Chevron insists that their involvement ends there. They refuse to take any responsibility for ominous environmental disaster that plagues the region that Texaco once profited from, and instead point their finger at PetroEcuador, a state-owned Ecuadorian oil company.

Ecuadorian citizens seem to disagree with the American company. A class action law suit was filed against Chevron in 1993 on behalf of 30,000 Amazon residents for polluting their environment.

Since then, Chevron pushed to have the case heard in Ecuador, where it has been re-filed. The trial is still going on right now, while judicial inspections are being performed. The vast sea of opposing information available on this subject can be dizzying, but when I took into account the origin of the intellectual material it helped cure my vertigo.

According to Judith Kimerling (2007 recipient of the Parker Gentry Award for Conservation Biology), “…from 1972 until it left Ecuador in 1992, Texaco intentionally dumped more than 19 billion gallons of toxic wastewater into the region and was responsible for 16.8 million gallons of crude oil spilling from the main pipeline into the forest.” This pollution has caused massive amounts of eco-degradation and human health problems. There has been increased cancer rates in oil producing villages and higher miscarriage rates. The International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health attributes this to living in the proximity of a contaminated water source, and it just so happens that the streams in the region contain more than 280 times more oil chemicals than European communities would allow.

But Chevron has a different perspective. Their analysis of Ecuador data reveals no increased cancer levels in the oil region. They fabricated this information by funding a study of their own called “Cancer Mortality and Oil Production in the Amazon Region of Ecuador, 1990-2005,” key word being “funding”. The study was conducted by three scientists at a consulting firm called Exponent. When I went to the their website and found that the veteran member of the Exponent Board of Directors (Samuel H. Armacost) is also a board member of the Chevron Corporation, I couldn’t help myself from laughing out loud.

Anyone with a critical eye should be able to see right through Chevron’s junk science. An independent court-appointed expert found that 100% of Chevron’s former well sites are contaminated with illegal levels of Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons. Most all of the samples contain well known carcinogens, or, cancer causing agents.

I wonder if Chevron is beginning to regret moving the case to Ecuador. They probably assumed switching the location would help to keep Chevron out of the US media spotlight. Maybe they thought they would be able to bully their way out of assuming liability more easily in a smaller, less wealthy country. All in all, it doesn’t seem to be working out so well for them. Chevron keeps trying to flaunt its power and threaten Ecuadorians by pushing US administration to cancel special trade preferences for Ecuador if the country’s government doesn’t drop the case. But the US government has continued all trade agreements….and soon Mr. Obama will step into office…and well, things aren’t looking great for Chevron these days.

Big oil has to pay for the damage it’s done. Hopefully, Chevron-Texaco still has some money left over from selling the 1.3 billion barrels of oil they extracted from the ancestral lands of Ecuador.

The anti-immigrant movement’s argument that immigrants are to blame for U.S. ecological degradation is deeply flawed. It has so many holes that it is transparent to anyone who thinks critically about the accusations they present. This is a strategic attack on immigrants, and cannot result in any productive environmental solutions. It only breeds more anti-immigrant hatred and leads Americans astray from real environmental progress.

Californians for Population Stabilization says on its website:

“Experts agree that the most dangerous problem facing our environment now and in the future—whether local, national, or global—is human overpopulation.”

“Because of rampant population growth, we’re also experiencing degradation of our ground water; pollution of our lakes, rivers and streams; destruction of forests, national parks, and natural habitats; wildfires and forest fires—often caused by migrating illegal immigrants…”

The truth is it doesn’t matter if a person is living in the United States or another country, wherever they are people are contributing to stresses on the environment. It’s ridiculous that anyone would buy into this being relevant to one’s locality. It’s a shockingly weak foundation on which to build their anti-immigrant agenda.

Both FAIR and CAPS often try to make it seem like environmentalists everywhere are siding with them. FAIR even has a page on their website called “Why Environmentalists Support Immigration Reform”, but they can’t name nor quote a legitimate environmentalist that actually does voice support for their policies.

In reality, there is more opposition to anti-immigrant groups than agreement by environmentalists. The Sierra Club, the most influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States, has decisively banished anti-immigrant rhetoric, stating:

“The Sierra Club, its entities, and those speaking in its name will take no position on immigration levels or on policies governing immigration into the United States. The Club remains committed to environmental rights and protections for all within our borders, without discrimination based on immigration status.”

For those seeking to fuel immigrant scapegoating FAIR offers an “environmentalist” perspective, but provides no meaningful information for legitimate discourse on the environment.

Genuine concern for the planet and the life on it should inspire exploration of viable solutions. Real environmentalists are working beyond borders.

This program has never been popular with unionizers and farm worker rights groups due to it’s negligent and oppressive nature. In fact it’s predecessor, the H-2, program ended over the controversial abuse workers in the program endured.

Currently, employers who are taking advantage of H-2A are required to hire foreign laborers for short-term jobs only. Also they must prove that they attempted and are incapable of hiring U.S. workers. In addition, H-2A requires that employers make sure that the hiring of the foreign-born laborers doesn’t negatively effect the compensation or the working conditions of their original employees, or U.S. laborers. The existing program provides some labor protection, but it has been widely criticized. It’s lax enforcement of policy has lead to wage violations, discriminatory refusals to hire worthy U.S. workers, and lamentable housing conditions.

The H-2A program has proven itself to be flawed and unfair since it’s conception. Guestworkers have a restricted situation, and therefore are often forced to cope with abusive employers. They don’t have the same bargaining position as U.S. workers, and are easily taken advantage of.

Sadly, the Bush administration feels the need to further degrade the laws protecting these workers… just as it liberates the American people from it’s claws. The Department of Labor plans on reducing the farmer’s obligation to actively seek out U.S. workers before applying forguestworkers, changing the program wage formula to reduce worker’s earnings, and eradicating government guardianship of the program.

“Eliminating labor law enforcement in an industry known for violating the minimum wage is irresponsible and completely unacceptable,” - Bruce Goldstein, Executive Director of Farmworker Justice.

It seems the Bush administration is more interested in destroying workers’ rights than creating jobs for American workers. Farm work is dangerous and poorly paid as it is, and it just got a lot worse. Congress can undo the damage wrought by the Bush administration. Write to your congressperson and tell them to stop these changes from taking effect.

You can visit the United Farmworkers or Farmworker Justice websites for more information on H-2A.

It is a swirling vortex that has an exceptionally high concentration of plastic particles floating beneath it’s surface, which Mr. Moore discovered during a sailing expedition in the late 90’s. It formed partially from the dumping of garbage directly into the sea, but mostly from trash on land making it’s way back to the water. Some of the objects found have been determined to be over 50 years old.

Since the plastic manufactured today is so durable, it disintegrates very slowly, and may never fully biodegrade. Instead it photodegrades, which means that it breaks down into small pieces while never really going away.

These particles are small enough for many aquatic species to ingest, which is how the toxic trash we toss enters our food chain. The floating particles resemble zooplankton, which are ingested by jellyfish and other animals. Then bigger animals eat the smaller animals that ate the plastics, and eventually the plastic particles end up in humans. According to Alternet.org, “Syringes, cigarette lighters and toothbrushes have been found inside the stomachs of dead seabirds, which mistake them for food.” which causes about a million birds to die each year. Plastic particles ingested by one group of animals have the potential to affect every animal that feeds on them exponentially.

Just as mercury quickly spreads from small fish into larger, and then to birds of prey, plastic sludge is passed up the chain. This bioaccumulation of toxins eventually reaches human beings. Besides the unknown effects of eating the plastics alone, they have been shown to act as magnets for other toxins. Plastic polymers attract DDT, PCB’s and insoluble oils in the sea, which are concentrated in the plastics. Some of the toxins clinging to the plastic are mistaken as estradiol (an estrogenic hormone) in animals’ receptors.

Disruption of hormone balance can lead to unpredictable changes in animal populations. Balancing on top of the food web, human beings everywhere feel the full effect of shifting populations. Possibly more frightening than dwindling wildlife populations is wondering how this toxic accumulation will affect the people on earth in the long term. Next time you dispose of a plastic bottle, it may come back to haunt you. End the toxic cycle: stop buying and throwing away plastics.

Luckily, about two thirds of the world’s coffee beans are still classified as arabica. Arabica beans are grown at higher altitudes, require less watering, and need cooler climates. Which means that almost all arabica beans are shade grown, greatly reducing the number of trees being cut down. Shade-grown coffee also grows slower than other varieties, producing a more flavorful, higher quality product.

It is sold for a considerably higher price, especially in the western world. However, due to the lack of price transparency received by farmers, they often resort to growing more beans for profit instead of higher quality. Which means clear cutting their land to make room for quick-growing, high-yielding robusta coffee shrubs.

This system of demand leads us to a series of environmental problems. While rainforests at one time covered 14% of the earth’s surface; they now cover only 6%. This significant damage cannot be solely attributed to coffee farming, but caffeine lovers can’t escape blame. Clearcutting forests for coffee plantations causes soil erosion, often requires the use of more chemical pesticides resulting in toxic runoff, and if the farm is on a slope, can cause deadly mudslides.

The environmental effects are exponential, and a shrinking biodiversity creates limitless and complex problems. Experts estimate that we are losing 137 plant and animal species every day due to rainforest deforestation. That’s over 50,000 species per year, and with that comes the loss of cures for human diseases as well.

The scary part is that when an ecosystem is rapidly stripped of so many of it’s species, we simply have no way of knowing how that will effect the the food chain. All this destruction just to feed a nation’s caffeine fix. But that isn’t our only destructive habit. In fact, if you live in the U.S. and consume avocados, coconuts, figs, chocolate, bananas, or palm (kernel) oil on a regular basis (like most of us do) you are contributing to a relatively unsustainable market that is more than this earth can afford.

One of the more disturbing aspects of this system is that we don’t feel the affects in our own country. Not only are foreign environments suffering, but causing forced migration from destroyed ecosystems. Take for example the deaths of 14 immigrants that were attempting to cross the Arizona desert, half of them were coffee workers from Veracruz state.

Let’s face it America, we’re not quitting coffee anytime soon, but we can lessen our impact. From now on let’s pony up for the shade-grown stuff.

Now of course, as some of you may have already guessed, I was a bit skeptical of the entire notion, but I tried to keep an open mind. When doing a “preliminary skim” of the article, I noticed a rather interesting statement: “But however one may try to abdicate responsibility for it, the connection between immigration, population, and the environment remains.’ I was rather confused, thinking, ‘Well, I can see a connection between immigration and national population, and I can see a link between global population and environmental issues…” But I somehow couldn’t link those two thoughts. How are they connected?

It turns out, they only have one major point:”Stabilizing population means a demographic “steady-state” where, over time, the population of the country does not rise.” And that, “[b]ecause immigration is the driving force behind current population growth in the U.S., limiting immigration is the key to slowing population growth, stabilizing our population, and protecting the environment.”

There seems to be a lot of phrases thrown around here, which I personally had some issues with: “stabilizing population”, “immigration is the driving force behind current population growth” and “protecting the environment.” Citations please!

So let’s start with my favorite one first: “immigration is the driving force behind current population growth.” Is it? Foreign born peoples (documented and undocumented) make up only 9.5% of the entire population in the United States (about half of what it was in early 1900s), while 16% in Canada and 22%  in Australia. Let’s look at these nation’s population growth rates: United States 0.894%, Canada 0.869%, and Australia: 0.824%. Hmm… I don’t see any sort of correlation there do you? It almost looks like we would have a better population growth rate if we let more immigrants in…(I’m being facetious).

I also had some trouble understanding how stabilizing the population only in the United States would protect the environment. I mean, if someone is in Mexico instead of Texas, are they protecting the environment? I know, right? I’m so dumb for not getting that. Then I thought maybe I wasn’t so dense, and maybe FAIR was being a bit disingenuous. I’ll let you be the final judge of that, but here’s an interesting factoid: in the same article, FAIR states, “the Sierra Club noted that ‘for almost fifteen years, the Sierra Club has acknowledged that population growth is the cause of all environmental problems.’” Interestingly, the Sierra Club has also made public statements such as “closing America’s borders does nothing to lower the number of people consuming the planet’s resources.” I don’t know, maybe I’m just not getting the point.

For more information on how immigrants are poisoning the environment, you can refer to FAIR’s website. I, on the other hand, will be spending the next few weeks exploring a slightly different, though painfully related issue: the impact that the United States has on not only the global environment but also the local ecosystems of the very same nations that provide us with the majority of our immigrants.

Mr. Pickens’ layout calls for building new wind generation facilities and switching (firstly commercial) vehicles to run on natural gas instead of refined oil. Then, he will harness the power of the wind turbines, creating energy to replace the electricity that was previously supplied by natural gas. While reading his scheme, I couldn’t help but notice that he never mentions anything about Americans slowing down the pace of our energy usage. Perhaps we’d like to believe that we don’t need to change our lifestyles, but there simply aren’t enough resources for us to be consuming at the rate that we do. Although Mr. Pickens would disagree with me.

When discussing the future plans for alternative energy resources, particularly for transportation, on The Daily Show, he assured us that “[i]n America, we’re gonna walk when we wanna walk, not ’cause we have to walk”. This outdated and dare I say arrogant attitude is especially worrisome, considering that Mr. Pickens has started to accumulate an even more precious resource.

“Heck, isn’t it like oil? You have to come back to who owns the water. The groundwater is owned by the landowner. That’s it.”

Pickens owns more water than anyone else in the United states. Texas has very loose laws on pumping ground water, which makes it a perfect location for his Mesa Vista ranch. It’s located on the Northeastern region on the “panhandle”, and rests conveniently atop of one of the world’s largest aquifers. He plans to sell his 65 billion gallons of “blue gold” a year to Dallas, transporting it over 250 miles. Dallas hasn’t agreed to the deal yet, but Pickens doesn’t seem concerned. He believes that “[t]here are people who will buy the water when they need it.” And he’s right: we will need it soon, as many experts are projecting a global fresh-water crisis heading straight towards us. And Thunder Boone Pickens is going to be there to sell it to us at whatever price he wants.

I can’t help but think back to a quote often attributed to Chief Seattle:

Now, for you nit-pickers out there, yes, it wasn’t Chief Seattle who said it…. but regardless of where it came from, it’s somehow rather fitting.

Food security is arguably the most well known campaign of the three discussed here. The expression addresses the need to have accessible food for all people, is often used in international government organizations, and focuses on the technical problem of providing adequate nutrition. Food security advocates also aim to point out the direct relationship between food consumption and poverty, and stress the importance of individuals’ abilities to provide for their own food necessity.

Food Sovereignty appeals to a more specific school of thought. This movement emphasizes the importance of farmers gaining back control over their crops, and the “right of peoples to define their own food, agriculture, livestock and fisheries systems,”. The term was coined by members of Via Campesina, who established seven principles to characterize their crusade. Most notably is Agrarian Reform - “which gives landless and farming people – especially women – ownership and control of the land they work and returns territories to indigenous peoples.”

Food Justice (like Food Sovereignty) views food security as a basic human rights issue, and centers itself around this idea. Food Justice advocate Brahm Ahmadi believes that “in order to discuss issues of hunger one must also discuss the underlining issues of racial and class disparity and the inequities in the food system that correlate to inequities to economic and political power.” He goes on to say, “..(Food Justice) requires an approach in which social justice is a central outcome, rather than as an associated outcome that is merely hoped for”. The core of this movement can be most clearly understood by reading the Food Justice Manifesto, in which the authors most eloquently state: “That every human being has a fundamental right to healthy food and that we have a moral imperative to address the root causes of hunger and starvation.”

All of these social expeditions need to be explored further, and deserve more public attention. It is critical that all individuals, communities, and governments consider the actions and ideas of these groups when making food-related policies or decisions. If we continue to degrade our land and farmers, we may find ourselves stuck with a potentially irreversible global crisis. We need to start dismantling the oppressive food system that is currently in place, and work towards security, sovereignty, and justice together.

Promoting cultural understanding, peace, and sustainability, FBRs seem to spend most of their time familiarizing themselves with native peoples of each of the countries they visit. Thirsting for more than geography lessons and UN statistics, they have managed to paint a global narrative filled with faces and personal interactions, all documented through their blog.

I stumbled upon fueledbyrice.org while searching for a good bike route from Chicago to Minneapolis. I had been meaning to make my way out there to see my dear friend, and thought I’d “walk the walk” and take my bicycle. I found myself fixated on their website for hours, entirely in awe of their accomplishments. They are a group of five that recently graduated from the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University, and are “looking for adventure and a more intimate acquaintance with the people of the world.”

Starting in Beijing, they peddled through China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, India, Nepal, Turkey, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia, Hungary, Austria, Germany, and France.

Their mission statement is 3 fold: 1) “To experience a big cross section of the world by traveling through rural agricultural areas of Asia wherein resides most of the world’s population,” 2) “To help build bridges of understanding to the people we’ll meet along our journey. Playing and singing music will be a major tool for us to have meaningful interaction across language barriers,” and 3) “To advocate deliberate, simple, low-impact lifestyles.”

With their long journey, they have managed to touch various different groups of people through their music and outreach. By day, they bike through nations, fostering relationships with people they meet. And when night rolls around, they mostly sleep in the homes of welcoming locals. Apparently, they made such a good impression that they were invited to speak to a graduating class of high school students at Tan Shui High School, located in the Guangdong Province of China.

And soon, I will have the unique opportunity of biking with them in their last stretch home. They will be passing through Chicago and are willing to have me along for their ride back up to Minneapolis. I feel honored, and look forward to the challenge of riding across states alongside those who have ridden across continents.

I read an article in Time Out Chicago several weeks ago titled “The well-intentioned, politically progressive and completely ill-conceived localvore movement” by David Tamarkin. Locavores are people who eat food grown or produced locally or within a certain radius, such as 50-150 miles. The mantra behind the idea of eating local is:

1. To procure the freshest food possible
2. To ensure the farmer gets a fair price for his crop, while supporting a local economy
3. To decrease energy expenditure by reducing packaging, shipping, and storing time

Mr. Tamarkin didn’t seem to find the idea completely palatable. After outlining the good things about locavorism, he went on to say: “It ignores the rest of the world and focuses on what’s good in one’s backyard. This thinking, of course, ignores the fact that somebody else’s backyard might be more needy than our own. If the first goal of buying local produce is to help farmers in need, it would stand to reason that localvores should seek out the neediest farmers they can.”

I get where he’s going with that statement, but at the same time I have to wonder if he really researched the topic of globalized farming and food sovereignty.

In the past three decades most countries have painfully experienced their own national food production capacity dwindle, due to the ever-increasing incentive to produce agricultural exports. This immense shift in the farming industry was made possible by free trade agreements, and aroused by huge government subsidies to agribusiness. People that were once able to feed themselves actually can’t now because they are exporting all of their crops. The world can certainly produce enough food to sustain all living creatures, it just has to be distributed correctly.

While I may have convinced myself that eating locally will make me less responsible for the global hunger problem, as Tamarkin points out, there are ecological questions to be considered as well: “While a tomato that was organically grown on an Illinois farm has a low impact on the environment, an organically grown tomato raised in an Illinois greenhouse…can be deceiving. They may be locally grown, but that term fails to reveal they were grown in a heavily heated, gas-guzzling greenhouse.”

He has a good point. Most local organic farms that I am familiar with don’t harbor those kind of facilities, but I’m sure there are plenty of them. Especially the big “organic” farms that are owned by parent companies (i.e. Cascadian Farms is owned by General Mills, Earth’s Best by Heinz). While I understand his skepticism, I would hope that someone disciplined enough to eat entirely locally would probably be able to figure out that a tomato coming from the Midwest in January would be growing in a greenhouse, and may use a lot of energy to produce. What Tamarkin may not know is that with the right insulation and a thermal mass wall, a well seasoned farmer could produce tomatoes in January using very little to no energy. If they have some extra money in the bank, they could even get a couple solar panels.

My (and most) Community Supported Agriculture programs run early spring through late fall. Some will keep delivering year-round, by using their storage crops or by putting not-so-local vegetables in the produce boxes. If you are interested in participating in a CSA and you live in Chicago, or if you just want to learn more about buying local in the Midwest Familyfarmed.org has a great map of drop off locations and different farms to choose from.

In Cudahy, Wisconsin, Sister Luigi Frigo conducts the same experiment with her second grade class every year. The children keep a group of mice in the classroom, and for four days feed them highly processed junk food (containing genetically modified ingredients and preservatives). On the first day the students notice a dramatic difference in the mice’s behavior. They become lazy, antisocial, and nervous. In a similar experiment at a high school in Appleton Wisconsin, the mice “destroyed their cardboard tube, were no longer nocturnal, stopped playing with each other, fought often, and two mice eventually killed the third and ate it.” according to author Jeffrey Smith. When they returned the mice to a healthy diet for a couple of weeks, they began to act normal again. One year, the class tried to repeat the experiment with the same group of mice a couple of months later, but they refused the food.

This investigation might not be scientifically sound, but it is a valid way to show that what you put into your body effects how you act and feel. Fortunately, this is not the only testing that has been done on genetically modified (GMO) foods.

In 1999, Dr. Arpad Pusztai was working in Scotland on a UK government grant to create a food safety assessment process to test GM foods. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to finish his work - he was fired from his job of 35 years when he voiced his concerns. According to him, the rats that ingested the GMO foods, “developed potentially pre-cancerous cell growth, smaller brains, livers and testicles, partially atrophied livers, and showed signs of a damaged immune system.”

Pusztai was the world’s top GMO safety researcher at Rowett Institute when his 20 member research team was dispersed and all records of his work were deserted. And Pusztai is not alone, there are many other government employees and scientists who have been offered bribes, threatened, stripped of their responsibilities, harassed, or fired for reporting negative side effects of GMO foods.

According to the Institute for Responsible Technology, a consumer safety organization, “Genetic engineers continually encounter unintended side effects – GM plants create toxins, react to weather differently, contain too much or too little nutrients, become diseased or malfunction and die. When foreign genes are inserted, dormant genes may be activated or the functioning of genes altered, creating new or unknown proteins, or increasing or decreasing the output of existing proteins inside the plant.  The effects of consuming these new combinations of proteins are unknown.”

This may provide some insight as to why Europe has said “no” to allowing any genetically modified food in their supermarkets. Scientists all over the world are concerned about what we are putting in our ecosystem and ourselves. This maybe a sign for Americans to be more cautious too. In the United States we require labeling of how orange juice is made from concentrate, coffee is hot, and nail polish is flammable. Isn’t it about time companies are required to tell us if our food is genetically engineered?

In Eastern Oregon resides the headquarters of a major beef conglomerate, Beef Northwest.  They produce meat that is sold under the “Country Natural Beef” (CNB) label. The cows raised to produce this beef are brought up by small family farmers who allow the cattle access to pasture for the first 16-18 months of their lives. After that, they are sold to CNB. They are shipped to a feedlot, and fattened on a mix of corn, potato, and alfalfa feed (which cannot be guaranteed to be GMO free) for the remaining three months of their lives.

These feedlots have been under scrutiny in the past by organic food advocates, for administering illegal quantities of drugs to their animals. Now things are heating up again, this time the focus is on the workers.

Beef Northwest has been accused of sexual and racial discrimination in their hiring practices on three separate occasions. The company also has no unionized feedlots in the country which has attributed to a slew of complaints that they are violating the rights of workers. A policy analyst at the Farmworker Support Committee has this to say about organic farming in America,

“The exploitative conditions that farmworkers face in the U.S. are abysmal — it’s a human-rights crisis,” said Richard Mandelbaum, policy analyst at the Farmworker Support Committee. “In terms of wages and labor rights, there’s really no difference between organic and conventional.”

So far, Beef Northwest has refused to acknowledge any efforts their employees are making to unionize, and are stalling the continued efforts. Organizers from the United Farm Workers (UFW) want a check card process, where workers are able to sign union cards while a neutral third-party overseas the process. The owners of Beef Northwest, however, are continuing to push for a secret ballot vote, in which workers vote anonymously. I probably don’t have to say it, but this process is just a little sketchy.

With few full-time, year-round jobs available in East Oregon Beef Northwest has no problem receiving job applicants and therefore still holds the upper-hand in the dispute. There employees are expected to work 12 to 14 hour days, including company recognized holidays. This practice is understandably taxing on the personal lives of the workers.

As a result of the harsh conditions, in 2007;

“the UFW sent a letter to owners of Beef Northwest informing them that a majority of their workers had authorized us to represent them”

Then a week later,

“Beef NW’s attorney agreed to meet with us and verbally agreed not to engage in any anti-union activities. However, workers soon reported an orchestrated campaign of threats and intimidation. It became apparent that Beef NW had no intention of negotiating a resolution, but instead had launched an anti-union campaign in an effort to undermine worker support for the UFW.”

It’s clear that the “secret ballot” election process is not only undemocratic, but unfair. Workers shouldn’t be bullied and pressured at their jobs because they want to stand up for their rights.

The labor union dispute has taken the spotlight in the leftist media since Senator Obama took the issue under his wing. He wrote a letter to John Wilson urging him to “negotiate with your employees’ chosen bargaining agent, the United Farm Workers.”

Action needs to be taken if there is any hope for their work conditions to be improved. It’s time Beef Northwest heard from the stores that sell their products and the consumers who buy them. Whole Foods is the primary retailer for Beef Northwest - send Whole Food a letter today explaining that if the organic farmworkers in Oregon have a problem, we all have a problem.

“Organic” can mean a lot of different things these days. Chemists define the word as a class of chemical compounds that have a carbon basis. Some people merely associate “organic” with something they bought at Trader Joe’s last week. “Organic” is most commonly thought of by American consumers as food that has been grown or raised without the use of conventional pesticides, antibiotics, or growth hormones. I know I always assumed that if something was labeled “organic” it meant it was probably produced in a more conscious, personal manner. But that is not always the case.

The incentive to switch to organic farming is getting more powerful as the demand for organic goods goes up. According to the Organic Trade Association, the:

“Total U.S. organic sales, including food and non-food products, were $17.7 billion in 2006, up 21 percent from 2005. They are estimated to have reached $21.2 billion in 2007, and are projected to surpass $25 billion in 2008.“

Organic food is the fastest-growing segment of the American food sector. The pressure to produce organically is increasing for other obvious reasons too, like the high price tag for goods. The “natural” market seems to be the hippest place to be in the food world, and everybody wants a piece of it.

Most major American food processors now have brand acquisitions that are certified organic -Kraft owns Boca, M&M Mars owns Seeds of Change - even ConAgra (one of the leading distributor’s of food containing genetically modified/engineered crops) is testing the waters. They purchased Massachusetts-based vegetarian food company Lightlife in 2000.

While this shift in U.S. agribusiness will undoubtedly expand accessibility of healthy foods to lower income brackets, it will also go against the very concept of organic production.

Big business lobbyists along with Republican leaders in congress helped pass the 2006 Agricultural Appropriations Bill. The Organic Consumer Association reports that this Bill allows,

“Numerous synthetic food additives and processing aids, including over 500 food contact substances, to be used in organic foods without public review. Young dairy cows to continue to be treated with antibiotics and fed genetically engineered feed prior to being converted to organic production.“

To some, this push to lower the organic standard is a step towards the complete degradation of the “organic” label. Others argue that this bill is a way of creating an incentive for producers to improve their practices over time. Either way, small family farmers are getting the short end of the stick.

Major dairy retailers and wholesalers are pumping out “organic” milk that comes from cows brought in from conventional feedlots, and giving them little or no access to pasture. While dedicated farmers raise their cows with care, and allow them to graze. And if the big corporations continue to receive the same premium price for goods produced much more cheaply, the little guys will slowly start to disappear from the organic market, the market they’ve spent four decades creating.

*Image gratefully borrowed from libraryman’s photostream

The other day I listened to a customer in the coffee shop where I work complain about the cap Costco put on the amount of rice each customer can buy per visit. It occurred to me that this guy must not have heard about the world’s food crisis. I thought about suggesting to him that he try visiting Haiti, where a farmer can grow rice, but not actually afford to buy it.

The world’s poorest nations have been falling short of what many of us consider a basic right: to produce and reserve enough food to feed their own people. Now that this problem is hitting closer to home, I wonder how Americans will respond. Two recent articles in In These Times caught my attention on this subject. In David Moberg’s piece on the global food crisis he says,

“Earlier this year, a U.N. commission of 400 agricultural experts concluded that the world needed to shift from agricultural business-as-usual to a more ecological and small-scale approach. To no one’s surprise, the U.S. government and agribusiness refused to endorse its recommendations.”

Most agricultural experts agree that switching to this more ecological, small scale approach would help stimulate local economy and ensure food stability. They argue for food sovereignty, which would give people and nations the right to create their own food economy and the right to decide weather or not to use genetically modified crops (which have not yet been proven to be safe to eat and degrade the quality of the land). These policies sound promising and have real potential to address a growing crisis…if they are embraced.

In the meantime there is a small movement of activists that call themselves “freegans” showing up in affluent cities all over the world. The name derives from the root words “free” and “vegan”, and they strive to live simply. One of the main ideals of both veganism and freeganism is to conserve energy by eating lower on the food chain, but freeganism is a little more political. It’s about rejecting consumer culture altogether, therefore not adding to the national, or global demand for goods.

One of most well known habits of freegans is “dumpster diving”. They find perfectly good food (and plenty of it, the U.S. accounts for 5% of the global population, but produces 96 billion lbs. of waste each year). While most Americans would probably think of digging through the garbage as repulsive, I think it’s pretty admirable. It appears as if it’s becoming a popular trend too. According to Sergio Burns in his article A Freegan World,

“There are around 400 to 500 freegans in New York City alone, and growing communities of like-minded individuals across the Western World who are living outside of and challenging the established social order.”

Freeganism is like a tiny, world-wide, esoteric club. In their own humble way they detract from world hunger….they give it less value. They’re people who live their lives in a way that is not invasive to others, nor to the planet. And while we might not all be so hip to rummaging through the waste basket, it wouldn’t hurt us to take a few pointers. Freeganism won’t make a dent in the shortage of food that is starving millions around the world, but it can help us learn how we contribute to the problem and just maybe set us down a path to learning how to stop.

Image gratefully borrowed from DavidDennis’ photostream

While issues, like global warming and the threat of decreasing natural resources paint the media headlines green, there seems to be less room for other pressing social issues. What happened to Guantanamo Bay? School of Americas? The war in Darfur??

Maybe there is only so much room in the hearts and minds of compassionate Americans? What if we could combine forces and create organizational ventures that are socially responsible and ecologically friendly?

On the southwest side of Chicago lies the Working Bikes Cooperative, an organization that is doing just that. The objective is pretty simple: whoever volunteers fixes bikes to be in working condition, nothing more, nothing less. This minimalist approach keeps the price tag low. So what’s so socially responsible about that?

1. They make it possible to sell a practical and sustainable mode of transportation at an affordable price to anyone regardless of their socioeconomic status.

2. It’s one of the few places in Chicago where someone with little or no skill can learn bike mechanics for free.

3. Working Bikes uses all the proceeds from selling bikes, plus money from donors, to ship mountain bikes to developing countries and needy communities in Chicago.

This is how it goes: Bikes are donated privately, or bought at scrap yards for less than five dollars (which is higher than the price the metal recycling companies will pay, but not enough to encourage scrappers to take bikes on the street). Then a team of volunteers assembles them in the most cost-effective way possible. Finally, the bikes are sold out of their storefront, which enables them to pay for shipping to foreign countries in need of affordable transportation.

In certain areas of the world, having this alternative mode of transportation means more than most of us can imagine; it’s not so much about saving on gas or being able to take a leisurely ride in the evenings. Having a bike can mean transportation to an otherwise out of reach job location. In extreme cases it can mean the difference between eating tomorrow or eating next week. Also, in many of the places they are shipped, a bicycle that is worth $80 in the U.S. will be worth ten times that amount. In a nutshell, receiving a functioning bike is a big deal.

This organization is salvaging bikes that would otherwise be recycled (which uses more energy than reusing, of course) or thrown away. It’s giving anyone a chance to learn practical skills, for free, that may help them get a job. Most inspiring though, this organization has figured out the magic formula…helping people and helping the environment go hand in hand.

“If we want to start healing our environment, we’ve got to slow population growth. More people mean more cars, more sprawl, higher energy demands, more air pollution, more demand for water and more paved-over farmland.”

Really? Sounds like CAPS knows a lot about what is affecting the environment right? But nowhere in their press release do they cite any scientific findings to support their claims. Surprisingly their website doesn’t mention any work they’ve done on behalf of the environmental either, just anti-immigrant propaganda. I tried googling CAPS to see if anything would surface, still nothing. You would think an organization running ads about protecting the environment would actually be doing something to protect the environment!

They assert that immigration accounts for 82% of population growth in America, but stop short of saying that the United States is over-populated. Know why? Because it’s not! CAPS’s asinine press release continues,

“The radio ad identifies the real “inconvenient truth” as the fact that population growth and environmental degradation are related, “people drive cars, create sprawl, destroy forests and pollute.”

Wow! I had no idea CAPS! People drive cars and pollute?! All this time I thought it was mass consumption destroying the planet, thank god you’re targeting immigrants as the real culprits.

Most of the immigrants I know are modest hard-working folks, who don’t have all that much to drive, sprawl, or destroy with. I wasn’t aware of the masses of hyper-consumptive immigrants out there driving SUVs and building McMansions on California’s rolling hills (ahem landslides).

CAPS’s release gets particularly creepy when it says,

…rolling back mass immigration is tough for “compassionate Californians” to swallow. “But there are times” Hull stated “when hard choices must be made for the greater good.”

What I find tough to swallow is blaming an impoverished and exploited population for our environmental problems. I find it especially hard to believe that it’s a choice made for the greater good. CAPS has got a lot of nerve using real environmental issues to disguise their hate speech, and if I was a Californian, I’d be pretty angry at CAPS for spreading their garbage onto my airwaves.

CAPS President Diana Hull says “It’s time for Californians to lead the country on this issue.” Yes, please California, take the lead on this issue. Tell CAPS to take their racist agenda and shove it.

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