agribusiness

From ‘Sea to Shining Sea,’ Industrial Ag Fouls America’s Waterways

From ‘Sea to Shining Sea,’ Industrial Ag Fouls America’s Waterways

By Katherine Paul A citizen-led group in Nebraska is fighting Costco’s plan to build a huge chicken factory farm operation that residents in nearby cities say would pollute their drinking water. Residents of Devils Lake, North Dakota, along with members of the Spirit Lake Nation Tribe are battling plans to build a hog CAFO in […]

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    Iowans Fight Back Against Factory Farms—So Can You

    Iowans Fight Back Against Factory Farms—So Can You

    Ready for some inspiration? Check out this video of a press conference that took place earlier this month in Iowa. The conference begins with the powerful voice of Diane Rosenberg, executive director of Jefferson County Farmers & Neighbors. Jefferson County Farmers & Neighbors is a member of the Iowa Alliance for Responsible Agriculture, a coalition […]

    3 Reasons a Meat Tax Is a Good Idea

    3 Reasons a Meat Tax Is a Good Idea

    By Ben Williamson A new analysis from the investor network Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return (FAIRR) Initiative argues that meat is going down the same road as tobacco, carbon emissions and sugar toward a “sin tax”—a levy intended to reduce consumption of products that are harmful. Such an excise tax on meat would help […]

    Michael Pollan: Consumer Boycotts Are ‘Achilles Heel of American Capitalism’

    Michael Pollan: Consumer Boycotts Are ‘Achilles Heel of American Capitalism’

    Trump has dumped family farmers. That’s right, President Trump, who once claimed he’s “fighting for our farmers,” is passing policies that mostly benefit the big agribusiness corporations—not small farmers, and certainly not rural communities. Robert Reich, professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, recently sat down with [see video above] Michael […]

    USDA Gives in to Big ‘Organic’ Poultry, Moves to Withdraw New Animal Welfare Rules

    USDA Gives in to Big ‘Organic’ Poultry, Moves to Withdraw New Animal Welfare Rules

    Monday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) formally proposed withdrawing a set of rules finalized at the end of the Obama administration that establish stronger, more enforceable animal welfare requirements for certified organic producers. The rules, titled the Organic Livestock and Poultry Practices rule, are the product of more than a decade of collaboration and […]

    Taxes on Meat Could Join Carbon, Sugar and Tobacco to Help Curb Emissions

    Taxes on Meat Could Join Carbon, Sugar and Tobacco to Help Curb Emissions

    By Jessica Corbett “Driven by a global consensus around meat’s negative contributions to climate change and global health epidemics such as obesity, cancer and antibiotic resistance,” a new report by a British investor network concludes that a meat tax should be considered “inevitable” for any government serious about addressing the climate crisis and other health […]

    Greenhouse Gas Emission Giants: Why Tyson Foods Rivals Exxon

    Greenhouse Gas Emission Giants: Why Tyson Foods Rivals Exxon

    By Joe Loria According to The Guardian, JBS, Cargill and Tyson—three of the world’s largest meat producers—emitted more greenhouse gas last year than all of France and nearly as much as the biggest oil companies, such as Exxon, BP and Shell. Hardly any meat or dairy companies publish their climate emissions, so it’s almost impossible […]

    Amazon Has a Patent For a Garden Service That Would Help You Grow Food

    Amazon Has a Patent For a Garden Service That Would Help You Grow Food

    Amazon has a new frontier it’s looking to tackle: your garden. The tech company recently received a patent for a new service that would let users upload photos of their vegetable gardens then receive a variety of recommendations from Amazon including recipes for the specific veggies they’ve planted, gardening tools they might need, and even […]

    Meat and Dairy Greenhouse Emissions ‘Could Lead Us to a Point of No Return’

    Meat and Dairy Greenhouse Emissions ‘Could Lead Us to a Point of No Return’

    Three of the world’s largest meat producers emitted more greenhouse gases in 2016 than France, putting them on par with oil companies such as ExxonMobil, BP and Shell, a recent study found. GRAIN, a non-profit organization, collaborated with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and the Heinrich Böll Foundation to estimate the greenhouse emissions […]