Green Options

Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and stay up to date.

The European Union has traditionally been more cautious of genetically-modified (GM) foods than the rest of us. They require more scientific study than other food safety organizations before approving individual seeds and ban a significant number of GM seeds as well. This stands in stark contrast to U.S. policies that encourage GM crop growing through subsidies. According to an article in the Christian Science Monitor, 92% of Minnesota’s 2007 soybean crop and 86% of its corn crop came from GM seeds.

Now, mounting pressure from both Europe’s farmers and global food aid organizations have caused the high courts of various EU countries to reconsider.

Eleven ways that moms are leveraging social media to pursue the mom agenda.

It’s a self-evident truth that moms know best. Until recently, though, this knowledge was largely confined to the family unit. With the spread of social media such as blogs and social networks, the walls of motherly wisdom are coming down. Concurrently, the sphere of motherly influence is expanding, most notably to board rooms and chambers of congress. This isn’t to say that moms don’t already wield influence in these areas. Speaker Pelosi is, indeed, a grandmother. But of all the demographic groups gaining power through the social web, from techies and teens to musicians and green activists, we’d argue that none is more formidable than moms. Marketers, politicians, and CEOs take note: networked moms have become a force to be reckoned with, and they continue to gain strength.

Anyone who’s ever feared or respected their mothers (that means you) knows what we’re talking about. Indeed, when you step back and consider the makings of this phenomenon, it’s nothing short of awe inspiring. The technology of social media has extended the power and reach of the individual to a point where it’s possible for anyone to spark a groundswell of action and impact, fueled by network effects and viral distribution. It is the proverbial butterfly that flaps its wings and causes a hurricane on the other side of the planet. Only this butterfly is highly motivated with a tremendous vested interest in the health and wellbeing of the next generation. And they number in the tens of millions in the U.S. alone.

For the past several decades, Oprah has been the voice for so many American moms. From the serious to the mundane, she covers issues that matter to women and holds tremendous sway with her viewers. We’ve seen firsthand how companies are nearly capsized with demand when their product becomes one of Oprah’s favorite things. But this is a waning, one-way channel. It’s Media 1.0, where companies produce the infotainment and we consume it. By and large, if it wasn’t important to Oprah, it wasn’t important to her audience. Media 2.0, on the other hand, is about creation and participation. According to MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe, some 40% of moms in the U.S. are already on MySpace, “using the site for the same reason everyone else is: to socialize.” Social media is about initiating and joining two-way conversations that matter to the individual and finding others for whom the same topics or issues matter. What matters most to moms? Their children, of course.

Hats off to Derry Brownfield, a Missouri radio broadcaster who spoke truth to Monsanto’s power and, as a result, lost his access to the broadcast studio in a company he co-founded.

The Corporate Crime Reporter tells the story in great detail, but here’s the tale in a nutshell:

Thirty-five years ago, Brownfield and Clyde Lear established Learfield Communications, now one of the top college sports radio broadcasters in the U.S. Lear bought out Brownfield in 1985, but Brownfield continued to broadcast for the company from its studios, eventually hosting a daily show called The Common Sense Coalition. On that show, he recently started assailing Monsanto, the multinational king of genetically modified crops and a company known for going after farmers who knowingly or unknowingly grow Monsanto-patented crops.

For people who don’t regularly read Vanity Fair, one might think it’s not much more than a fashion magazine, but VF is known not only for high-fashion photo spreads, but for in-depth exposés as well.  This month, Vanity Fair is taking on agribusiness giant Monsanto in Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele’s article “Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear”.

We’ve written about Monsanto’s attempts to control both agribusiness and the public perception of agribusiness.  Shirley wrote about Monsanto’s attempts to keep dairies from labeling their own milk “rbGH-free” and  Beth wrote about Monsanto’s genetically-engineered sugar beets.  Barlett and Steele focus on Monsanto’s tactics of attacking farmers for alleged patent violations and their impact on rural communities, and their article is a must-read for those interested in where their food comes from.

More than 70 groups and individuals have asked Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland to kill an emergency rule that would restrict the use of labels saying “rbGH-free” on milk from cows not treated with Monsanto’s synthetic recombinant bovine-growth hormone (rbGH).

In a letter sent to Strickland today, the petitioners warned that, “If the emergency rule remains unchanged, it will negatively impact Ohioans’ ability to make an informed decision about the dairy products they buy. It interferes with farmers and dairies’ rights to free speech, and with consumer right-to-know. In this era of increased concern about what’s in our food and how it is produced, Ohio should be making more information available not less.”

(image courtesy Aine D on Flickr)

Did you know that nearly half the sugar we bake those heart-shaped cookies with comes not from sugar cane, but sugar beets? Additionally, by next year, much of that beet sugar could be from genetically-engineered beets? The new beet seed was created by Monsanto to be able to withstand direct application of the herbicide Roundup, which has the active ingredient glyphosate.

The Environmental Protection Agency has enabled Monsanto in releasing the new GE crop by increasing the allowable residue of the herbicide by FIVE THOUSAND percent. Beets, being a root vegetable, are especially susceptible to retaining chemical residue.