First Local Vegetable Supply

Warm conditions for growing have helped bring the first local harvests to market. We're expecting the following items this week from Little Seed Gardens:

• Baby Arugula
• Baby Bok Choy
• Baby Turnips
• Pea Shoots, &
• Salad Mix

Little Seed Gardens is an eighty-five acre family run farm in the town of Chatham in Columbia County. Claudia Kenny and Willie Denner tend vegetables, cover crops, and pasture. They are committed to ecological agriculture practices that protect land and human resources, build biological diversity, and produce quality food for regional markets.

Ethanol Booms, Farmers Bust

By Lisa M. Hamilton, AlterNet. Posted May 25, 2007.

From the news these days you'd think farmers have never had a better friend than ethanol. Headlines holler that corn prices are soaring and that at this moment farmers are planting more acres of corn than they have in the last 50 years. Reporters writing about the ethanol boom are throwing around words like gold rush, jackpot, and nirvana. But if you actually are a farmer, ethanol and the high corn prices it brings is looking less and less like a blessing -- and more like a curse.

In concept, corn ethanol could benefit American farmers. Anytime we as a country look to them to supply our daily needs, it's an opportunity for rural communities to win. The problem is that the boom is taking place in the same old agricultural economy, which works to the benefit of those on top: landlords, processors, and companies selling inputs like seeds and fertilizers. It's agribusiness as usual, and like always, farmers will finish last.

read more (AlterNet.Org)

In Honeybee Mystery, Plot Thickens And Suspect Emerges

By Amy Ellis Nutt, Newhouse News Service

Bees are among the most sensitive and hardest-working creatures in nature.

A mysterious ailment, however, is causing the great pollinators to lose their way home. The disorder, called "colony collapse,'' has resulted in the deaths of millions of honeybees worldwide and up to half of the 2.5 million colonies in the United States.

The chief suspect, say many scientists, is the most commonly used insecticide on the planet: imidacloprid.

Launched in 1994 by Bayer, the German health care and chemical company, imidacloprid is used to combat insects such as aphids that attack more than 140 crops, including fruits and vegetables, cotton, alfalfa and hops. Sold under various brand names, such as Admire, Advantage, Gaucho, Merit, Premise and Provado, imidacloprid also is manufactured for use on flowers, lawns, trees, golf courses and even pets in the form of flea collars.

read more (Newhouse News Service)

Bio Shield Paints

The BioShield collection of paints, stains, thinners and waxes is made primarily from naturally-derived raw materials including citrus peel extracts, essential oils, seed oils, tree resins, inert mineral fillers, tree and bee waxes, lead-free dryers and natural pigments.

With BioShield products you no longer have to wonder what combinations of synthetic chemicals generate the puzzling, all-too-familiar smells that come from household products. The mild fragrance that is unique to BioShield products will enhance your painting, finishing, and cleaning activities, and help to create a serene environment at your home, business, or school.

BioShield Paints and Wood Finishes are now available in the Eco-Home Department at Organic Connection.

Tell FDA Not to Weaken Labeling for Irradiated Foods

What if the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed a rule that would intentionally hide information you rely on to make decisions about what to feed yourself and your family?

Or if FDA proposed changing food labeling information to something the agency knows to be misleading to consumers?

Well, FDA has announced just such a rule to weaken labeling of irradiated foods.

Currently, irradiated food must be labeled as "Treated with irradiation" or "Treated by radiation" and have on them the irradiated symbol. But now, in yet another attempt to appease industry at the expense of the public, the FDA has proposed a new rule that would allow irradiated food to be marketed in some cases without any labeling at all. In other cases, the rule would allow the terms "electronically pasteurized" or "cold pasteurized" to replace the use of "irradiated" on labels. These terms are not used by scientists, but rather are designed to fool consumers about what's been done to their food.

read more (Center for Food Safety)

Soap, Drugs, and Rock & Roll

In a recent bizarre encounter between the punk rock band, The Germs, and law enforcement officials in California, it was discovered that standard field drug testing kits could distinguish the difference between soap products that are made from natural and organic ingredients and products that may claim to be organic but really contain synthetic detergents made in part or entirely from petroleum. Watch this humorous short clip to see if some of your favorite so-called natural or organic "soaps" may actually be synthetic.

Watch: (from DrBronners.com)