The Obama administration has indicated a shift in US development policy from "food aid" (dumping our excess production overseas) with "food security" (improving food production in foreign countries). This would be great for farmers if Obama's plan were to ensure their access to clean water, arable land and diverse, locally adapted plants and animals. Unfortunately, it looks like Obama's planning on replacing the bags of wheat, rice and corn with bags of pesticides, fertilizers and genetically engineered seeds.

Click here to read this article

Agribusiness companies are aggressively lobbying to make a range of farming activities eligible for funding at the upcoming climate talks. If successful, billions of dollars will be invested into the very approach to food production that is exacerbating the climate crisis, warns GRAIN.

Click here to read this article

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has back-tracked on its plans to ban the sale of raw oysters from the Gulf of Mexico during warm months amid mounting industry and political pressure.

Click here to read this article

The International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) and the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) urged lawmakers to mark up the Food Safety Modernization Act to ensure plants producing raw milk products are no longer exempt from FDA scrutiny.

Click here to read this article

Erectile dysfunction and ejaculation problems were two side effects in a recent study of men exposed to high levels of bisphenol A, or BPA.

Click here to read this article

The planet can produce enough food to feed all of its people a European diet several times over, but the global food crisis persists due in a large part to such misplaced government priorities as the push for biofuels, a Netherlands-based doctor of economics said in Saskatoon Wednesday.

Click here to read this article

Its seems we have a compost smackdown on our hands. In one corner is the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and in the other is the Center for Food Safety, a national nonprofit that seeks to curb harmful food production, which has petitioned SFPUC to stop giving out free compost.

Click here to read this article

Report on the outcome of the Senate HELP Committee's "FDA Food Safety Modernization Act" (Food Safety) mark up hearing to decide whether to amend the dangerous Codex provision, a decision that would have momentous impact on the future of dietary supplements.

Click here to read this article

Ceding ultimate responsibility for organic agriculture to the USDA has yielded a measure of the consistency, credibility and recognition sought by the organic community. However, these gains have come at the expense of twenty years of turbulence with a partner at times prone to indifference and capriciousness, to say the least.

Click here to read this article

Monsanto has abandoned its ambitious plans for two types of a so-called "second generation GM crop" rather than accede to a request from European regulators for additional research and safety data.

Click here to read this article

A new book from nationally recognized author Thomas A. Lewis offers a fresh and startling perspective on the problems afflicting modern industrial society, and on the increasingly urgent need for sustainable living. In Brace for Impact: Surviving the Crash of the Industrial Age by Sustainable Living, Lewis argues that industry's relentless, decades-long search for economies of scale has caused equally enormous concentrations of risks, which now threaten the continued existence of every industrial-scale enterprise supplying essential human needs.

Click here to read this article

Women are central to global and national efforts to cope with climate change, concludes a new report, "The State of World Population 2009," released today by the United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA.

Click here to read this article

What if we could reinvent Thanksgiving Day's traditional dishes? Could we replace baked yams topped with melty marshmallows with something natural and organic? Could we convert Mom's canned green bean casserole into a healthier, Earth-friendly dish - complete with crunchy onion bits on top?

Click here to read this article

As U.S. and British oil companies sign contracts with the Iraqi government, is it time to declare Big Oil the "victor" in the bloody venture?

Click here to read this article

In honor of Veterans Day and in light of the recent Fort Hood tragedy, please take a minute to tell President Obama to provide immediate, personal and professional mental health services for all soldiers and veterans. Take action by sending him a letter written by Iraq Veterans Against the War.

Click here to read this article

In my view, the real solution to the problem of how to reform health care in this country is a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system.

Click here to read this article

With starvation threatening one-sixth of the world’s population, and the West’s technological solutions called into question—the Green Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s failed to solve the problem, and now the Gene Revolution, or agricultural biotechnology, is under increasing attack—many think it’s time for another way. Berkeley’s Miguel Altieri, an associate professor of insect biology in the College of Natural Resources, has a world-wide reputation for his alternative solution: “agroecology,” or sustainable agriculture, which respects the knowledge of indigenous peoples, protects the environment, and promotes social equity.

Click here to read this article

Food can both nourish and kill. Its production can both destroy and enhance our environment. Farming touches every aspect of our lives -- the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the soil we need. Eating cannot be personal. What I eat influences you. What you eat influences me. Our diets are deeply, intimately and necessarily political.

Click here to read this article

Click here to read this article

Oscar Wilde observed, “Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Patel's book, The Value of Nothing, shows how our faith in prices as a way of valuing the world is misplaced. He reveals the hidden ecological and social costs of a hamburger (as much as $200), and asks how we came to have markets in the first place. Both the corporate capture of government and our current financial crisis, Patel argues, are a result of our democratically bankrupt political system.

Click here to read this article