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PLEASE VISIT GROWAFARMER.ORG TO STAY IN TOUCH WITH CASFS AND THE UCSC FARM & GARDEN!
This has been a long time coming. Congratulations everyone in SF for their hard work!! Estimated savings: 800,000 gallons of oil/year.
Last summer, the Colorado General Assembly passed some of the nation's most rigorous anti-immigrant policy laws. While lawmakers congratulated themselves on their foresight immigrants began to flee Colorado. And now the state's large-scale farms, which are almost comically reliant on immigrant labor for profitability, are begging the state government to help them find workers for the growing season. Thus desperate policymakers are turning to another despised population to fix their mess: prison inmates. The state's Department of Corrections recently announced an experimental program to make "low-risk" inmates available for work as farmhands. Colorado farms typically hire 10,000 workers per season; analysts expect a shortfall of 4,000 this year. The prison program is voluntary, and inmates will receive 60 cents a day for their labor. (Farmers will pay the state a rate roughly equal to the going wage for farm labor: about $9 per hour.) Hmmmmmmm....more here.
Consumers have spoken and the dairy industry is responding - California's cows are going drug free. In a recent move by the largest dairy cooperative in California, California Dairies Inc., which ships over 14 billion pounds of milk annually, Golden State cows are going to be drug free as of August 2007. Some California farmers have been injecting their cows with the hormone known as RBST - recombinant bovine somatotropin - for more than a decade with no fuss. But now, farmers have been told to stop this practice if they want to be able to mass market their milk in California.
After reading this article in yesterday's NYT, I was sufficiently disturbed by the fact that whale meat stewed in ketchup is being served to Japanese students. When this video of a mass dolphin slaughter arrived in my inbox tonight however, I was moved to action. ***WARNING THE VIDEO IS EXTREMELY BRUTAL AND DISTURBING*** I signed this petition and forwarded it to everyone I know. I would encourage each of you to do the same. There simply is no need for this disgraceful violence towards cetaceans.
Big victory in the war over Monsanto's <MON> Round-Up Ready Alfalfa. A federal judge on Monday issued a preliminary injunction banning the sale of Monsanto Co.'s genetically modified alfalfa and any planting of the seed after March 30. More here.
Makers of Sodas Try a New Pitch: They’re Healthy. That may strike some as an oxymoron. But for Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, it’s a marketing opportunity. In coming months, both companies will introduce new carbonated drinks that are fortified with vitamins and minerals: Diet Coke Plus and Tava, which is PepsiCo’s new offering. They will be promoted as “sparkling beverages.” The companies are not calling them soft drinks because people are turning away from traditional soda, which has been hurt in part by publicity about its link to obesity. More here.
You've got to read it to believe it. The first GM food crop containing human genes is set to be approved for commercial production. The laboratory-created rice produces some of the human proteins found in breast milk and saliva. The rice's producers, California-based Ventria Bioscience, have been given preliminary approval to grow it on more than 3,000 acres in Kansas. The company plans to harvest the proteins and use them in drinks, desserts, yoghurts and muesli bars.
The government is on track to approve a new antibiotic to treat a pneumonia-like disease in cattle, despite warnings from health groups and a majority of the agency's own expert advisers that the decision will be dangerous for people. More here.
Food Rules: A Teach-in On the 2007 Farm Bill
We shall never cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
~T. S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)
