Newsbites: Schwarzenegger Vetoes Bill that Would Have Given California Farm Workers Overtime Pay; Herbicide Resistant Superweeds are on Their Way to a Farm Near You–Soon; Open Season at Last in Part of the Gulf; Endangered British Columbia Sockeye Get Certified as Sustainable–How Can That Be?

Posted by Barry on August 1, 2010

  Jim Crow is Alive and Well in California SB 1121 was hardly a radical-sounding piece of legislation. Among other things, it would have given California’s 700,000 farm workers the right to take one day off out of every seven. Hourly paid agricultural employees would have received overtime pay after eight hours per day or […]

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Florida Farm Workers Left Out in the Cold

Posted by Barry on January 13, 2010

Photograph by Scott Robertson courtesey of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers   Following this week’s prolonged cold snap in Florida, news reports bemoaned the prospect of higher prices for orange juice and crops such as strawberries, citrus, and tomatoes. The state’s governor (and United States Senate hopeful) Charlie Christ promptly issued an executive order to […]

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Death on a Dairy Farm: The Human Cost of Cheap Milk

Posted by Barry on December 31, 2009

Here in Vermont, there has been no shortage of heart-wrenching evidence that this country’s dairy farmers face a financial crisis of epic proportions. Last August, I attended an auction where a farm that had been in the same family for 144 years—six generations—was sold off during the course of a single day, tractor by tractor […]

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