Category Archives: Dr. Bronners

From GMOs To Soda Taxes, Here’s What the Election Means For Your Fridge

by LucaDavison Posted on November 5, 2014

Mother Jones

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States and localities nationwide voted yesterday on a host of hot-button food and agriculture issues, from GMO labeling to soda taxes to food stamps. The outcomes of these contests have major implications for policy—and your dinner plate. Here’s a roundup of how they shook out:

Colorado Proposition 105: This statewide ballot initiative pushed for the labeling of genetically modified foods, requiring most GM foods to bear a label reading, “produced with genetic engineering.” Burrito chain Chipotle and Whole Foods came out in support of the measure, while agribusiness giants Monsanto, PepsiCo and Kraft came out against it. (Unsurprisingly, 105’s opponents raised more than $12 million—many times what supporters brought in.) Outcome: Colorado voters resoundingly rejected Prop 105, with nearly 70% of voters voting no.

Oregon Measure 92: This ballot measure was nearly identical to Colorado’s, requiring foods with GMO ingredients to be labeled. Like in Colorado, Big Ag mobilized big-time against Measure 92, raising more than $16 million. But 92’s supporters—including Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps—raised an impressive $8 million. Outcome: Undecided

San Francisco Measure E and Berkeley Measure D: These two Bay Area cities both considered levying taxes on sugary beverages. San Francisco’s Measure E proposed a two-cent per ounce tax, while Berkeley’s Measure D proposed one-cent per ounce. Both races were considered something of a last stand for the soda tax—if it couldn’t pass in these two bastions of liberalism and healthy living, it was essentially doomed everywhere else. No surprise, then, that Big Soda spent more than $7 million in San Francisco and over $1.7 million in Berkeley (population: 117,000) to defeat the measures. Outcome: Failing to gain the necessary two-thirds supermajority, the San Francisco soda tax failed. Berkeley’s is undecided.

Maui County, Hawaii, GMO Moratorium Bill: Hawaii’s Maui County—which includes the islands of Maui, Lanai and Molokai—considered one of the strongest anti-GMO bills ever: a complete moratorium on the cultivation of genetically engineered crops until studies conclusively prove they are safe. Agriculture is big business on Maui: the island is a major producer of sugarcane, coffee, and pineapple, among other things. Monsanto is among the companies operating farms in Maui County, and this bill would’ve effectively shut it down. (Under the law, farmers knowingly cultivating GMOs would get hit with a $50,000 per day fine.) Opponents raised nearly $8 million against the measure, making it the most expensive campaign in state history. Outcome: Undecided

Florida Second Congressional District: Rep. Steve Southerland, a tea party darling, faced Democrat Gwen Graham in his attempt to get re-elected in this Florida Panhandle district. Last year, Southerland attempted to pass legislation that would’ve cut $39 billion in food stamp funding, forcing millions out of the program. (He called the cuts “the defining moral issue of our time.”) Widely considered the most sweeping cuts in decades, they were not passed, and made Southerland an extremely vulnerable incumbent. Outcome: In a rare House flip for Democrats, Rep. Southerland was defeated by Democrat Gwen Graham.

Kansas Senate: Pat Roberts, the three-term Republican Senator from Kansas, faced independent challenger Greg Orman in a surprisingly tight race for this deep-red state. The race was considered a key indicator of the GOP’s Senate hopes, and important for agriculture too: Roberts had said that in the event of a Republican majority, he would be Senate Agriculture Committee Chair—given that he won his own contest, of course. Roberts, once considered a “savior” of food stamp programs, attempted to cut $36 billion from the program last year, and would certainly advocate for similar policy as chairman. Outcome: Roberts won re-election, and the GOP won the Senate majority. Look for Chairman Roberts in 2015.

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From GMOs To Soda Taxes, Here’s What the Election Means For Your Fridge

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The Midwest’s Vast Farms Are Losing a Ton of Money This Year

by ErwinHanson Posted on October 22, 2014

Mother Jones

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Think you have it tough at work? Consider the plight of the Midwest’s corn and soybean farmers. They churn out the basic raw materials of our food system: the stuff that gets turned into animal feed, sweetener, cooking fat, and even a substantial amount of our car fuel. What do they get for their trouble? According to a stunning analysis (PDF) by Iowa State ag economist Chad Hart, crop prices have fallen so low (a bumper crop has driven down corn prices to their lowest level since 2006), and input costs (think seeds, fertilizers, pesticides) have gotten so high, that they’re losing $225 per acre of corn and $100 per acre of soybeans. So if you’re an Iowa farmer with a 2,000-acre farm, and you planted it half and half in these two dominant crops, you stand to lose $325,000 on this year’s harvest.

Over on Big Picture Agriculture—the excellent blog that alerted me to Hart’s assessment—Kay McDonald wonders: “Is organic corn the way to go next year?” She points out organic corn receives a large premium in the market, and key input costs—seeds, fertilizers, and insecticides—are much lower, making the economics better.

Another possibility is one I’ve been banging on about for years: why not take some of the Midwest’s vast stock of farmland—say, 10 percent?—and devote it to vegetable and fruit production? And take another slice of it and bring it back to perennial grass for pasture-based beef and pork production? Both vegetables and pastured meat deliver much more income pre acre than commodity corn and soybeans, once the systems are up and running and the infrastructure in place. And considering how much of our produce comes from drought-stricken California, that would likely be a wise move from a food security standpoint.

Alas, none of this is likely to happen, at least not anytime soon. That’s because crop subsidies, enshrined by the farm bill signed in February, will likely wipe out much of the huge gap between farmers’ costs and what the market gives them. According to Bloomberg, taxpayers are set to pay “billions of dollars more to subsidize farmers than anticipated just months ago,” before crop prices plunged.

I don’t begrudge federal support for farming. As I argued in a post last year, large-scale commodity farming is a vicious business—farmers are caught in a vice between a small handful of buyers (Archers Daniels Midland, Cargill, Bunge) that are always looking to drive crop prices down, and a small handful of input suppliers (Monsanto, DuPont Pioneer, Syngenta, etc) always looking to push the price of seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides up. It’s no wonder, as Iowa State’s Hart has shown, that the “long run profitability” of such farming is “zero.”

But as it’s structured now, the subsidy system keeps farmers chugging along on the corn-soy treadmill. Meanwhile, transitioning to organic ag and diversifying crops to include vegetables and pastured meat would also require much more hands-on labor and a new set of skills for Midwestern farmers, who have been operating in a corn-soy-chemical system for decades. It would also require the rebuilding of infrastructure—small-scale slaughterhouses, canneries, cold storage, etc.—that were dismantled as corn and soy came to dominance. Supporting such a transition, and not propping up an unhealthy food system suffused with cheap corn and soy, seems like a good use of the billions of federal dollars that are about to be spent.

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The Midwest’s Vast Farms Are Losing a Ton of Money This Year

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Is 2014 the "Tipping Point" for the GMO Labeling Movement?

by DanielJoseph Posted on September 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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Is this the year that voters will finally insist on knowing which supermarket foods contain genetically modified organisms? Activists in Oregon say the momentum is on their side for a GMO labeling initiative on the November ballot. “The electorate in Oregon has a greater awareness of this issue than in other states,” says Sandeep Kaushik, a spokesman for Yes On 92, as the initiative is known. “We are approaching a tipping point.”

Read “How Dr. Bronner’s Turned Activism Into Good Clean Fun”

In 2002, Oregon became first state to try and pass a GMO labeling initiative—Measure 27 lost by a margin of more than 2 to 1. But the more recent initiatives in California and Washington suffered far narrower defeats, despite a barrage of attack ads bankrolled by biotech, grocery, and ag conglomerates. Washington’s I-522, the most expensive ballot measure in state history, lost by barely 1 percent—a mere 19,000 votes.

Oregon may now be poised to finish what it started: A poll released in July by Oregon Public Broadcasting put support for GMO labeling at a whopping 77 percent. Even if it wins, Oregon probably won’t be the first state to require disclosure. A labeling bill approved in April by the Vermont Legislature takes effect in 2016, assuming it doesn’t get overturned by a lawsuit. Maine and Connecticut have also passed GMO labeling laws, though they’re contingent upon further regional support. Such laws are common outside the United States, and this year alone, according to Slate, 25 states have proposed 67 pieces of legislation related to GMO labeling. But the Oregon prop (and possibly a similar one in Colorado) would be the first directly enacted by voters—a major PR victory for the movement against GMO foods.

Despite the unpopularity of GMOs with consumers, the debate over their health and environmental impacts is far from settled. While the commercialization of GMOs has triggered few health complaints, long-term studies on the chronic health effects of GMOs have been sparse. Pest- and herbicide-resistant GMO crops have boosted yields around the world, benefiting farmers and the poor, but they have also spawned chemical resistant “superbugs” and “superweeds.”

The labeling campaigns are designed to bypass the thorny scientific debate by reframing the issue around the consumer’s “right to know.” This idea polls extremely well with voters, but not so well that it can’t be overcome by an avalanche of spending on political ads. For instance, 66 percent of Washington voters supported I-522 in the summer of 2013, yet some $22 million in spending against the measure whittled support down to 49 percent by Election Day. A similar phenomenon is under way in Oregon, where a poll released by a Portland TV station last week showed that voter support for the labeling measure has fallen to 53 percent, with 16 percent undecided.

Advocates for Oregon’s I-92 remain optimistic, however. While rural areas of Washington and California are strongly opposed to labeling, that’s less the case so far in Oregon, where GMO contamination incidents have angered farmers and two rural counties have banned cultivation of GM crops. The Oregon measure is also well timed: Young voters, who tend to support labeling, didn’t turn out to vote last year in Washington, but Oregonians will cast ballots this year on a pot legalization initiative, which is seen as a potential magnet for the non-AARP crowd. Anti-GMO activists, for the first time, are also funding a registration drive to target young voters.

For now, at least, I-92’s backers have raised more money than its opponents, but nobody expects that advantage to last. In Washington, the anti-GMO crowd was outspent 3 to 1, and the chasm would have been even wider were it not for the heavy involvement of a few organics companies, notably Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, which is shoveling money at the Oregon effort.

Unlike its opponents in Big Food and Ag, Dr. Bronner’s hasn’t entered the fight to retain its own bottom line, at least not directly—GMOs don’t play much of a role in the soap business. Yet the company has become a fascinating model for how genuine corporate activism can increase sales and create a fiercely loyal customer base, as I noted last year in a profile of David Bronner, the family business’ idealistic, third-generation CEO. About half of Dr. Bronner’s profits go towards activism. “If we are not maxed out and pushing our organization to the limit,” he asked me at the time, “then what are we doing?”

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Is 2014 the "Tipping Point" for the GMO Labeling Movement?

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Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps Pure-Castile Soap, 18-in-1 Hemp Peppermint, 32 Ounce Bottle

by Myrna Posted on August 6, 2014

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Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps Pure-Castile Soap, 18-in-1 Hemp Lavender, 32-Ounce

by Myrna Posted on August 2, 2014

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Dr. Bronners – Magic Pure-Castile Soap Organic Citrus Orange – 32 oz.

by Myrna Posted on August 1, 2014

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