lines.

Willie Nelson: Occupy the Food System; Farmers march on Wall Street (videos)

On Dec. 4, farmers marched on Wall Street. Here’s one video of a speech by Jim Gerritsen, an organic Maine farmer, who discusses the class action lawsuit against Monsanto, and a more recent piece by singer-songwriter, Willie Nelson:

Occupy the Food System

By Willie Nelson,
Reader Supported News

Thanks to the Occupy Wall Street movement, there’s a deeper understanding about the power that corporations wield over the great majority of us. It’s not just in the financial sector, but in all facets of our lives. The disparity between the top 1 percent and everyone else has been laid bare – there’s no more denying that those at the top get their share at the expense of the 99 percent. Lobbyists, loopholes, tax breaks… how can ordinary folks expect a fair shake?

No one knows this better than family farmers, whose struggle to make a living on the land has gotten far more difficult since corporations came to dominate our farm and food system. We saw signs of it when Farm Aid started in 1985, but corporate control of our food system has since exploded.

What will we get for our billions of Farm Bill bucks?

By Metro Farm

The federal government will soon craft a new Farm Bill that will give billions of dollars to the largest, most profitable farms in the nation.  This leads us to ask…

What will we get for our billions of Farm Bill bucks?

This Saturday at 9am Pacific, the Food Chain Radio show with Michael Olson hosts Iowa State University Economics Professor Bruce Babcock and Farm Bill Hackathon Hostess Beth Hoffman for a conversation about the 2012 Farm Bill.

Enforcement Hammer Falls on Giant Arizona Organic Factory Farm Dairy

USDA Action Spurred by Industry Watchdog’s Investigation

By Cornucopia

CORNUCOPIA, WI – An industrial-scale organic dairy, located south of Phoenix in the desert Southwest, is poised to lose its USDA organic certification. The enforcement action at Shamrock Farms is the result of a USDA investigation into organic livestock management practices that was triggered by a formal complaint from The Cornucopia Institute.

Shamrock operates a massive dairy that was milking approximately 16,000 cows at the time of an inspection by Cornucopia staff in 2008. Between 700 and 1,100 of the cows at the split operation were in the organic milk herd; the remainder were part of a conventional dairy that is part of the same sprawling complex. Shamrock is Arizona’s first-ever certified organic dairy.

“We found inadequate, overgrazed pasture adjacent to their milking facility, and we were told by Shamrock employees that the confined cows had not been out in weeks,” said Mark A. Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst for Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute, an organic industry watchdog.

Stocking stuffers for foodies (5-book review)

By Rady Ananda

Need a last minute gift for your beloved locavore? Several books would make excellent holiday gifts, so this review covers a few of them on the environment, as it relates to local food sovereignty, food security and palate delight. There’s even one for kids, which starts the set:

Avatars of Gaia: Escape from Hazard Hollow
Professor Heart (self-published: 2009, 210 pp.)
Website: www.avatarsofgaia.org

Charlotte Purin of Los Angeles decided one of the best ways to save Mother Earth is to get kids involved. So she wrote Avatars of Gaia: Escape from Hazard Hollow for preteens. The tale educates as it entertains, integrating the concepts of sustainability, healthy-eating, and environmental consciousness into a fantasy adventure story.

Chemtrail Agenda – Michael Murphy on Coast to Coast AM

Journalist, filmmaker and activist Michael Murphy spoke with George Noory on Coast to Coast AM on Dec. 7, providing evidence of the worldwide black project known as chemtrails, one aspect of geoengineering, to allow corporations and the government to control natural systems including weather, water, soil and food.

GMO Film Project

A film by Compeller Pictures
gmofilm.com

Directed by Jeremy Seifert
Produced by Joshua Kunau
Co-Producer, Elizabeth Kucinich
Associate Producer, Timothy Vatterott
Cinematographer, Rod Hassler

The GMO Film Project (Untitled) tells the story of a father’s discovery of GMO’s through the symbolic act of poor Haitian farmers burning seeds in defiance of Monsanto’s gift of 475 tons of hybrid corn and vegetable seeds to Haiti shortly after the devastating earthquake. After a journey to Haiti to learn why hungry farmers would burn seeds, the real awakening of what has happened to our food, what we are feeding our families, and what is at stake for the global food supply unfolds in a trip across the United States in search of answers.

Homemade holiday wreaths

By Rady Ananda

It’s not too late to uber-create your holiday wreath… here are some ideas from around the web, including these made with corks and ties featured by The Ecoholic:

Poland Joins Ranks of Grassroots Anti-Monsanto Activism

By Michael Edwards and Anthony Gucciardi
Activist Post and NaturalSociety

The anti-GMO, anti-Monsanto movement has been making major waves in recent months.

The inexorable growth of this revolution was recently highlighted by the popularity of Anthony Gucciardi’s article detailing actions taken by Hungary to destroy 1000 acres of maize and issue a 10-year ban on GM foods.  That article has gone mega-viral with over 95,000 shares, and is one of the best indications to date that we the people can take on even the largest corporations if we just take action and make our voices heard.

Rural farmers unite to feed Wall Street protestors

Feed the Movement is a grassroots effort to supply fresh produce from our region’s small farms to the kitchens of the ongoing Occupy movements in New York and New England.

Kucinich: Protect Our Food Supply from Manufactured Crises

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On Dec. 9, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) announced commonsense legislation that would prohibit open-air cultivation of Genetically Engineered (GE) pharmaceutical and industrial crops, preventing biological contamination of our food supply. The bill would also establish a tracking system to regulate and ensure the safety of GE pharmaceutical and industrial crops.

“We must take steps to prevent genetically engineered organisms from being grown in a way that could do irreversible damage to our food supply. Under pressure from profit-minded industry, we have already allowed the spread of genetically modified crops into our agriculture at great cost to our economy and with unknown effects on our bodies,” said Kucinich.

Is government making the family farm too safe for families?

By Metro Radio

In the name of safety, the federal government is establishing rules that will prohibit teens from working on family farms.  This leads us to ask…

Is government making the family farm too safe for families?

This Saturday at 9am Pacific, the Food Chain Radio show with Michael Olson hosts Oklahoma Labor Commissioner Mark Costello and Oklahoma Farmer Matt Muller for a conversation about government rules and family farms.