Farming policy: an end to French hypocrisy?
Common Dreams - 2/24/2009.By John Litchfield – Sarkozy makes historic move to divert European subsidies from rich cereal ranches to small traditional farms. Paris announced that from next year it would confiscate over 20 per cent of the billions of euros of European taxpayers' money paid to its ranch-like cereals farms and divert the cash to hill farmers, grazing land, shepherds and organic agriculture. |
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Who’s minding your food? Surprise! It depends
Common Dreams - 2/24/2009.By Mary Clare Jalonick – The FDA bears the brunt of food safety oversight, a mission called into question in the wake of a massive recall of peanut products. But at least 15 government agencies have a hand in making sure food is safe under at least 30 different laws, some of which date back to the early 1900s. |
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Score one for sustainable food
Grist - 2/23/2009.By Tim Philpott – Obama taps a real reformer, Kathleen Merrigan, for deputy USDA secretary. Last time a president had the occasion to name a deputy USDA secretary, I had a rhetorical cow, man. Back in 2005, President Bush chose Chuck Conner, a man who had previously worked as a flack for Archer Daniels Midland, for that position. Could Bush have made a more explicit bow to the gods of agribusiness? |
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Monsanto’s bt cotton kills the soil as well as farmers
Institute for Science in Society - 2/23/2009.A recent scientific study carried out by Navdanya, compared the soil of fields where Bt-cotton had been planted for 3 years with adjoining fields with non GMO cotton or other crops. The region covered included Nagpur, Amravati and Wardha of Vidharbha which accounts for highest GMO cotton planting in India, and the highest rate of farmers suicides (4000 per year). |
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