The Organic & Non-GMO Report Newsletter

Iowa, Minnesota farmers plead guilty in organic fraud schemes

Two farmers, one in Iowa and another in Minnesota, recently pleaded guilty to selling conventionally grown crops as organic in multimillion-dollar fraud schemes. According to court records, Mark Lynn Haines, 48, of Sigourney, Iowa engaged in a scheme to defraud and obtain money from 2015 to 2018 concerning sales of grain as organic, when in […]

Kansas City nonprofit grows free, organic produce for cancer patients

  Kansas City, Missouri nonprofit Food for the Cure is providing organic produce to support recovery of cancer patients in the area. “Organic food is really the best thing for their bodies and it’s not easy to find,” said board vice president Alan Staples. “Especially if they’re getting chemo, the last thing you want to […]

Testing finds glyphosate in two popular oat milks

Two out of 13 popular brands of oat milk had detectable levels of the controversial herbicide glyphosate, according to a new report from Mamavation. Partnering with Environmental Health News, the environmental wellness blog and community had the oat milks tested by a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-certified lab for glyphosate and heavy metals. They found traces of […]

Farmers, conservationists ask court to strike down crop-damaging dicamba pesticide

  Toxic drift continues to harm millions of farmland acres, wild places, endangered species Four public-interest organizations representing farmers and conservationists recently filed arguments seeking to have a federal court again strike down the Environmental Protection Agency’s controversial approval of the drift-prone, volatile herbicide dicamba. The arguments, filed on April 11, are a continuation of an earlier lawsuit […]

First trials over deadly pesticide Paraquat scheduled for this year

More than 3,000 farmers have filed lawsuits against paraquat’s manufacturers, Chevron and Syngenta The herbicide paraquat was introduced in 1962 and promoted as an alternative to plowing soil, which began to fall into disfavor because of its degradation of soil. Chevron, paraquat’s manufacturer, claimed the weedkiller was necessary for no-till farming. Paraquat remains one of […]