The Cornucopia Institute is a name you don't hear that often in organic food circles. Yet the Wisconsin-based group is fast becoming an effective watchdog group on organic standards, especially organic milk.

Cornucopia filed complaints with USDA in 2005 and 2006 alleging Dean Foods (owner of Horizon Organic) was breaking the federal organic rules. The complaints point to confined feeding operations.

But here's where it gets interesting (OK, disheartening). While USDA decertified a couple of Horizon's factory-like farms in response to Cornucopia's pressure, documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) show that USDA never investigated or visited Dean's largest dairies in question. Yet USDA dismissed Cornucopia's two complaints. The FOIA documents reveal that Dean Foods hired one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Washington to represent them.

This has led Cornucopia to file a third complaint claiming that one of Dean's Horizon suppliers was "skirting the law by confining the majority of their cows to a filthy feedlot" as opposed to allowing them access to grass and pasture as the organic standards require. Cornucopia is also asking the Inspector General at USDA to look into "appearances of favoritism" at the agency.

Source: The Cornucopia Institute

A few venues in Canada are showing a new documentary called "The World According to Monsanto." The film was available on YouTube earlier this spring but was mysteriously taken off in April. Above is a three-minute clip. Here’s what spurred French reporter Marie-Monique Robin’s investigation, according to The Gazette:

In 2004, a member of an Indian farmers' union approached investigative journalist Marie-Monique Robin in New Delhi's Indira Ghandi airport.

An epidemic of suicides has plagued Indian farmers. Farm organizations blame indebtedness, unfair trade policies and higher costs since farmers, lured by higher yields, started buying seeds from global agri-businesses instead of saving their own.

'You have to do something about Monsanto,' he urged the award-winning documentary-maker, who is based in Paris.

'They're buying up all the seed companies here.'

Robin spent three years researching Monsanto's global reach through interviews with farmers, whistleblowers and others in influential positions. Whether the film will be shown here in the States is yet to be seen.

It's one of the many crises of American agriculture that the average age of farmers is ever increasing while the number of young farmers spirals downward. Ambitious young farmers face challenges that make it difficult – at times impossible – to begin farming: tumultuous markets, low prices, steep learning curves, and, perhaps most daunting, access to land.

These days, farmland is sharing more borders with subdivisions and other new developments, an economic turn that many farmers find disheartening but see as inevitable. Many find their land is worth more as real estate than in crop rows.

Skip Glover, a 64-year-old farmer who couldn’t bear to see his vegetable farm yield to creeping Atlanta suburbs, decided to be creative about his farm’s fate. Just because his three kids were settled in careers outside the farmfield didn’t mean the next generation of farmers wasn’t out there.

And so began his search for young farmers to lease his land, those people making up 5 percent of Georgia farmers younger than 35.

His search ended with two experienced organic vegetable farmworkers in the area: Joe Reynolds and Judith Winfrey. The couple now lives on Glover’s land and lease 5 acres of farmland for just $1 a year. This year marks their first harvest, vegetables, flowers, and eggs sold at Atlanta farmers’ markets. Glover is helping the couple start a CSA.

Reynolds and Winfrey enjoy much autonomy in their new farming venture, but Glover’s experienced hands are always in reach.

Source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

It's funny to think that some of the most unhealthy food is served to the already ill. But it's true. Hospitals have tight food budgets and processing constraints just like any institutional kitchen, making it difficult at times to source local, fresh food that heals the wounded and recovering. Some hospitals in the Bay area, however, are bucking this trend, and putting fresh local vegetables and fruits on patients' trays and cafetreria menus.

One hospital in particular lucked out. The John Muir Health facilities scored excutive chef Alison Negrin who formerly was a chef at Alice Waters' restaurant, Chez Panisse, famous for spurring the restaurant agriculture movement in the area. She serves mostly fresh produce that often comes within 150 miles of the hospital. Even hamburgers served in the hospital cafes offer local grass-fed beef.

Hospitals account for $12 billion worth of food purchases every year. Just think of the potential impact on hospital patients, visitors, and employees -- not to mention our local economies.

More can be found in a new report by UC Davis researchers, called "Emerging Local Food Purchasing Initiatives in Northern California Hospitals."

Source: UC Davis

For those of you who haven't heard, Bush vetoed the Farm Bill yesterday. We said this was to be expected, even in light of a veto-proof majority in Congress. With all the news coverage out there, you should check out a piece by Katherine Ozer, the Executive Director of the National Family Farm Coalition, called "The Irony of a Bush Farm Bill Veto."

She begins by saying that Bush is correct in wanting to limit payments to wealthy landowners, especially those who don't farm. (This is his reason for vetoing the bill.) But, as Ozer explains, this Administration has consistently provided corporate agribusiness, grain traders, and the livestock industry nearly everything they've asked for. "The Bush Administration is virtually silent on the real bad actors contributing to our broken industrial food system," she says.

For example, the Administration opposed real structural market reforms to restore competition in the livestock markets, as proposed by Senator Grassley. And Bush's Justice Department may soon approve an acquisition in the beef packing sector that would make a Brazilian company the largest beef packer in the world. I'm not sure anything could be worse for American ranchers.

As Envirovore reported, Bush encouraged people to buy food from local farmers as a way to deal with current food challenges and that we should help other nations build infrastructure to better sustain and support their food needs. Yet the Administration supports free trade and the WTO, which have undermined domestic food production in these countries.

It's crucial that debates around the Farm Bill include a proper premise, and Ozer says it well: "It has never been more critical to the survival of millions around the world that we define the problem correctly and pursue a solution that builds food sovereignty."

Source: AlterNet

We've heard the argument that using food crops for biofuel is driving up food prices. Just how much is debatable given the complex structure of our global food system, yet it hasn’t stopped research dollars from being directed toward “second-generation” biofuels: non-food crops, like grasses.

As we’ve learned from other biofuels, especially corn ethanol, nothing's a silver bullet. And we shouldn’t expect one. What we should expect, however, are net benefits from these fuels rather than greater risk and financial loss. Enter a report presented by scientists at a UN meeting in Bonn, Germany, yesterday that says second-generation biofuels might provide more problems than cures.

The reason is this: scientists say that the most popular second-generation biofuels overlap to “an alarming degree” with invasive species, risks that haven’t been sufficiently evaluated before plantings occurred.

According to the Global Invasive Species Program, the harm caused by invasive species costs the world upwards of $1.4 trillion a year (5 percent of the global economy).

While it's easy to understand why biofuel manufacturers are heading in this direction -- grasses grow fast with little to no human care -- it's also easy to see the problem: so do invasives. If many of the grasses being promoted for large-scale commercial planting are dubbed invasives, then we certainly do have a problem. We know that the few precautions taken to keep transgenic crops contained haven't worked. Are second-generation biofuel crops another disappointing quick fix with consequences that promise to change our landscapes forever?

Source: The New York Times

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says it will completely ban "downer" cattle -- those that are too weak to rise or walk -- from the food supply. It's about time.

Perhaps you're confused. But notice I say completely ban, because USDA instituted a policy against slaughtering downer cattle in 2004. While this policy was heralded as a success for food safety advocates in the aftermath of the first identified case of BSE in the U.S., USDA slipped a lobbyist-influenced exception into its guidance document that essentially formed a loophole.

This exception was codified in the final rule on July 13, 2007, about six months before the Humane Society released its gruesome video of inhumane downer cow treatment that eventually led to the largest beef recall in U.S. history.

But what's disappointing is that, like the meat lobbyists who originally lobbied for the exception but now support the total ban, Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer asserts the new rule is about boosting consumer confidence and is not a response to a food safety issue (what the clear distinction is between the two is beyond me). He explains that "of the 34 million cows slaughtered for food in 2007, fewer than 1,000 were animals that could not stand but were admitted to the slaughterhouse after a second inspection by a veterinarian." Is that supposed to make us feel better?

Shafer explains, "This is not a food safety issue. It never has been...We are trying to eliminate any confusion here."

Eliminate confusion? How about consumer confusion as to why these cattle weren't eliminated entirely to begin with, why our government didn't establish safety precautions (yes, it's a safety issue!) sooner? Now that's a downer.

Source: The Washington Post

Jeff Kleinpeter sees a bit of irony in Monsanto's bullying of dairy farmers who label their products "rBGH free." Kleinpeter, himself a dairy farmer targeted by Monsanto, was featured in Vanity Fair's recent article, "Monsanto's Harvest of Fear." After it was published, Kleinpeter received hundreds of emails supporting his farming practices and decision to stand up to the biotechnology giant.

The irony lies in his increased sales. "They're causing a stink," he says "And we get new customers." People from around the country are asking to buy Kleinpeter's products.

It seems the more Monsanto pushes -- the more it bullies small farmers -- the more resistance against the company and its products just grows.

The resistance to its genetically engineered rBGH hormone can be seen in the U.S.'s chronic shortage of organic milk, one of the largest sectors of the organic food industry, with milk cows accounting for more than 40 percent of the total number of certified livestock. Many consumers note a preference for hormone-free milk as a reason for purchasing organic. And the food industry has responded.

Also see Envirovore's Monsanto's rBGH Mooving Out of the Marketplace.

Source: The Independent Weekly