http://nmfermentationfest.com/program/

Sat. June 24 at the Hubbell House
6029 Isleta Blvd SW, Albuquerque
BACK-TO-BACK EDUCATION ALL DAY
OPEN TO ALL GENERAL ADMISSION TICKET HOLDERS

As you probably know, Milkweed attracts Monarch butterflies.  I learned from a Silver City friend that some Home Depot stores are selling Milkweed plants treated with a systemic neonicotinoid that can kill the Monarch larva.  If you see a neonic label on a Milkweed plant from a New Mexico Home Depot or any big box store, please let us know.

Here is the letter my friend forwarded from the past president of a garden club in New Orleans detailing her discovery:

I purchased a Milkweed plant from Home Depot near my home and it wasn’t until I got home that I noticed the little information stick hidden behind the identification information that the plant had been treated with systemic Neonicotinoids.  The container boasted how desirable the plant is for birds and butterflies.  Yesterday I went to a different Home Depot and they had just put out an entire rolling cart of these plants, maybe about 100, all poisoned.  I contacted the store manager and told him that it is the same as giving poison candy to kids on Halloween. This is THE host plant for the Monarch.  My club, Shady Oaks and our junior club, Little Shadows have worked so hard to establish a Monarch Waystation and to educate people on the decline of the Monarch.  I hate to think of the millions of poison Milkweed being distributed nationwide by Home Depot.

The container says distributed by Home Depot, 2455 Paces Ferry Rd N. W., Atlanta , Georgia.

I contacted the LSU Ag Agent for New Orleans, Dr Joe Willis.  He said the Neonicotinoids will dilute as the plants grow but that only a very small amount will kill the larva of the Monarch.  He is contacting the Master Gardeners of the area.  I contacted the newsletters of the Jefferson Parish Council of Garden Clubs and the Federated Council of New Orleans Garden Clubs to ask that they send a notice to our local members.  I contacted a local GOA club and the president said she would inform her members. I contacted our LGCF President and our Environmental School Chairman with the information.

We need a notice to Home Depot from a national source.  I contacted the Monarch Watch organization ,www.MonarchWatch.org/ws at the University of Kansas (1200 Sunnyside Avenue, Lawrence, KS 66045) .  The Little Shadows Junior Garden Club registered our Monarch Waystation with them.

. . . .

Mary Ellen Miller

Shady Oaks Garden Club , LGCF District II

Moderator Little Shadows Junior Garden Club

Immediate Past President Federated Council of New Orleans Garden Clubs Inc.

We assembled to hear the opinions of the five judges who presided over the International Monsanto Tribunal. After taking six months to review the testimony of 28 witnesses who testified during the two-day citizens’ tribunal held in The Hague last October, the judges were ready to report on their 53-page Advisory Opinion.

The upshot of the judges’ opinion? Monsanto has engaged in practices that have violated the basic human right to a healthy environment, the right to food, the right to health, and the right of scientists to freely conduct indispensable research.

Links and more here:
https://action.organicconsumers.org/content_item/oca-email?email_blast_KEY=1369939

I checked the Monsanto website and didn’t see anything on the homepage about the Tribunal, but did a search there and found this open letter:  http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/pages/monsanto-tribunal-hague-open-letter.asp

What I did see on the homepage is Monsanto’s all-out effort to portray itself as sustainable.  And when I googled “California Roundup,” I found a list here of Monsanto’s responses to California’s labeling Roundup as toxic:  http://www.monsanto.com/pages/results.aspx?k=California%20Roundup

See what you think.

https://www.change.org/p/tell-trump-to-actonclimate/u/20057015?utm_source=petition_update&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=featured_news&tk=M7uuzjtTiwsNuen1YEyzWf6bmZTO7xWHkcU4_kXmCTo

From our president wearing her newly designed summer cap to seed starts, winter greens and garlic, a visitor wearing his mini solar fan and diggers taking a break, we’re enjoying the mild spring.  Note the bluebird house, our new method of mounding potatoes, and our water master pointing out where she stepped in a gopher hole.

Loss of seed diversity parallels loss of pollinators.  You can watch this important film online.

In the last century, 94 percent of the world’s vegetable seed varieties have disappeared.

“SEED: The Untold Story” documents the miracle of seeds and our 12,000-year-old food legacy—including the history of how corporations like Monsanto have stolen and corrupted the very source of life.

http://www.seedthemovie.com/trailer

Congress Must Investigate Collusion Between Monsanto and the EPA, Now

“I have cancer, and I don’t want these serious issues in HED [EPA’s Health Effects Division] to go unaddressed before I go to my grave. I have done my duty.”

It’s been four years since Marion Copley, a 30-year EPA toxicologist, wrote those words to her then-colleague, Jess Rowland, accusing him of conniving with Monsanto to bury the agency’s own hard scientific evidence that it is “essentially certain” that glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller, causes cancer.

Copley has since died. But her letter suggesting that EPA officials colluded with Monsanto to hide the truth about Monsanto’s flagship weedkiller has been given new life.

Thanks to the persistence of hundreds of plaintiffs in lawsuits alleging that they (or their deceased family members) were diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma after being exposed to Roundup, newly discovered internal emails and other documents are being made public. And they paint an increasingly troubling and sinister picture of corruption.

The Organic Consumers Association is calling on Congress to immediately and fully investigate these and any other revelations that may come to light.

Full article here:  https://www.organicconsumers.org/essays/congress-must-investigate-collusion-between-monsanto-and-epa-now

By Damian Carrington, Guardian UK 07 March 17
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/42349-un-experts-denounce-myth-pesticides-are-necessary-to-feed-the-world

We need to be on the watch. The national organic food certification program is on the list of regulations to remove. Here’s what the program does:
“Operated by the US Department of Agriculture, the NOP was established by the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 to set uniform national standards for foods and agricultural products labeled “USDA Organic,” replacing the patchwork of state-level standards that had held sway for decades previously.”

Here’s the article dated Feb. 9, 2017:

“Dark Forces” Are Coming for Your Organic Food

A link to this article appears on the United Farm Workers’ website.  Although the ruling is tentative pending Monsanto’s appeal, you might print out this article, take it to Home Depot, and ask the manager to post it on the Roundup shelves.  Report back what response you get.

 If you want to donate to UFW or learn about their actions, go to http://ufw.org/

(Contributions to UFW are not tax-deductible.)

Court Rules Against Monsanto, Allows California To Put Cancer Warning On Roundup

January 27, 2017 3:27 PM

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) – California can require Monsanto to label its popular weed-killer Roundup as a possible cancer threat despite an insistence from the chemical giant that it poses no risk to people, a judge tentatively ruled Friday.

California would be the first state to order such labeling if it carries out the proposal.

Monsanto had sued the nation’s leading agricultural state, saying California officials illegally based their decision for carrying the warnings on an international health organization based in France.

Monsanto attorney Trenton Norris argued in court Friday that the labels would have immediate financial consequences for the company. He said many consumers would see the labels and stop buying Roundup.

“It will absolutely be used in ways that will harm Monsanto,” he said.

After the hearing, the firm said in a statement that it will challenge the tentative ruling.

Critics take issue with Roundup’s main ingredient, glyphosate, which has no color or smell. Monsanto introduced it in 1974 as an effective way of killing weeds while leaving crops and plants intact.

It’s sold in more than 160 countries, and farmers in California use it on 250 types of crops.

The chemical is not restricted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which says it has “low toxicity” and recommends people avoid entering a field for 12 hours after it has been applied.

But the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a Lyon, France-based branch of the U.N. World Health Organization, classified the chemical as a “probable human carcinogen.”

Shortly afterward, the most populated U.S. state took its first step in 2015 to require the warning labels.

St. Louis-based Monsanto contends that California is delegating its authority to an unelected foreign body with no accountability to U.S. or state officials in violation of the California Constitution.

Attorneys for California consider the International Agency for Research on Cancer the “gold standard” for identifying carcinogens, and they rely on its findings along with several states, the federal government and other countries, court papers say.

Fresno County Superior Court Judge Kristi Kapetan still must issue a formal decision, which she said would come soon.

California regulators are waiting for the formal ruling before moving forward with the warnings, said Sam Delson, a spokesman for the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.

Once a chemical is added to a list of probable carcinogens, the manufacturer has a year before it must attach the label, he said.

Teri McCall believes a warning would have saved her husband, Jack, who toted a backpack of Roundup for more than 30 years to spray weeds on their 20-acre avocado and apple farm. He died of cancer in late 2015.

“I just don’t think my husband would have taken that risk if he had known,” said Teri McCall, one of dozens nationwide who are suing Monsanto, claiming the chemical gave them or a loved one cancer.

But farmer Paul Betancourt, who has been using Roundup for more than three decades on his almond and cotton crops, says he does not know anyone who has gotten sick from it.

“You’ve got to treat it with a level of respect, like anything else,” he said. “Gasoline will cause cancer if you bathe in the stuff.”

http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2017/01/27/court-rules-against-monsanto-allows-california-to-put-cancer-warning-on-roundup/

Approved by Valencia County Commission and sponsored by Valencia Soil and Water Conservation District

Everyone is welcome, all ages encouraged!  Join for one or both discussions.

Meetings (in English and Spanish) in El Cerro and Meadow Lake Community Centers beginning third week of January 2017 and continuing through the end of the first week of February.  Meal Provided/Comida Incluida!

Copy this link to your browser for details:

https://files.acrobat.com/a/preview/83e5eaca-058e-4c30-980e-256b8c69071

Contact Lindsey Hamilton at EVUrbanGardens@gmail.com or call her at (406)599-8121.

Find East Valencia Urban Gardens Program on Facebook here:  https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=East%20Valencia%20Urban%20Gardens%20Program

and learn how to grow garlic for your family.

One of the books soon to be in our Little Free Library–in English and Spanish and with the recipe!

We just installed a Little Free Library at Valencia Community Gardens on Silva Road in Tomé. Now we need to let the neighborhood know. We have mostly gardening books and books on food so far, but we’re hoping to increase our inventory of children’s books. It would be especially nice to have some books by Rudolfo Anaya and Nicolas Otero, in particular How Chile Came to New Mexico and How Hollyhocks Came to New Mexico. Thanks to Julianne (Jules) Caldarera for all her help.  To learn more about free libraries, go here:  https://littlefreelibrary.org/

Myron Ebell’s also a climate denier.  Talk about the link between agriculture and climate change.

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/11/trump-epa-pesticides