The Machine Changes, the Work Remains the Same

By Robert Jensen
For related articles and more information please visit the OCA's Resource Center on Politics and Democracy and our page on Organic Transitions.

When I first got involved in left/radical political organizing in the 1990s, I don't recall any of us referring to our efforts as "phone activism" or calling ourselves "fax activists." A friend who started organizing in the early 1960s assured me that he never heard the term "mimeograph activism" in those days. We used telephones, fax machines, and mimeographs in our organizing work, but the machines didn't define our work and we didn't spend a lot of time arguing about the implications of using them.

Today the terms "online activism" and "internet activist" are common, as are discussions about the positive and negative effects of computer-mediated communication (CMC) on left/progressive political organizing (See interview with Joss Hands on "Activism in a digital culture"). Is CMC so dramatically different, or is the left simply caught up in the larger culture's obsession with life online? I will start with observations that likely are not controversial, and then step back to frame the question in ways that may not be widely accepted.

Two basic points:

First, CMC makes possible the distribution of information to a larger number of people at lower financial cost than previous technologies (though the ecological cost of a communication technology that creates highly toxic e-waste and consumes enormous amounts of energy may make this technology prohibitively expensive in the long run) and allows for easier and faster feedback from the recipients of that information.

Second, while the technology is too new for definitive assertions, there is a seductive quality to CMC that leads some groups and individuals to spend too much of their time and resources online, even when there's ample reason to suspect that expense of energy isn't productive.

Two corollary cautions:

First, political information is not political action. Being able to distribute more information more widely more quickly does not automatically lead to people acting on that information. The information must be presented in ways that lead people to believe they should act, and there must be vehicles for that action.

Second, what appears to be wasting time online is not always a waste of time. Just as we solidify bonds with people face-to-face by chatting about the mundane aspects of our lives, we sometimes do that online. Political organizing -- like all of life -- includes such interaction.


View the Original article

Canada Carbon Capture Project Leaking Into Their Land, Couple Says

By Nathan Vanderklippe
First there were the strange blooms of algae on water that had pooled in a gravel pit near Jane and Cameron Kerr's house. Then there were the dead animals - a cat, an African goat, a rabbit, a duck, a half-dozen blackbirds. Then there were the night-time blowouts, which sounded like cannons and left gashes in the side of the pit.

But what started as a series of worrisome problems on a rural Saskatchewan property has now raised serious questions about the safety of carbon sequestration and storage, a technology that has drawn billions in spending from governments and industry, which have promoted it as a salve to Canada's growth in greenhouse-gas emissions.

Before the blowouts made them nervous enough to leave home, the Kerrs lived on a farm near Weyburn, which is home to a major project that involves taking captured carbon dioxide and injecting it into the ground. It pumps 6,000 tonnes of the substance underground ever day; since 2000, it has sequestered more than 16 million tonnes, all of it 1.4 kilometres below the surface.

In Weyburn, the injected gas is used to help squeeze more oil out of old wells. But the project has been a key test of a technology that could help clean up atmospheric emissions from industrial users like coal-fired electrical plants and oil sands.

Carbon capture and storage holds the promise of allowing industry to continue operating while scrubbing out carbon emissions. As such, it has become a key plank of climate-change strategy for both the federal Conservatives and the government of Alberta, which has dedicated $2-billion to funding several pilot projects. 


View the Original article

EPA Proposes Phaseout of Fluoride-Based Pesticide

By Elana Schor

U.S. EPA today proposed to start gradually banning a pesticide often used on cocoa beans and dried fruits that degrades to fluoride, a move closely linked to the Obama administration's decision last week to curb the maximum levels of fluoride in drinking water out of concern for children's health.

EPA's bid to wind down legal use of sulfuryl fluoride, citing the health risk to children posed by aggregate fluoride exposure, marks a long-awaited victory by the three public-health groups that first asked the agency to rein in the pesticide more than five years ago.

One of the three advocacy organizations, the Environmental Working Group (EWG), said the sulfuryl fluoride phaseout appears to be EPA's first official granting of any pesticide restriction petition filed by green advocates.

The Department of Health and Human Services and EPA announced Friday that fluoride, long considered a beneficial tap-water additive that helps prevent cavities, should be restricted to 0.7 milligrams per liter, or the low end of previous legal ranges (E&ENews PM, Jan. 7).

In its proposed prohibition on sulfuryl fluoride, EPA acknowledged that the pesticide's residues on food are "responsible for a tiny fraction of aggregate fluoride exposure" but deemed that children's total contact with fluoride in the environment -- through drinking water as well as toothpaste -- posed an excess risk of tooth and bone damage.  

View the Original article

U.S. Chamber Chief Pushes Congress to Block EPA Climate Regulations

The head of the nation's most powerful business lobbying group made clear Tuesday that blocking the Environmental Protection Agency's greenhouse gas regulations is a key part of his agenda.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue attacked EPA in his annual "State of American Business" speech Tuesday morning. He called the emissions rules, which have begun the phasing-in stage, part of a multi-front "regulatory tsunami" by the Obama administration.

"We will ... continue our legal and legislative efforts to stop the EPA from misapplying environmental laws in order to unilaterally regulate greenhouse gases," Donohue said in his prepared remarks.


View the Original article

Organizing a Grassroots Truth-in-Labeling Campaign in Your Community

Millions Against Monsanto and Factory Farms

By Ronnie Cummins

For related articles and more information please visit OCA's Millions Against Monsanto Campaign page.

"If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it."

Norman Braksick, president of Asgrow Seed Co., a subsidiary of Monsanto, quoted in the Kansas City Star, March 7, 1994

After decades of chemical assaults and biotech bullying, Monsanto has earned its reputation as one of the most evil corporations on Earth, sharing this distinction with America's chemical and energy-intensive industrial food and farming system, "Food Inc." Monsanto and their Evil Axis are clearly worried about their public image. They're worried even more about their shaky bottom line - their accelerating loss of market share to a $30 billion organic and local food and farming movement.

Monsanto and Food Inc. are uneasy that North American consumers, like their European and Japanese counterparts, are wary and suspicious of genetically modified (GM) or engineered (GE) foods; as well as the filthy, disease-ridden animal factories (typically maintained by exploited immigrant labor) where GM grains and drugs are forced-fed to most of the nation's livestock and poultry. The biotech industry and the industrial agriculture lobby are painfully aware that every poll over the past two decades has shown that 85-95% of American consumers want mandatory labels on GM foods. They are also aware that most consumers are disgusted and alarmed once they get a glimpse in the media of the animal prisons and torture chambers the EPA euphemistically calls CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations).

This is why Monsanto, grocery store chains, and the Grocery Manufacturers Association adamantly oppose labels on GM foods or foods that come from CAFO animal factories. They know, just as we do, that millions of consumers are still "in the dark" about how "conventional" foods - especially the cheaper brands of animal products, processed and fast food - are produced. They know, just as we do, that millions of American consumers will shun or boycott products that are truthfully labeled in grocery stores as "May Contain GMOs" or "CAFO."

Unfortunately we can't depend on an indentured Congress to take a stand for us in regard to truth-in-labeling. Especially since the 2010 Supreme Court decision that gave big corporations and billionaires like the Koch brothers the right to spend unlimited amounts of money (and remain anonymous, as they do so) in order to buy elections and politicians. As long as Big Money controls the media and the elections, our chances of passing federal GMO and CAFO labeling laws over the objections of Monsanto and Food Inc. are all but non-existent.

Therefore we need to shift our focus away from Washington and the White House and go local. We need to concentrate our efforts where our leverage and power lie, in the marketplace, at the retail level - educating the public, gathering thousands of petition signatures, generating phone calls, organizing picket lines and pressuring retail grocers to voluntarily label GM and CAFO-tainted products. Then, once we reach a critical mass in our local efforts, we can mount a grassroots lobbying campaign to pass mandatory GMO (and CAFO) labeling laws, at the city, county, and state levels. If local or state government bodies refuse to listen to us, in those cities, states, and counties where the law permits, we will then need to gather petition signatures of registered voters and place these truth-in-labeling initiatives directly on the ballot.

We should not kid ourselves. We are up against powerful and ruthless adversaries who understand that truth-in-labeling poses a mortal threat to Business as Usual. Truth-in-labeling will no doubt require a protracted struggle. But restoring consumers' right-to-know is well worth the effort, since once the thin veneer of "normalcy" or acceptability is lifted off of Monsanto and Food Inc's products, millions of consumers will demand non-GM, organic, local, and non-CAFO products.

Groundwork: Organizing a Truth-in-Labeling Petition Drive in Your Local Community

(1) Form a volunteer "Millions Against Monsanto and Factory Farms" committee and begin to educate and mobilize a thousand or more petition-signers in your community.

Get volunteers to circulate online petitions to their personal or organizational email lists.
See if you can set up a petition table at your local health food store, or at community events or locations.
Circulate by email, or download and print hard copies, of the GMO/CAFO Truth-in-Labeling petition.Download and Distribute OCA's Millions Against Monsanto flyer: Ten Things Monsanto Does Not Want You to Know (PDF)

(2) Order "Millions Against Monsanto" bumper stickers or T-shirts from the OCA national office. Use these tools to create visibility for the Truth-in-Labeling campaign in your community. You can go here to place your order.

(3) Register your local Truth-in-Labeling campaign with the Organic Consumers Association. Send an email with your full contact information to information AT organicconsumers.org. Please tell us a little bit about yourself and give us an idea of how much support you believe there is in your local community. Designate yourself or a group of volunteers as local coordinators. OCA staff can let you know how many people have already signed labeling petitions in your local community. Once you are ready, OCA will set up a Truth-in-Labeling "listserv" or email communications network for your local area. Set a preliminary goal for the number of petition signers (OCA suggests a minimum of 1,000) that you need in order to move forward. Stay in touch with campaign developments by regularly visiting our Millions Against Monsanto page.

View the Original article

World Agriculture Threatened by Water Gluttony: Report

NEW YORK (AFP) - World agriculture employs more than one billion people but is in trouble because it's the biggest consumer of ever scarcer water and a huge producer of greenhouse gas emissions, a new report said Wednesday.

Worldwatch Institute, a research group on climate, energy, agriculture and the green economy, said there had to be a revolution in investment in food and water to reverse a "frightening" long-term depletion of stocks.

"Agriculture as we know it today is in trouble," said the institute's "State of the World 2011" report.

The industry accounts for one trillion dollars of the global economy but also 70 percent of water withdrawals and 15 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, much of that from developing countries.

The institute said small farmers who dominate the industry would be the key to maintaining food supplies for the world's estimated one billion hungry people.

Studies have shown that increasing food production is not making a dent in reducing hunger in the world.

View the Original article

Monsanto Voted Most Evil Corporation of the Year by NaturalNews Readers

By MIke Adams

After taking nominations for the Most Evil Corporation of the Year survey from our readers, we hosted an online survey that allowed readers to vote on this question. Over 16,000 readers voted in our online survey from January 5 through 9, 2011.

Astonishingly, fifty-one percent of all votes went to Monsanto as the Most Evil Corporation of the year. This means Monsanto wins the top prize by a huge margin.

Taking second place was the Federal Reserve, with twenty percent of the votes. This is especially intriguing because it means that NaturalNews are well informed about the fact that the Federal Reserve is not a government entity but rather a corporate entity that serves the profit interests of the global banking cartel.

The other corporations included in the survey (along with their vote results) are:

British Petroleum 9%
Halliburton 5%
McDonalds 3%
Pfizer 2%
Merck 2%
Wal-Mart 2%
Nestle 1%
Other 7%

(Note: The total slightly exceeds 100% due to rounding on the part of the survey host.)

View the Original article

The New Agtivist: Joan Gussow, Mother of the Sustainable Food Movement

By Paula Crossfield

Few would argue that Joan Dye Gussow is the mother of the sustainable food movement. For more than 30 years, she's been writing, teaching (she is emeritus chair of the Teachers College nutrition program at Columbia University), and speaking about our unsustainable food system and how to fix it. (This excellent article by journalist Brian Halweil showcases her work in detail.) Now more than ever, her ideas have wings. Michael Pollan, for example, has said, "Once in a while, when I have an original thought, I look around and realize Joan said it first."

Gussow lives what she teaches, growing most of her own food year-round in her backyard. TheNew York Timesprofiled her last spring as she was rebuilding her garden after it was destroyed by a flood. When I asked her about her newly rebuilt garden, she said, "It's given me 10 additional years of life, at least!"

I spoke to her recently about how far we've come, the future of the food system, and her new book, Growing, Older: A Chronicle of Death, Life, and Vegetables.

Q: You've been talking about food, energy, and the environment for decades. Do you have hope we might finally see big change in the food system?

A: I must say that compared to the reception my ideas got 30 years ago, it's quite astonishing the reception they're getting now. I am excited to see the kinds of things that are going on in Brooklyn, for example. People are butchering meat and raising chickens -- it's become the sort of "heartland" of the food movement. But whether or not there's going to be sea change in the whole system is so hard to judge.

View the Original article

Buying Clubs of Fresh Produce Gaining Popularity

By David Smiley
Every week, dozens of trucks packed with organic fruits, vegetables and other goods are bypassing South Florida's big box supermarkets, community grocery stores and farmers markets.

Rather than dropping off their loads at the typical commercial locales, these haulers are heading down residential streets to homes, colleges and even places of worship where shoppers have established a relatively unknown niche in the food chain: the buying club.

The concept?

By pooling their money and appetites, club members are strengthening their buying power and cutting out the middle man. Some buying clubs have a membership or start-up fee. Others do not.

"It's convenient. It's less expensive. It's healthier," said Julie Garcia-Diaz, a member of Annie's Organic Buying Club, one of the larger buying clubs in South Florida.

On a recent Monday afternoon, Garcia-Diaz picked up a $35 box stuffed with organic cherry tomatoes, carrots, blueberries, bananas, chard, beets and other vegetables and fruits from the South Miami home of Maddy López, where about 20 members go either weekly or bi-weekly to stock up on produce. Lopez, a single mother and bookkeeper, is a group host who gets her produce for free in exchange for providing a pick-up point.

Buying club members choose different orders but don't directly choose their food. Most buy only produce, though some pay extra for yogurt, milk, bread, and in some cases, meat. Except for a few specifically requested items, the food is selected by the buying club, and members take whatever comes.

"It's like they're doing your shopping for you," said Garcia-Diaz.

Nationally, buying clubs are growing in popularity, according to farmers, distributors, consumers and national analysts.

Ronni Blumenthal, vice president of administration for Global Organic Specialty Source Inc., a Sarasota-based distribution center that handles food from around the country and supplies both buying clubs and major chains throughout the Southeast, called buying clubs the center's "fastest-growing" base.


View the Original article

Worldwatch Report Highlights How Lopsided Discussion is About Africa, Food, and Biotechnology

By Samuel Fromartz

Last year, I had the opportunity to travel to Zambia for a project for Worldwatch. The massive report "State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet," released Wednesday, focuses on many projects that were highly effective in both feeding people and raising incomes in Africa. Much of this work was chronicled on Nourishing the Planet blog, as researcher Danielle Nierenberg logged thousands of miles criss-crossing the continent meeting with farmers, researchers, NGOs, and government officials. 

It was a refreshing perspective because so much of the discussion about agriculture in Africa focuses on production. Plant more. Increase yield. Improve seed technology. But there is really no silver bullet when it comes to food production and access, and the relentless focus on technology ends up being lopsided and incomplete -- as I saw in Zambia.

The nation produces more than enough food, much of it by small-scale farmers without tractors, irrigation, or any form of transportation. But this excess food ends up rotting in warehouses and causes price crashes when it hits the market -- good for buyers but dismal for small-scale farmers who depend on these sales for their meagre income.

Even so, some areas of the country still suffer from malnutrition and shortages. Why? There are many reasons, inadequate roads and supply networks among them, since it isn't always easy to get the food from areas where it is surplus to areas where it is in short supply. In this reality, high-tech seeds are the least of the nation's problems. And yet, on op-ed pages, that often seems to be the focus of discussion.

How come we hardly see op-eds on what paved roads, improved sanitation, more efficient distribution networks, soil conservation, and a reduction in food waste might do for world hunger? Fifteen percent of the grain harvest is wasted in poorer countries, according to a researcher quoted in this report. Even cutting that in half would amount to an enormous yield gain. The Worldwatch report attempts to jump-start this discussion by addressing these issues.

View the Original article

The 'Food Bubble' is Bursting, Says Lester Brown, and Biotech Won't Save Us

By Tom Philpott

For years -- even decades -- Earth Policy Institute president and Grist contributor Lester Brown has issued Cassandra-like warnings about the global food system. His argument goes something like this: Global grain demand keeps rising, pushed up by population growth and the switch to more meat-heavy diets; but grain production can only rise so much, constrained by limited water and other resources. So, a food crisis is inevitable.

In recent years, two factors have added urgency to Brown's warnings: 1) climate change has given rise to increasingly volatile weather, making crop failures more likely; and 2) the perverse desire to turn grain into car fuel has put yet more pressure on global grain supplies.

View the Original article

Mad Cow Disease 'Can Be Spread Through Air'

By David Derbyshire

Mad cow disease can be spread by airborne particles, researchers warn.

And they fear that those who work in abattoirs, slaughterhouses and laboratories could be at risk.

Their study shows prions, the infectious agents which cause BSE and its human form, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, can be dangerous if carried through the air.

In tests, mice who breathed them in developed the brain disease with 'frightening' speed and died.

The discovery could also explain why some of the victims in the 1990s were vegetarians.

Since the link between BSE-infected meat and vCJD was confirmed in 1996, 170 have died. Deaths peaked in 2000 when 28 died. Last year, there were three victims.

Prions, a type of protein, can spread on surgical instruments and in blood transfusions. It had been assumed they were not transmitted by air.

But Swiss researcher Dr Adriano Aguzzi at University Hospital Zurich and colleagues exposed laboratory mice to aerosols containing prions in a specially designed chamber.

View the Original article

Toxics Found in Pregnant U.S. Women in UCSF Study

By Victoria Colliver

Multiple chemicals, including some banned since the 1970s and others used in items such as nonstick cookware, furniture, processed foods and beauty products, were found in the blood and urine of pregnant U.S. women, according to a UCSF study being released today.

The study, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, marks the first time that the number of chemicals to which pregnant women are exposed has been counted, the authors said.

Of the 163 chemicals studied, 43 of them were found in virtually all 268 pregnant women in the study. They included polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs, a prohibited chemical linked to cancer and other health problems; organochlorine pesticides; polybrominated diphenyl ethers, banned compounds used as flame retardants; and phthalates, which are shown to cause hormone disruption.

Some of these chemicals were banned before many of the women were even born.

The presence of the chemicals in the women, who ranged in age from 15 to 44, shows the ability of these substances to endure in the environment and in human bodies as well, said lead author Tracey Woodruff, director of the UCSF Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment.

A call for action

Woodruff said people have the ability to reduce but, as the findings show, not eliminate their exposure to chemicals. "We want to show people this is an issue we want the government to pay attention to and address," she said.

The study focused on pregnant women because of the potential for exposure to multiple chemicals to hurt their unborn fetuses, but also looked at the data for nonpregnant women. The research did not follow the subjects to determine whether actual harm occurred.

View the Original article

Cargill: Rolling in Cash, Relying on Child Labor

By Tim Newman

Business is booming for the behemoth agricultural commodities trader Cargill. This week, the company announced a tripling of profits in the second quarter of its fiscal year. In the three months prior to November 30, Cargill's net earnings were a whopping $1.49 billion compared to $489 million during the same period a year ago. So why is this company still sourcing products made by forced and child labor?

Cargill's success is due in part to its ability to profit from the high food prices that are gripping the world. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Bank have recently warned about the threat that continued rising prices at an all-time high pose for food security globally. From Haiti to Senegal to Bangladesh, food riots have broken out in reaction to price hikes on basic food items, echoing the protests that hit many countries throughout 2008. Recently, Algeria raised the prices of staples like flour, sugar and cooking oil by an average of 30 percent, leading to protests that left three people dead, hundreds injured and close to 1,000 people in jail.

High prices for food may be devastating for millions of people around the world, but clearly companies like Cargill have little to complain about as their corporate profits accumulate. While Cargill makes more money than ever, it is shocking that the company is somehow unable to mobilize its immense resources to stop the use of forced labor and abusive child labor by its palm oil supplier. As I wrote on Change.org last month, there are numerous cases of workers being trapped and forced to work under unsafe conditions on palm oil plantations supplying for Cargill in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Almost 200 Change.org readers have already called on Cargill to stop forced and child labor in its palm oil supply chain and they are not alone. Forty five companies have signed on to a pledge organized by the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) that specifically calls on Cargill to take action to responsibly source its palm oil to avoid environmental and human rights violations. RAN's campaign activities even helped convince General Mills to become a leader among major corporations in committing to responsible and sustainable palm oil production.

View the Original article

Why the Banana Crisis Doesn't Make Me Stop Worrying and Love GMOs

By Tom Philpott

As a life-long and still die-hard banana eater -- locavoreanism be damned, they don't grow well in the North Carolina mountains -- I've been meaning to read the recent bunch of well-regarded books on the travails of Americans' favorite breakfast fruit. (Emily Biuso's 2008 Nation review piqued my appetite on this front.) The trouble with bananas is this: the export market is dominated by a single variety that's being stalked by a ruinous blight.

Well, lucky me: bananas have gotten the New Yorker treatment. Rather than plow through books, you can now read Mike Peed's recent, quite good and not-very-long piece ($ub req'd) on the looming banana crisis. The article has generated plenty of buzz in sustainable-food circles. Before I had a chance to read it, I saw a couple of list-serv postings arguing that it presents a compelling case for subjecting bananas to genetic modification.

The argument seems to go like this. Bananas are a massive source of nutrients and income in the global south. The one variety that has been deemed fit for the export market -- the Cavendish, selected for bland flavor, portability, and monster yields -- risks being wiped out by a fungus bearing the oddly frightful name of Tropical Race Four. If only geneticists could find a gene that resists Tropical Race Four and splice it into banana plants, the catastrophe could be averted. Moreover, unlike with, say, corn or alfalfa, there's no chance of a GMO Cavendish spreading genetic material to wild or non-GMO bananas, because the Cavendish is sterile.

But I came away from Peed's article with the opposite conclusion: I see no compelling case for GMO-izing bananas. First of all, such a project would probably have little effect on how people eat where bananas are actually grown. Peed reports that despite the yellow fruit's ubiquity in U.S. and European supermarkets, 87 percent of bananas produced in the world are consumed right where they're grown: in the hot parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. And guess what? Tropical Race Four doesn't threaten this bounty.

View the Original article

Monsanto Pushing to Legalize Commercial Planting of GE Corn in Mexico

MEXICO CITY-Mexico, the birthplace of corn, is edging toward the use of genetically modified varieties to lower its dependence on imports, but strong opposition among some growers and environmentalists, who see altered corn as a threat to native strains, has kept the wheels turning slowly.

Monsanto Co., DuPont Co.'s Pioneer Hi-Bred unit and Dow Chemical Co,'s Dow AgroSciences recently completed small, controlled experiments in northern Mexico with genetically modified corn, and are seeking government authorization to enter a "pre-commercial" phase, expanding the growing area to nearly 500 acres from 35 acres.

The trials began in October 2009, four years after Mexico lifted an 11-year moratorium on genetically modified corn-or maize-to which scientists have added desirable traits like pest resistance.

Many farmers and environmentalists, however, fear that altered corn will cross-breed with the nearly 60 documented native maize varieties, transforming the biology of the grain, a dietary staple with deep cultural significance here. By contrast, genetically modified cotton, alfalfa and soybeans are widely accepted and cultivated on nearly 250,000 acres across the country.

"We are the children of corn. It's our life, and we need to protect it," said José Bernardo Magdaleno Velasco, a corn producer in Venustiano Carranza in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, where he grows two native varieties. According to Mayan legend, the gods created humans from corn. The plant is still used in some indigenous religious rituals.

Two types of genetically modified corn are produced commercially in 16 countries, led by the U.S., but almost nowhere has their introduction met the resistance it has in Mexico.

Protests have been staged across the country, and a coalition of 300 groups has led a campaign called "Sin maiz no hay pais," or "Without corn there is no country."

Opening the doors to genetically modified corn, its opponents fear, would contaminate native varieties, such as the red Xocoyol or the black Yautsi, increase dependence on foreign companies and possibly harm the nation's environment and health. 


View the Original article

The Story of Agribusiness's Haitian Rice Racket

As we file this article, Port-au-Prince is thick with the smoke of burning tires and with gunfire. Towns throughout the country, along with the national airport, are shut down due to demonstrations. Many are angry over the government's announcement on Tuesday night of which two presidential candidates made the run-offs: Jude Célestin from the widely hated ruling party of President René Préval and the far-right Mirlande Manigat. This is another obvious manipulation of what had already been a brazenly fraudulent election. A democratic vote is one more thing that has been taken from the marginalized Haitian majority, compounding their many losses since the earthquake of January 12.

What is at stake in Haiti? What interests underlie the grab for power in the country? One answer is the large amount of aid and development dollars that are circulating. Among those benefiting handsomely from the disaster aid are U.S. corporations who have accessed U.S. government contracts. Below is the tale of one U.S. corporation and its subsidiaries, who have received contracts which involve both a conflict of interest and harm to one of Haiti's largest and most vulnerable social sectors, small farmers.

"We were already in a black misery after the earthquake of January 12. But the rice they're dumping on us, it's competing with ours and soon we're going to fall in a deep hole," said Jonas Deronzil, who has farmed rice and corn in Haiti's fertile Artibonite Valley since 1974. "When they don't give it to us anymore, are we all going to die?"

Deronzil explained this in April inside a cinder-block warehouse, where small farmers' entire spring rice harvest had sat in burlap sacks since March, unsold, because of USAID's dumping of U.S. agribusiness-produced, taxpayer-subsidized rice. The U.S. government and agricultural corporations, which have been undermining Haitian peasant agriculture for three decades, today threaten higher levels of unemployment for farmers and an aggravated food crisis among the hemisphere's hungriest population.

Two subsidiaries of the same corporation, ERLY Industries, are profiting from different U.S. contracts whose interests conflict. The same company that is being paid to monitor "food insecurity" is benefiting from policies that increase food insecurity. American Rice makes money exporting rice to Haiti, undercutting farmers' livelihoods, national production, and food security. Chemonics has received contracts to conduct hunger assessments and, now, to distribute Monsanto seeds.

View the Original article

Five Fish You Should Eat More Of

Our oceans are in a perilous state. Rampant abuse and rapacity has led us down a dangerous path; stories of overfishing, toxic contamination, and ocean acidification put consumers in a state of confusion and fear at the seafood counter. Luckily, all is not lost -- by making informed choices, we can enjoy healthy, delicious seafood while supporting fishermen that are doing their utmost to work in harmony with the planet. Here are five examples of sustainable, restorative seafood options that merit our support:

1. Sardines

First of all, I'm not talking about the unidentifiable, semi-fossilized fish paste that you find covered in oil or mustard sauce when you open up a sardine tin -- fresh sardines are a totally different animal. They are inexpensive, delectable indulgences that carry fabulous flavors, perform marvelously on a grill, and are used by top-level sushi chefs to make mouth-watering nigiri and sashimi dishes. Even better, these tiny delights are packed full of Omega-3 fatty acids while their short lifecycle keeps them relatively mercury-free. Unfortunately, we're using them in the worst possible way.

There's no excuse for the way we're treating our amazing sardine resource in this country. The vast majority of our sardines are sold to foreign bluefin tuna ranches, where they are used to fatten up juveniles that have been purloined from wild stocks. This is a problem on many levels: bluefin tuna are severely endangered, have little Omega-3 content, can be extremely high in mercury, and are exorbitantly expensive. We're using our sardines -- healthy, delicious fish that most Americans can afford -- to fuel a foreign industry that is harming the ocean in order to create a luxury good with dubious health benefits that is only available to the very wealthy.


View the Original article

Maude Barlow: A Healthy Environment Should Be a Human Right

Maude Barlow is a member of OCA's Policy Board. Yes! Magazine is a great publication that you should subscribe to if at all possible by clicking here.

In most legal systems, you have a right to freedom of speech or religion, but you don't have a right to breathe clean air or drink safe water.

Maude Barlow-author, activist, and former senior advisor on water to the United Nations-believes that those rights should be recognized. This past summer, she helped engineer a landmark victory: The U.N. formally adopted a resolution recognizing the human right to water (though the United States abstained).

Now, Barlow is part of an international movement-of governments, scientists, and activists-working to bring a focus on environmental rights to the ongoing United Nations climate negotiations. This week, she is attending the United Nations climate meeting in Cancún, Mexico.

The negotiations are thus far getting scant press attention, but thousands of people from all over the world are turning out in Cancún to voice their political views and hold alternative meetings and demonstrations outside the U.N. conference. Early this week, the international grassroots organization La Via Campesina led Barlow and hundreds of other grassroots leaders on a tour across the Mexican countryside to witness how climate change is already affecting rural communities. The tours converged in Mexico City where a few thousand people held a march to the Zócalo, the city's central plaza.

Activists in Cancún and Mexico City are rallying behind the idea of environmental rights. Many support a document called the "People's Agreement on Climate Change," which includes a "Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth." It's an idealistic name for a proposal that would sound either visionary or improbable, or both-if not for the fact that the declaration represents the work of representatives from 56 countries and of tens of thousands of people who attended a climate conference in Cochabamba, Bolivia, last April. The document declares that everybody has rights to basics like clean water and clean air, but it also says something even more extraordinary: that the planet's ecosystems themselves have rights.

It's unlikely that the Cochabamba proposals will end up in any formal agreements to emerge from Cancún. But the idea of environmental rights is taking hold. In September 2008, Ecuador formally recognized the rights of nature in its new constitution. In the United States, a handful of local governments have passed resolutions recognizing that nature has rights, including, recently, the city of Pittsburgh.

View the Original article