Argentine farmworker Fabián Tomasi was an iconic voice against the use of pesticides until his death from cancers caused by pesticide exposure in 2018. He was, as many have been and continue to be, a literal body of evidence of the dangers of pesticides.

Research has shown that more than 90 percent of Americans have traces of pesticides in our bodies, most of which comes from the food we eat. Yet, despite the mass amounts of evidence of the dangers of pesticide use, the world has never used as many pesticides as it does today. The United States uses more than any other country, including some of the most dangerous pesticides that are banned in other countries. 

With the release of the US edition of the Pesticide Atlas, a powerful compendium on the state of pesticide use and why it matters, leaders at prominent US civil society organizations working for common sense pesticide action (including Pesticide Action Network (PAN) North America, the Center for Biological Diversity, Hawaii Alliance for Progressive Action, and Real Food Media) highlight the alarmingly persistent use of toxic pesticides in the United States—and what we can do about it. 

In community and solidarity,

Tiffani, Christina, Tanya, and Anna

Read Issue No. 62 of the Real Food Scoop

Download the Pesticide Atlas

The post Real Food Scoop | No. 62 appeared first on Real Food Media.

A powerful work of history, essay, testimony, and polemic, Amitav Ghosh’s new book traces our contemporary planetary crisis back to the discovery of the New World and the sea route to the Indian Ocean. The Nutmeg’s Curse argues that the dynamics of climate change today are rooted in a centuries-old geopolitical order constructed by Western colonialism. At the center of Ghosh’s narrative is the now-ubiquitous spice nutmeg. The history of the nutmeg is one of conquest and exploitation—of both human life and the natural environment. In Ghosh’s hands, the story of the nutmeg becomes a parable for our environmental crisis, revealing the ways human history has always been entangled with earthly materials such as spices, tea, sugarcane, opium, and fossil fuels. Our crisis, he shows, is ultimately the result of a mechanistic view of the earth, where nature exists only as a resource for humans to use for our own ends, rather than a force of its own, full of agency and meaning.

Writing against the backdrop of the global pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests, Ghosh frames these historical stories in a way that connects our shared colonial histories with the deep inequality we see around us today. By interweaving discussions on everything from the global history of the oil trade to the migrant crisis and the animist spirituality of Indigenous communities around the world, The Nutmeg’s Curse offers a sharp critique of Western society and speaks to the profoundly remarkable ways in which human history is shaped by non-human forces.

The post The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis appeared first on Real Food Media.

Originally published by Food Tank

Bonnie Haugen and her family run a grazing dairy farm in Southeastern Minnesota. She recently spoke about the impacts of corporate concentration on her community in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform: “When we bought these acres 29 years ago, there were about 12 dairy farms within a three mile radius of us. Now, there’s only one other dairy with approximately 400 cows aside from us. What I’ve seen in my community mirrors national trends: the pressure of corporate ag has taken a fair opportunity away from my neighbors who wanted to keep or pass on dairy farming.” 

Squeezed by inflation that is pushing up the cost of both everyday goods and farm inputs, Midwest farmers increasingly support candidates committed to busting up corporate monopolies in food and farming. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, for instance, in a tight re-election race against Republican opponent Jim Schultz, has led the charge on tackling anticompetitive practices in the agricultural sector that are contributing to inflation. 

“Three of my grandkids ages 8, 6, and 3 want to farm,” continued Haugen in her July 2022 statement, “I want them to have the opportunity to farm without being a serf to corporate ag.” Haugen is a supporter of the Land Stewardship Action Fund (LSAF), dedicated to electing leaders that promote family farming and strong rural economies. 

Farmers Doubly Squeezed

Farmers don’t just grow food, of course; they also consume food–and all manner of basic goods. This means farmers are doubly squeezed by the higher cost of both production and consumption. On the consumption side, farmers and non-farmers alike have felt the increase in living expenses; grocery prices, for instance, are up 13 percent from a year ago. With a few large firms dominating every step in the food chain—from retailers like Walmart to processors like Nestle to seed and chemical giants like Bayer—consolidation is a major contributor to high food prices. 

Former Whole Foods executive and retail market expert Errol Schweizer explains: “Corporate concentration is the strategy, but the goal is extreme profiteering, redistributed upwards to investors and executives. Market concentration increases prices to consumers while hurting worker bargaining power Squeezing farmers is just the first step in a radically inequitable value chain.” 

The Midwest has been beset by precarious farm incomes for decades—dipping into the red more often than not, which means assuming more and more debt. As food analyst Ken Meter points out in his book Building Community Food Webs, between 1996 and 2017, growing corn resulted in an aggregate loss of US$524 per acre while cumulative losses for wheat farmers totaled US$1,236 per acre.

“The commodity system draws wealth out of rural communities,” Meter said. “Over the past century, farmers have really only made money when there was some external crisis, such as the oil crisis of 1973, the global housing finance crisis of 2008, and the war in Ukraine. Otherwise, net income keeps falling even as food prices rise for consumers. But the monopolies in the middle profit every year.”

A new report from Midwest Healthy Ag confirms that Midwest farmers are struggling under the weight of rising costs, including for fertilizers, diesel, and renting land, combined with decreased income from selling milk, grain, and other products. One farmer interviewed for the report said, “Increased fuel prices, along with decreased price for a bushel of corn make me doubt I can survive after 2021.”

Policymakers Rally Against Consolidation

While corporate concentration in agriculture has gone relatively unchecked for decades, food cost inflation has brought the issue front and center. “Corporate profiteering and out-of-control consolidation by big agricultural firms have led to increased prices at every point on the food chain, from the farm to the grocery store,” said Representative Mark Pocan (D., WI—2nd) in a statement announcing the Food and Agribusiness Merger Moratorium and Antitrust Review Act of 2022. 

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has also disparaged corporate concentration in agriculture: “Highly concentrated local markets in livestock and poultry have increasingly left farmers, ranchers, growers, and producers vulnerable to a range of practices that unjustly exclude them from economic opportunities and undermine a transparent, competitive, and open market—which harms producers’ ability to deliver the quality, affordable food working families depend upon,” said Vilsack.

Vilsack’s statement was made in September 2022 as President Biden announced a new US$15 million fund to ramp up collaboration between the USDA and State Attorneys General on enforcement of competition laws, such as the laws against price-fixing. The news follows a December 21, 2021 letter to Secretary Vilsack from a bipartisan coalition of 16 attorneys general offering recommendations for improving competition in the livestock industry.

“One of the ways corporations keep profits high at consumers’ expense is by creating unfair markets where there’s no meaningful competition,” said Minnesota AG Keith Ellison, who spearheaded the letter, “This is especially true in agriculture, where farms and farming communities often face artificially high prices and struggle to afford their lives because antitrust behavior by Big Ag deliberately leaves them with few choices.”

Randy Krzmarzick, a row crop farmer and LSAF supporter in Sleepy Eye, MN, commented, “I’ve been farming some 40 years and I’ve seen continued consolidation in all parts of agriculture, fewer companies that supply our products and buy our commodities.” When asked why he’s planning to vote for Keith Ellison, Krzmarzick said, “I think it’s important to have an attorney general who’s watching out for abuses and who’s on our side—the side of family farmers, of which there’s less and less of us all the time.” 

Photo courtesy of Jed Owen, Unsplash

The post On Eve of Election, Midwest Farmers Squeezed by Inflation Eye Corporate Concentration appeared first on Real Food Media.

In 1979, an idealistic 44-year-old Black woman named Nettie Mae Morrison moved with her husband to Allensworth, 75 miles south of Fresno, in California’s Central Valley. 

“She wanted to be a part of history,” said her son, Dennis Hutson, who was in his mid-20s at the time. The town had a distinctive past. It was founded in 1908 by Allen Allensworth, a man born into slavery who became the first African American to reach the rank of lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army. About 3 square miles in size, , it was the first town in California founded and governed by Black people—and it served as a beacon of possibility for Black people all over the nation, its population growing to around 1,200 people. 

But the community soon fell on hard times.

In 1914, the Santa Fe Railroad Company moved its rail stop from Allensworth to nearby Alpaugh, a majority-white town, dealing a major blow to Allensworth’s economy. That same year, Col. Allensworth died after being struck by a motorcycle during a visit to Los Angeles. 

It was access to water, however, that proved the most challenging. 

According to California’s water regulatory agency, “The company that sold the land to Col. Allensworth,” the Pacific Farming Company, “didn’t fulfill its promise to build an adequate water system, leaving the growing population with debt and dry wells. Drought struck the Central Valley soon after the town was founded, which led to poor crop yields and further decreased vital water supplies.”

In 1966, the town suffered another blow when officials discovered arsenic in the drinking water, and by the 1970s Allensworth no longer appeared on most maps.

The town’s storied past and ongoing challenges were what drew Morrison there, Hutson said of his mother. She dedicated the rest of her life, from 1979 until her death in 2018, to Allensworth, where she joined church efforts and nonprofit campaigns against local polluters and rallied to secure clean drinking water for the community. On weekends, her five grown children joined her in her efforts.

Decades later, two of her children—twins Dennis Hutson and Denise Kadara, felt a similar calling to Allensworth. Hutson, a Methodist preacher and Air Force chaplain living in Las Vegas at the time, remembered his frustration that little seemed to have improved for local residents despite his mother’s many efforts. As recently as 2020, nearly one-third of the population still lived below the poverty line. 

“[I asked myself], ‘Why doesn’t the government do something?’” Hudson recalled. “A voice [in my head] responded, ‘Why don’t you do something?’”

So in 2007, Hutson and Kadara, age 54, and Kadara’s husband, Kayode Kadara, decided to buy 60 acres from a retiring farmer in Allensworth, calling it the TAC Farm (TAC originally stood for The Allensworth Corporation, an entity that has since been dissolved.) Over the next few years, Hutson moved from Las Vegas and the Kadaras from Half Moon Bay, California, to settle in Allensworth full-time.

Their goal was to create a Black-owned, Black-operated farm that would honor Allensworth’s legacy and boost the local economy in the Valley. They began to farm a mix of collards, okra, mustard greens, watermelon and black-eyed peas because, as Hutson said, “I’m going to grow food that I know Black people want to eat.”

The Central Valley is sometimes called the nation’s breadbasket, producing about 8% of total agricultural output and nearly 40% of the country’s fruits and nuts. But climate change poses a serious threat to the region’s farms. Annual average maximum temperatures in Allensworth, and the surrounding San Joaquin Valley, which is part of the Central Valley, increased by 1 degree F from 1950 to 2020. That figure is projected to increase another 4 or 5 degrees F in the next 30 years, according to a state-commissioned report released earlier this year. The region is also experiencing its most severe drought in a millennium, according to a separate study published earlier this year in the journal Nature.

The extreme heat and drought don’t just threaten crops. These conditions make farm work more dangerous for workers and pose critical health risks for surrounding communities, according to Chantelise Pells, a water-systems researcher at UC Merced and co-author of the state-commissioned report.

“When you compound the expenses of air conditioning, poor air quality and limited access to water, [the climate crisis] is a huge economic burden for low-income communities,” Pells said. “They have to make a choice of whether to suffer in the heat or not have enough money to meet their basic needs.”

According to the same report, hundreds of thousands of residents in the San Joaquin Valley—many of whom are farmworkers—do not have access to clean drinking water and instead rely on store-bought bottled water. More frequent heat waves, which are often accompanied by poor air quality, increase the economic burden on low-income communities in the region that already experience disproportionate rates of asthma and heat-related illnesses.

Lack of rainfall and snowmelt runoff also mean farmers rely more heavily on groundwater, a practice that has become unsustainable, experts say. And amid the water scarcity, small-scale farmers like the Hutson-Kadaras are struggling to compete with larger farms.

“Most small-scale farmers don’t have the means to dig deeper wells and compete with large farms for access to groundwater,” said Angel Santiago Fernandez-Bou, a researcher at UC Merced and another co-author of the state-commissioned report.“During a drought, this can be a big problem for small or disadvantaged farmers.”

In 2007, for example, Hutson dug a 720-foot well on his family’s property, only to discover that his neighbors, who operate larger-scale operations, have wells thousands of feet deep. He realized that meant his well—and the farm’s lifeline—would be at risk of drying up long before his well-financed neighbors’ water sources would. (Around 42% of public wells in the San Joaquin Valley are at risk of drying up due to current drought conditions, according to the state-commissioned report.)

”When you are in the midst of a drought in a state that is having severe water challenges, it seems to me that you would rethink how you do your farming,” Hutson said, “—that it would encourage you to consider other ways to provide for your livestock [while] at the same time trying to provide for your environment.” 

In 2011, the Hutson-Kadaras participated in an organic farming training program, where they learned adaptive practices, such as enriching their soil with organic compost and installing windbreaks—hedges of trees to protect crops against wind—that would limit their reliance on synthetic fertilizers, reduce soil erosion and conserve water. 

In the past decade, the TAC Farm has adopted other climate friendly practices, including closed-loop agriculture—a technique in which farmers recycle nutrients and organic matter material back to the soil.The Hutson-Kadaras also raise rabbits, feeding them organic alfalfa and using their nutrient-dense manure as fertilizer. 

Hedgerows and windbreaks reduce soil erosion, minimizing soil disturbance, which in turn leads to less dust and fewer pollutants in the air. Healthy soil increases water retention, leaving more water in the aquifers. The cover crops add fertility to the soil, reducing the need for agrochemicals that pollute the air and water. The benefits of these farming practices, if adopted widely, reverberate throughout the surrounding community, according to Pells.

“Using regenerative practices [like cover cropping and reducing tillage] is a win-win,” Pells said. “It improves water and air quality, while lessening the economic burden on the farmers themselves.”  

The experiences over the past 15 years have convinced the Hutson-Kadaras of the importance of small-scale and cooperative farming. The benefits aren’t just environmental, Hutson said. Surrounding communities have been shown to benefit economically as small farms generate jobs and circulate income among local establishments. 

State officials are now looking to the Hutson-Kadaras’ farm as a model for developing a new generation of small-scale, sustainable farmers. Earlier this summer, state lawmakers earmarked $10 million in funding to help Hutson and Kadara develop a farmer training program that focuses on sustainable practices and cooperative methods that can help fight the tides of climate change and transform the Central Valley into a more economically and environmentally sustainable region. 

The program will primarily recruit burgeoning Black, Indigenous and other farmers of color in an effort to close some of the racial disparities that are rampant in food and agriculture. After 7 months of training, participants can lease a small plot of land on the Hutson-Kadara’s farm for the next 2½ years and sell their goods to local cooperatives. (While land access has been, and continues to be, an issue for many beginner farmers, organizations like Minnow exist to facilitate the transfer of land into the hands of California’s farmers of color while advancing Indigenous sovereignty.) 

Drought and extreme heat notwithstanding, Hutson said his dream—to make Allensworth once again a beacon of hope for Americans of color—is slowly becoming a reality. In June 2022, California state Governor Newsom set aside an additional $32 million dollars in the state budget for Allensworth—a majority of which will go to building a new visitor center that will connect the town’s history of Black self-determination with its future as a sustainable and equitable farming hub.

“I want Allensworth to be known for training and producing the next generations of cooperative, small-scale, sustainable farmers—whether they are Black, Latinx, Indigenous or Asian,” Hutson said. “That’s what I hope for and that’s what we are working toward.”

This article was made possible by a grant from the Open Society Foundations for Nexus Media News.  Nexus Media News is an editorially independent, nonprofit news service covering climate change. 

Header image: LA Times

The post How a Methodist Preacher Became a Champion for Black-Led Sustainable Agriculture appeared first on Real Food Media.

Carlos Vicente –

Gustavo Esteva – We also said goodbye this past week to the Mexican activist and organic intellectual Gustavo Esteva. The founder of Oaxaca’s Universidad de la Tierra (University of the Earth), Esteva dedicated his life to scholarship and solidarity with peasant and Indigenous peoples. He participated in the Zapatista uprising and became one of the movement’s key advisors and negotiators. He authored, co-authored, and edited more than 40 books and thousands of articles. He was an ardent critic of Western/Northern-led “development projects,” the ideologies of superiority that justify them, and the violence they inflict. Read an interview with Esteva at In Motion Magazine.

We offer our deepest condolences to Carlos’ and Gustavo’s families, friends, and colleagues.

The post Rest In Power: Two Latin American Food Sovereignty Activists Join the Ancestors appeared first on Real Food Media.

Community food webs strive to build health, wealth, capacity, and connection. Their essential element is building greater respect and mutual trust, so community members can more effectively empower themselves and address local challenges. Farmers and researchers may convene to improve farming practices collaboratively. Health clinics help clients grow food for themselves and attain better health. Food banks engage their customers to challenge the root causes of poverty. Municipalities invest large sums to protect farmland from development. Developers forge links among local businesses to strengthen economic trade. Leaders in communities marginalized by our current food system are charting a new path forward.

Building Community Food Webs captures the essence of these efforts, underway in diverse places including Montana, Hawai‘i, Vermont, Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, and Minnesota. Addressing challenges as well as opportunities, Meter offers pragmatic insights for community food leaders and other grassroots activists alike.

The post Building Community Food Webs appeared first on Real Food Media.

The 12^th Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC) will be online and worldwide from 7-13 January 2021, in a groundbreaking seven-day event featuring more than 150 hours of talks and workshops from partners around the world.

We’ve worked with ORFC to bring you a mix of sessions to help connect you with people and movements worldwide. With this broad mix of interactive workshops, engaging panels, and inspiring keynotes, you’re sure to find numerous sessions that pique your interest. Here are just a few of the sessions we’re excited about:

• Food and Democracy, with Frances Moore Lappé 
• Spinning Food: The Stealth PR Tactics Industry Uses to Shape the Story of Food, with Anna Lappé (BONUS: Anna will be leading a limited-capacity workshop to dive deeper into the tactics and what we can do about them. Sign up for it on the website). 
• Perilous Bounty: How the US Model of Industrial Farming Threatens the Global Food Commons, with Tom Philpott
• Against Philanthropy: The Role of Foundations in Colonizing the Food System with Raj Patel and Rupa Mayra, and Anna as chair. 
• Gender Diversity & Ecology with Edgar Xotchil, Clare Riesman, Paula Gioia, Alessandro Santos Mariano, and Tiffani moderating. 
• Message from the Future II, with Naomi Klein, Nnimmo Bassey, and Jamie Hartzell 
• Neo-colonial Economies and Ecologies, Smallholder Farmers and Multiple Shocks in Africa: Confronting False Solutions Towards Decolonization with Vandana Shiva, Tim Wise, and Mariam Mayet

As you can see, this conference is stacked with sessions to ground your knowledge, expand your thinking, and make new connections. 

Check out the full program here and make sure to get your tickets now. 

The post Getting Inspired and Building Connection at ORFC Global appeared first on Real Food Media.

Alongside a public health emergency, Covid-19 has unleashed a staggering spike in global hunger. More than a quarter of a billion people are expected to face acute food insecurity as a result of the pandemic. Among the hardest hit are Black, brown, and Indigenous small-scale food producers – and the consumers they feed – from countries already scarred by colonialism, import dependence, and the climate crisis. Yet, these are the very people who are leading movements to address the roots of hunger while responding to the disruptions wrought by Covid-19. 

Recognising the precarity of an industrial food system that drives farmers into debt and poisons their soil and water, these producers are increasingly embracing agroecology – a way of farming that coexists with natural ecosystems to produce healthy food. At the Agroecology Fund, we acted swiftly to support their mutual aid and solidarity responses to Covid-19 – channeling nearly $1 million through an emergency fund to 59 grassroots organisations across five continents earlier this year.

In the process, we learned several key lessons on how to respond to an acute crisis, while deepening transformative change.

Lesson 1: Take the lead from grassroots organisations and BIPOC communities

Traditional grantmaking deliberations often place an onerous burden on grassroots groups with limited resources for funder engagement. Funders must make their decision-making processes more equitable and expedient. For this emergency fund, we simplified requests for proposals, and streamlined grant disbursements. But making funding processes more accessible is critical beyond moments of crisis. We stand with our peers calling for such transformations in philanthropic practices, including the US-based network HEAL Food Alliance, which urged food systems funders to do more to center racial equity and resource BIPOC communities who are already scaling critical solutions.

Lesson 2: Support food sovereignty and food security

Last month, the United Nations’ World Food Programme was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for providing food aid to almost 100 million vulnerable people globally. While a powerful recognition of just how urgent food security is, food aid – too often consisting of imported genetically modified (GMO) grains, ultra-processed foods, and surplus commodities – actually undermines local economies and small food producers.

For nearly a decade, the Agroecology Fund has prioritised food security without compromising food sovereignty – the right of peoples to determine what they eat and how it is produced. Social movements like our partner, La Via Campesina, representing 200 million peasants worldwide, remind us that we can only end hunger by supporting the small producers who already feed the majority of the world’s population. 

Increasingly, governments and UN agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Environment Programme (UNEP) endorse principles of agroecology. It is becoming clearer to policymakers that strengthening local resilience means supporting communities to grow and distribute emergency relief in times of crisis even as they steward ecosystems and ensure a sustainable food supply through the year.

Lesson 3: Invest in long-term resilience

To some, addressing the Covid-19 hunger crisis may seem an impossible trade off between providing urgently needed handouts or investing in long-term solutions. Our emergency grantees show it’s possible to rapidly mobilise mutual aid while strengthening long-term food security in their communities. 

From the Philippines to Argentina, through interventions as diverse as online marketplaces and microcredit programs, our grassroots partners are helping their communities’ weather the crisis and build resilience. In Zimbabwe, when market closures left thousands of farmers stuck with perishable produce, our grantee Pelum Zimbabwe mapped local supply chains to reveal healthy food options to consumers and policymakers. In India, Amrita Bhoomi launched a producers’ cooperative so farmers could supply healthy, locally grown food at fair prices.

Grantees we support have also been working to shape the policy response to the crisis. In Brazil, for example, the Landless Workers Movement (MST) has been advocating for public procurement sourced from agroecological farmers. 

Lesson 4: Tap the power of pooled funds

Faced with the scale of today’s interlocking crises, collective action is essential. Pooled funds help individual donors move swiftly to make well-informed investments. Groups like ours – a pooled fund of more than 30 donors – and other networks including Thousand Currents and Grassroots International have deep connections to social movements that can help steer resources towards transformational change. As one of our fund donors said, ‘On my own, I would never know which grassroots groups in the Philippines or Brazil or Uganda to support to address the food crises unfolding there.’

Pooled funds also help generate positive peer pressure among collaborating organisations to give more. Promisingly, many of our peers are offering matching grants, disentangling donations from asset returns, and even initiating spend downs in response to this global crisis.

Today’s challenges are immense; tomorrow’s will be no less so. We must work together to fund grassroots-led humanitarian relief and activism that builds toward lasting, systemic change, ensuring our charitable dollars function not as a Band-Aid, but as part of a global effort to eradicate the roots of hunger in all its complexity.

Amrita Gupta leads communications at the Agroecology Fund and Daniel Moss is its executive director. Anna Lappé directs the food and democracy program of the Panta Rhea Foundation and is a member of the fund.

The post Food Today, A New Food System Tomorrow appeared first on Real Food Media.

Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser spent decades maintaining and improving his canola crop as farmers have done for millennia — selecting the strongest plants, saving their seeds, and replanting them the following season. One August day in 1998, however, Schmeiser received a letter from Monsanto lawyers informing him he was being sued for patent violation: the company’s “Roundup Ready” canola, a genetically engineered canola that altered the plant’s genes to make it resistant to Roundup herbicide, had been found in Percy’s fields.

As the farm advocacy organization GRAIN explains, “Canadian farmers have a long and strong tradition of seed saving, especially in the western prairies where Schmeiser is from. Canola, the crop Schmeiser grew, is itself a product of farmer seed saving, farmer selection, and publicly funded research. It’s an example of what plant breeding can accomplish without patents. It’s also an example of why co-existence between GM (genetically modified) and non-GM crops is impossible. Today, all of the canola acreage in Western Canada is contaminated with Monsanto’s patented ‘Roundup-Ready’ gene.”

What ensued was an epic David vs. Goliath battle that pit the rights of farmers to save and replant seeds against agribusiness attempts to make it ever-more difficult for farmers to plant anything but their patented varieties. Percy did not set out to be an anti-biotech activist. But the pollen from genetically engineered crops blown onto his farm — and Monsanto’s legal intimidation — sealed his fate as a globally recognized seed and farm justice leader.

The stakes were, and still are, high. It’s a struggle to protect the world’s Native, farmer-bred, and publicly-funded plant varieties—the foundation of global food security and climate resilience—from obliteration by privately-controlled GE crops. It’s a struggle to hold those agribusiness corporations accountable for their technologies instead of criminalizing hapless farmers who, as Percy always maintained, never wanted or benefitted from GE seeds.

Percy ultimately lost that court battle — but he grew the movement. In 2018, looking back on his 20-year fight against Monsanto, he commented: “In the end it turned out good and we brought the world’s attention to what GMOs do and what it could do to farmers… We always felt if you grow a product or a seed on your land you should have the right to reseed it and that right should not be taken away.”

Percy Schmeiser passed away last week at 89 years old, just as a major motion picture about his life, starring Christopher Walken, is being released (view the “Percy” trailer on YouTube).

Meanwhile, Monsanto (now owned by Bayer) and other agribusiness giants aggressively pursue the monopolization of seed markets, the rewriting of seed and patent laws in their favor, and the criminalization of farmers’ seed saving practices.

Around the world — and in the Global South especially, where most of the world’s seed diversity is managed for local food security — small farmers and their allies continue to fight for the right to save and share seeds. For the international peasant farmer confederation La Vía Campesina, “seed sovereignty” is a cornerstone of agroecology and food sovereignty. Now more than ever, Indigenous seed keeping knowledge and practices are recognized as critical to our collective response to the climate crisis. And of course, anyone can save seeds and be part of the global seed sovereignty movement.

Rest in Power, Percy Schmeiser. And long live the seed keepers.

The post In Memoriam: Farmer and Seed Saving Crusader Percy Schmeiser appeared first on Real Food Media.

More than a decade after Michael Pollan’s game-changing The Omnivore’s Dilemma transformed the conversation about what we eat, a combination of global diet trends and corporate interests have put American agriculture into a state of quiet emergency, from dangerous drought in California–which grows more than 50 percent of the fruits and vegetables we eat–to catastrophic topsoil loss in the breadbasket heartland of the United States. Whether or not we take heed, these urgent crises of industrial agriculture will define our future.

In Perilous Bounty, veteran journalist and former farmer Tom Philpott explores and exposes the small handful of seed and pesticide corporations, investment funds, and magnates who benefit from the trends that imperil us, with on-the-ground dispatches featuring the scientists documenting the damage and the farmers and activists who are valiantly and inventively pushing back.

Resource scarcity looms on the horizon, but rather than pointing us toward an inevitable doomsday, Philpott shows how the entire wayward ship of American agriculture could be routed away from its path to disaster. He profiles the farmers and communities in the nation’s two key growing regions developing resilient, soil-building, water-smart farming practices, and readying for the climate shocks that are already upon us; and he explains how we can help move these methods from the margins to the mainstream.

The post Perilous Bounty: The Looming Collapse of American Farming and How We Can Prevent It appeared first on Real Food Media.