Billions of people live in the kind of squalor that was eradicated long ago in the rich world. It is a global water and sanitation crisis that deserves our undivided The-issueattention NOW (well, yesterday, to be exact)… especially since there is a lack of political will to push through changes that could benefit the poorest and most vulnerable people. Here are just two shocking statistics:

• 884 million people don’t have clean water
• 40% of the world’s population suffer without a safe toilet, that’s 2.5 billion people!

Fortunately, there are organizations dedicated to providing sanitation and clean water to the world’s poorest people. End Water Poverty is one of them and I am committed to helping them raise awareness about the critical issues and motivating people around the globe to take action.

Here’s one easy way to take action and it will just take a minute or less! Sign the End Water Poverty Petition, urging global leaders to specifically address the lack of toilets. What happens when something as basic as a toilet is unavailable?

• Girls’ educations are ruined due to open, unsafe or no toilets at schools
• 4,000 young children die each day due to unsanitary conditions
• Communities become locked into circles of ill-health, poverty and despair

Want to do more to help? Put November 19th on your calendar: World Toilet Day. Celebrate the fact that you have a toilet — you probably even have two… or more! Organize a public big squat in your community–Here’s how: big squat movement for the toilet-less

Spread the word about this day and the crisis any way you can. If you’re on twitter, follow @EndWaterPoverty @WorldToiletDay and @icount4myEARTH and join us every Wednesday to tweet about World Toilet Day and other world water crisis issues–be sure to use the hashmark #waterwednesday to help earn us Trending Topic status and to make @WorldToiletDay tweets virul. Simply re-tweet our tweets or come up with some of your own. Here are some sample tweets:

• Join a million putting an end to the water and sanitation crisis @endwaterpoverty http://bit.ly/3Q8ces #waterwednesday
• #waterwednesday Celebrate your toilet on @WorldToiletDay – because 2.5 billion people don’t have one! http://bit.ly/3X6wT7
• Urge politicians to stop 4000 child deaths/day @EndWaterPoverty @WorldToiletDay action http://bit.ly/3X6wT7 #waterwednesday
• Did you know @WorldToiletDay is #19Nov? Why should you give a crap? http://bit.ly/PslHg #waterwednesday

If you’re on facebook, join End Water Poverty’s group and invite your friends. OR copy and paste this entire blog entry into an email and forward it to friends, family and colleagues. For more ways to help, go to EndWaterPoverty.org

More facts about the world water crisis:

• More than half of hospital beds in Sub Saharan Africa are occupied by patients suffering from sanitation and water related diseases
• These diseases are the biggest killer of young children, killing over five times more than HIV/AIDS and twice as many as malaria.
• Young girls simply don’t attend as there aren’t toilets at school, or they aren’t safe or private.
• Other girls spend hours of their day walking to fetch water or caring for ill siblings and have no time for an education at all
• In Africa, an estimated 5% of GDP is lost to illnesses and deaths caused by dirty water and the absence of sanitation
• Climate change is making things worse, increasing pressure on water resources.

End Water Poverty is calling for:

• One global action plan for sanitation and water monitored by one global task force
• 70% of aid money for sanitation and water to be targeted at the poorest countries
• Water resources to be protected and shared equitably

Success depends on rich governments protecting good water and sanitation plans from failure due to inadequate financing; and developing countries must commit to implementing these plans. Please sign the petition now and learn about other ways you can take action by visiting EndWaterPoverty.org. If you’re part of an organization, consider joining The End Water Poverty coalition.

4,000 children do not deserve to die each day because they are lacking clean water and sanitation. Together, we can help make a difference.

SIDE NOTE: To get a glimpse at our world water crisis, consider renting the award-winning documentary  FLOW (for love of water) and sharing it with your family.

Producing more. Conserving more. Improving farmers’ lives. That’s sustainable agriculture. And that’s what Monsanto is all about. (You can see the full add here)

What!?! Are you joking?!!?! Which is what exactly went through my head when I first heard these ads airing on NPR. This I have to say is first rate “Green Washing”, and probably the best I have ever seen. And I was even more shocked to hear it run on NPR of all places! But I guess they have a bottom line to meet. I used to make yearly donations to NPR and then stopped. I have reconsidered several times about renewing my “membership” and donation, but my decision has now been made. I will divert my dollars to other projects that I believe in like the Center of Food Safety, a project I firmly believe in.

Just to give you a brief background on Monsanto, up until two decades ago it was a chemical company that produced chemical warfare, specifically agent orange. Today it is the biggest seed corporation in the world and controls the worlds seed supply through genetic engineering and patents. It is also the market leader in genetically modified US corn, soybean and cotton seeds. In a previous blog, I discuss why Monsanto could be a sitting target for an antitrust enforcement by the Obama administration because they have their farmers in an iron grip with their contracts (but I’m not holding my breath with Michael Taylor, former Monsanto executive, appointed by Obama as the FDA’s food czar or “senior advisor to the commissioner”).

As Marc David, Nutritionist and Founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, stated in one of my Green Club interviews, GMO’d foods are a huge genetic experiment of which we don’t know the repercussions. I agree. And if you want to know how GMO’d foods are affecting our children’s health in the form of food allergies you can listen to my interview with, Robyn O’Brien, author of The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It

In a recent video put out by the Center of Food Safety, Vandana Shiva founder and director of Navdanya in India, leader in the Slow Foods Movement (which is at the top of my favorite food movements), and author of the recently released book, Soil not Oil, shares the heartbreaking story of farmers pressed into deep debt, and some driven to suicide, by the economy of biotech crops.

Over the next month, CFS will be bringing you videos from experts with whom they work closely in the trenches—Michael Pollan, Vandana Shiva, Anna Lappé, and CFS’s Executive Director Andrew Kimbrell—to help reveal the real truth about the bogus claims put forth by Monsanto and other biotech companies. I will be closely watching these videos to learn more about what’s going on with our food supply and hope you will too!

The Center for Food Safety is on the front lines fighting against the corporate take-over of our food, farms, and future; advocating REAL, sustainable, solutions to the problems of the biotech industrial agriculture model.

If you want to get involved and help keep our food supply green, organic and sustainable, become part of the solution and say no to industrial and GMO’d agriculture by taking action and make a donation to the Center For Food Safety. Join more than 85,000 members across the country saying no to industrial agriculture, and yes to True Food!

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) has introduced The Household Product Labeling Act (S. 1697), which would require household cleaning products to carry labels that list all of their ingredients.

“Moms and dads have a right to know whether harmful chemicals are present in their kitchen cupboards,” Franken says. “When my wife, Franni, and I were raising our own kids, we were constantly concerned with what we used to wash their cribs, their pacifiers, the floors and surfaces they played on. This is just a commonsense measure to help parents keep their kids safe and healthy.”

Current law requires product labels to list immediately hazardous ingredients, but there is no labeling requirement for ingredients that may cause harm over time.

Toxic chemicals in household products produce harmful health effects—the main reason we recommend natural and organic options.

The bill would make information readily available to consumers. HR 3057, the House companion bill, was introduced by Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY).

From the Mind of Al Franken 

• Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot
• Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right
• The Truth (With Jokes)
• Oh, the Things I Know!

The Saudi Organic Farming Association (SOFA) is working in connection to create a state-of-the-art organic sector, better market place for organic goods, and close adherence to worldwide food safety standards.

GTZ will also set up the SOFA’s organizational framework, and share expertise with the government.

While SOFA will monitor organic production, protect farmers, promote consumer awareness, and keep with food quality policies of many European countries.

Saudi Arabia is a major importer of agricultural goods, with figures expected to grow 25%. So successful organic farming would keep more food raised in house.

As an, at times, ethnocentric American, it surprises me to see non-Western nations taking interest into issues like this. I seem to think a country like Saudi Arabia has more pressing matters at hand than organic farming.

But it’s cool to see though!

Via Arab News.

Image credit: Pure Travel.

I’d like to call your attention to a hot debate sparked by my blog post Corporate-Backed and Bogus: The Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement.  If you haven’t done so,  read it now to check out  the range of opinions and responses on this important topic.

Charlotte Vallaeys, Farm and Food Policy Analyst at The Cornucopia Institute and her colleagues oppose The Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement as it stands.

Charlotte weighed in on comments from a supporter of The Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement and member of the Western Growers Association, an organization that, according to its website, provides ‘quality services and programs that benefit and enhance the competitiveness of its members in the Arizona and California fresh produce industry.’

Check out the debate for yourself:

Western Growers Association: No one is guaranteeing the safety of anything; however, the program aims t o develop scientifically defensible, regionally-based growing, handling and manufacturing practices – developed by a coalition of stakeholders including government entities, academics and the industry.  These practices have NOT been developed.  This proposal sets up the infrastructure by which a coalition of stakeholders can come to the table and develop those practices. Indeed, there is currently no way of guaranteeing that fresh leafy greens are 100% safe as scientists do not yet have a clear understanding of food borne pathogens on leafy greens.

Cornucopia:   Our main concern is with the “coalition of stakeholders” that would oversee the development and implementation of the rules. Most members on the committee (19 of 23) will be handlers and growers, and 17 of those 19 will likely represent the large-scale, corporate leafy greens industry. The committee members that are not growers or handlers will include a retail industry representative, a food service industry representative, a member of the public and an importer.

There will be a separate committee that will assist the Administrative Committee in developing the rules, which will indeed be required to include academics and government entities, including a National Resource Conservation Service representative and a representative of the Environmental Protection Agency, which is very positive. But ultimately, it is the Administrative Committee that holds the power to make the rules (see section 970.49 of the proposal). Just to reiterate, this Committee will consist of industry representatives with no academics or government representatives.

Western Growers Association: The proposal, as is currently drafted would require that at least two “small” growers participate in the development of these practices.

Cornucopia:  This is a token representation of “small” growers who will not have real power. A two-thirds majority will be needed on important votes, and with 23 members, the two “small” representatives will not be able to influence policy or the outcome of a vote.

Western Growers Association: The “seal” is to be used primarily on bills of lading.  California and Arizona have had a similar program in place for multiple years now; has anyone seen a USDA-approved “seal” on any of the leafy greens in the market?  No.  The seal is used on bills of lading so retailers know that the product in question was handled and grown according to the practices outlined in those state’s agreements.

Cornucopia:  There is currently nothing in the proposal that would prevent signatories from extending the use of this seal beyond bills of lading and manifests.  There is no prohibition against using the seal on packaging visible to the consumer, and it will probably be only a matter of time before the seal is used as a marketing tool. It is, after all, a Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement.

Western Growers Association: Regarding transparency, there was an open comment period on the need for USDA to pursue a marketing agreement about a year ago.  There has been a Web site – www.nlgma.com – on-line for about a year calling for stakeholders to provide comments on the proposal.  Many of those comments and suggestions have been added to the proposed agreement.  Furthermore, the proposed NLGMA has been prominently covered on the USDA AMS site.  There was a Webinar where proponents explained the proposal and answered every question offered up by the more than 200 attendees, nationwide (the Webinar along with those questions and answers are available at www.nlgma.com).  A large group of regional, state and national proponents have been communicating this process with their respective constituents for more than a year.  The proponents called for, and USDA granted, a series of public hearings, across the nation, (which are ongoing) to discuss the merits of the proposal.  I am not sure how this process could be more transparent.

Cornucopia: I don’t believe that lack of transparency is a concern listed in the blog post.

Western Growers Association: There are a handful of different “metrics” or standards out there, and many of them are very costly.  The entire industry needs to work toward one set of practices, defensible by sound science, which can replace those “super metrics” being handed down by the buying community.  The National Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement would afford stakeholders that opportunity.

Cornucopia:  The problem is that the proposed Marketing Agreement would put the power to develop the metrics in the hands of 23 people, most of whom will be representatives of large-scale handlers and growers. Food safety is a serious issue, and any government regulation for food safety should be done with the citizens’ safety in mind. Industry representatives will be serving two masters—citizens’ need for safe food, and their industry’s interests. The likelihood that the resulting standards will be self-serving to their industry, disregarding the needs of other stakeholders (such as small growers) are much higher than if government agencies, staffed by public servants, were charged with developing the rules.

Western Growers Association:     Lastly, this program is voluntary.  If producers do not want to participate, they do not have to.

Cornucopia: It is voluntary for handlers, but not for growers. If most handlers sign up, growers will be left to choose between following the metrics or not being able to sell their crops unless they find a handler who is not a signatory.

What do you think? Let us know and let’s keep the conversation going!

It seems pathogens usually linked to meat have made the leap to vegetables, a result of outdated safety laws, mass-production, and global food markets.

Using data from the CDC, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has compiled a list of the 10 most dangerous foods.

Leafy greens, such as lettuce and spinach, topped a list which includes: eggs, tuna, oysters, potatoes, cheese, ice cream, tomatoes, sprouts, and berries.

As the “winner” green vegetables reported 363 outbreaks with 13,568 cases of illness from 1990 to 2006. At the bottom of the list, berries got off easy with 25 outbreaks with 3,397 reported cases of illness.

So the CSPI lauds the new Food Safety Enhancement Act, passed by the House of Representatives in July, granting the FDA more authority to crackdown on food production and growing facilities.

I think within the next 10 years food safety will be greatly improved. It is becoming too obvious that a big food system requires a lot more checks and balances.

Via HealthDay News.

Image credit: Fruit Today

During yesterday’s successful concert, Farm Aid leaders asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to support measures that help family farmers thrive.

In the 1990s, broken farm policies and consolidated corporate food production forced nearly 80% of hog farmers out of business. According to Farm Aid, similar circumstances are causing dairy farmers to be paid less than half of what it costs to produce milk, and the United States risks losing thousands of dairy farmers this year alone.

At yesterday’s concert, Farm Aid representatives reiterated their request for the USDA to set a price for milk that covers the cost of production, which would guarantee dairy farmers a fair price that keeps them on their land. Farm Aid also asked the USDA to stop using taxpayer dollars to fund new and larger factory farms.

“Family farmers are the first rung of the economic ladder in this country,” said Farm Aid Founder and President Willie Nelson. “Against all odds, they have persevered and found ways to stay on their land, growing good food for all of us and creating strong communities. It’s time now for policy to rise to meet their needs with fair prices and support for their innovations.”

“We invite all Americans to join us in pressing for food production that protects our environment, our health and our economy,” added Executive Director Carolyn Mugar. “We are encouraged by the opportunity the new administration in Washington offers us all for making the needed changes.”

At the concert, USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan joined farmers and food advocates in a conversation about the many ways family farmers are rebuilding local and regional food systems and reenergizing the economy.

“Farmers face overwhelming challenges as they work each day to put food on our tables, and Farm Aid’s ongoing efforts on behalf of family farmers have helped put a human face on this vocation,” she said. “At the same time, there is a bright future for small- and mid-sized producers because there is an agricultural renaissance taking place in America. More and more consumers are wanting to better connect with their producers, and USDA’s new Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative helps to accomplish that goal.”

For Your Organic Bookshelf: Farm Aid: A Song for America

Photo: Paul Natkin/Photo Reserve Inc. 2009

What unites former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and international artists like Fergie, Lily Allen, Duran Duran, Mark Ronson, Jamie Cullum, Marion Cotillard and Milla Jovovich?

A global musical petition that demands climate justice.

A new cover of Midnight Oil’s Beds Are Burning is designed to send a message to world leaders who will participate in the UN’s Copenhagen Climate Change Summit in December.

Each free download will count as a signature on a “digital petition” for an ambitious, fair and international answer to the global-warming crisis. More than 1.3 million people have signed on thus far.

“Climate change is the greatest humanitarian challenge facing mankind today,” Annan says. “And it is a challenge that has a grave injustice at its heart. It is the major developed economies of the world which contribute the overwhelming majority of global greenhouse emissions. But it is the poorer and least developed nations that are hit hardest by its impact.

“By downloading ‘Beds Are Burning’ for free from major music download platforms on the Internet, people from around the world will be adding their names to this growing global petition—joining the campaign for climate justice and becoming a climate ally. This will be the first time ever that a musical petition has been created to demand decisive action from our world leaders.”

“Music is the universal language, capable of transcending cultures, generations, religions and races,” adds song producer Alexandre Sap. “A song or an artist truly has the power to translate a message or a movement more than any politician or world leader can on a global scale. This will create a voice for all of us who deserve to have a say leading up to Copenhagen in December. The goal is to draw enough attention to an event that will affect everyone’s lives on the planet.”

You may download the song from the Time for Climate Justice website, Amazon or iTunes. 

For Your Organic Bookshelf: Climate Change: What It Means for Us, Our Children and Our Grandchildren

Michelle Obama has encouraged all Americans to save a little spot in their yard for growing fresh vegetables. She even brought back the Whitehouse garden, trying to make it organic, until she found out for a long time the lawn was fertilized with raw sewage. But that wasn’t enough to make her quit gardening.

On November 10th, Michelle will drop by Sesame Street to show Elmo and the gang how to grow vegetables like tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce. Here’s a sneak peek of the episode. And I guess fame has gone to Elmo’s head. He seems a little unwilling to get his hands dirty and dig into the garden too–prima donna!

Via OMG!

Image credit: Sesame Street

Molokai is where much of the research into the seed corn takes place, making Monsanto the largest employer on the island.

Putting people to work is awesome, but Monsanto’s massive farming operations gobble up a bunch land and suck down a lot of water. That’s the problem.

Monsanto wants to make money and maximize profits, so these research and farming facilities need to run full-steam ahead, which demands the lion share of the island’s water supplies.

So when a drought on Molokai dried up reservoirs, prompting the local irrigation company to demand water cutbacks of 20%, Monsanto petitioned for the right to take more water—threatening small farmers.

By law, two-thirds of Molokai’s water must go to homestead farmers, but companies like Monsanto drink up 84% of the irrigation system. That’s why local farmers are currently seeking legal action against Monsanto.

Via Fred Pearce’s Greenwash.

Image credit: ismaSan