OCA has joined forces with our allies at Toxin Free USA and Beyond Pesticides to file a consumer protection lawsuit against Driscoll’s over its false “sustainable” and “eco friendly” labeling on strawberries and blueberries.

Despite the advertising imagery of lush, green farms, many of Driscoll’s operations grow berries in plastic containers within facilities entirely covered in plastic. To prepare the land for this type of growing system, soil is compacted and plastic is laid down on the newly leveled ground. Rows of plastic pots are laid on top of the plastic-lined ground, and the plants grow in a coconut husk substrate. Plastic hood infrastructure is built over the crops to shield them from extreme weather conditions.

Even in its more traditional outdoor growing fields, Driscoll’s berry plants are encased in plastic. Further, some of the company’s operations are, in fact, factories where plants are grown without soil or sunlight.

Read the full press release and see exactly what we’re demanding from Driscoll’s.

Then take sixty seconds to send Driscoll’s a message yourself.

As always, we are thankful for your continued support and activism; it’s what gives us the ability to work on lawsuits like this. We keep moving forward on many fronts to cut through the greenwashing and let the powerful companies know we’re not buying it.

Wishing you a happy end of summer and a delicious healthy organic berry season!

In solidarity,
OCA

Can you help support our work to hold Big Ag accountable?

Make a tax-deductible donation to Organic Consumers Association, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit

Make a tax-deductible donation to Regeneration International, our international sister organization

Have you considered recommending a grant to OCA through your donor-advised fund?

Most of us are aware that communities near industrial agriculture are living with real health risks every day, suffering the consequences of pesticide exposure from the ground they walk on, water they drink and air they breathe. Farmworkers and rural residents exposed to pesticides have higher rates of cancer and respiratory disease, and many children in these areas are facing developmental problems.



As our country’s farming communities struggle with poor health and poverty, a clear solution emerges: organic farming. Organic farming avoids that exposure altogether, and there’s a strong economic case as well: counties with the most organic farms have lower poverty rates and higher household incomes than the national average.

But federal support still hasn’t caught up. In 2018, the last year a full Farm Bill passed, organic received just $180 million of the $21 billion spent annually on farm programs,  hardly enough to show up on a pie chart. Farmers are feeling that neglect directly: payments they were promised sat delayed for nearly a year before finally going out, leaving many small farms in serious financial hardship. 



The Senate is writing this year’s Farm Bill right now, and in the Agriculture Committee Chairman’s own words, this is a “now or never” moment.



It’s time to provide our rural communities and organic farmers with the support they deserve.

Organic funding isn’t guaranteed. Two bills in Congress, the Opportunities in Organic Act and the (O DAIRY) Act, would fund certification, technical assistance, and organic dairy support, but only if lawmakers hear from us first.
Please take action now.

Tell the Senate to support organic in the Farm Bill now!

This October 16th, the grassroots are rising. Regeneration International’s 6th Annual People’s Food Summit is a free, 24-hour virtual journey around the globe, farmers, researchers, activists, and communities from every continent coming together to celebrate regenerative organic agriculture and its promise for a healthy future on this planet.

Created as a grassroots alternative to the UN Food Systems Summit, the People’s Food Summit puts community-led solutions front and center, restoring soil, water, biodiversity, and resilience one field, one farm, one network at a time.

This year’s lineup includes Dr. Vandana Shiva, on reclaiming our relationship with nature and the earth; Shelley Cabrera, a young Indigenous Quechua lawyer from Peru on the vital and often unrecognized role of women and ancestral knowledge in the world’s food systems; Jennifer Judith Chox Ixmatá, a young Indigenous Guatemalan woman defending her community’s food sovereignty through the milpa system and traditional maize culture; Sean Sherman, Oglala Lakota chef and founder of The Sioux Chef, on Indigenous food sovereignty and what the oldest food systems on this continent have to teach us all; Kaluki Paul Mutuku, a Kenyan climate advocate and digital storyteller exploring how youth-led narratives are reshaping Africa’s environmental and food systems future; and Allan Savory, whose lifelong work in Holistic Management has regenerated millions of acres worldwide. Plus dozens more voices from Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and beyond.

Learn more.

Subscribe to the Regeneration International Newsletter for more Food Summit News.

Audubon Press Room:

“WASHINGTON, D.C. — With populations of grassland birds continuing to decline and the nation’s cattle herd at its smallest size in more than 70 years, legislation introduced last week in the Senate would create a new U.S. Department of Agriculture program to support both agricultural producers and grassland restoration.  

The Rebuilding America’s National Cow Herd (RANCH) Act, introduced by Senators Mike Rounds (R-SD) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), would provide voluntary technical and financial assistance to producers who choose to convert marginally productive cropland into native grasses and other perennial forage for livestock.  

‘Voluntary, incentive-based conservation programs are vital for reversing the concerning drop in grassland birds and supporting our nation’s agricultural producers,’ said Marshall Johnson, Chief Conservation Officer at the National Audubon Society.”

By helping farmers and ranchers restore native grasslands on marginal cropland, this legislation creates lasting benefits for birds, strengthens rural economies, improves soil and water resources, and supports the long-term success of working lands.

Editor’s Note:

We’re sharing this because it’s a rare bipartisan effort to restore native grasslands, and the wildlife benefits are real. But OCA has some reservations. The bill does not include any mention of organic or regenerative grazing standards, so “managed grazing” isn’t guaranteed to mean the practices that rebuild soil health. It also emerged largely as a response to plans for cheap beef imports, meaning its main goal is rebuilding herd size to stabilize price. Grassland restoration and improved soil and water resources could follow, but only if the grazing is done well.



Another big concern is that without stronger standards, growing the cattle herd could add more cattle without guaranteeing the grazing practices that make it part of the climate solution. Converting cropland to perennial grass is a genuine improvement over row-cropping either way, but whether it delivers the full climate and soil benefits of regenerative grazing would depend on how the program is implemented.

We’re glad to see bipartisan attention on grassland restoration. We just want to make sure the bill lives up to that promise. We’ll keep you updated on how it develops. 

Zephyr Teachout argues that reorganizing food systems requires confronting the concentrated corporate power that controls grocery shelves, distribution networks, farm equipment, data, pricing, and access to markets. When companies such as Amazon, Walmart, and Instacart dominate food distributors and become private regulators, they decide which products reach consumers and which farmers survive. Drawing inspiration from the farmers’ movements of the 19th century, Zephyr explains how education, unlikely alliances, and democratic action can begin moving food and economic power back into local hands.

“We need to break up, in other words, not just Monsanto – although we need to break up Bayer-Monsanto, DuPont-Dow, Walmart, Amazon, Whole Foods, Costco, Instacart, and all of those – but we need to recognize that that also means breaking up Disney and Sinclair and restructuring society. Right now, while we still have the spark and the capacity to come together, to convene, and to join, to begin, we need to make those alliances now to totally rethink how we allow information, communication, energy, and food to be controlled at the local democratic level.” –Zephyr Teachout

Watch Zephyr Teachout’s main stage talk at Churchtown Dairy: Real Organic Podcast Episode #290

Paula Cocozza, The Guardian:

“When Robert Solomon’s working hours were cut during the pandemic – he did building management and tech support for a nonprofit organization – he got an extra job at a food cooperative, helping to stock the store. It was, he says, the most ordinary job, but that’s what made it special.

That job ended with the pandemic, but in 2022 he left the nonprofit and hunted for grocery positions. Now, at 71, he is assistant buyer in produce (i.e. fruit and vegetables) at an independent market in New York. ‘I love the opportunity to do physical, creative work with my body, hands and mind,’ he says. ‘I’m working harder than I have since my 30s, and I love it.

The work requires good attention,’ he says. By ‘attention’ he means his mind doesn’t wander too often. ‘One of the big attractions is that it’s a low-fantasy job. I spend most of my time working, not fantasizing about what a wonderful job I’m doing and how I’ll get famous for it next year.’”

“There are no guarantees on how long I will be able to work. But I think this is the best employment I’ve had. It’s an appreciation of good things.”

by Dan Falk, Nautilus:

“The pseudoscience of eugenics, founded on the mistaken notion that nature envisions some ‘right’ combination of genes, and that selective breeding can improve the human race, is making a comeback. While the heyday of eugenics was a century ago, the idea was never really forgotten.

In the 19th century, the modern science of biology was in its infancy, but took a leap forward with the work of pioneering researchers like Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. But other thinkers, like Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, took things further by supposing that, just as farmers breed animals to improve or weed out various traits, humans could be guided to make ‘better’ offspring.

When the Nazis came to power in the 1930s, they took eugenicist ideas and ran with them, justifying their hatred of certain groups—Jews, Roma, gay people, the disabled—as supposedly backed by science, anchored to the notion that some people were naturally superior to others. In this distorted way of thinking, violence against the unfit was justified, even noble.”

Despite a half century of science showing that the ideas behind eugenics have no basis in fact, it continues to surface in Washington and across political lines.

Joan Rose, The Conversation:

“The nationwide cyclospora outbreak is very likely a result of sewage contamination in the food supply, according to scientific researchers and public health officials. In many states, sewage water is treated – though not always in ways that remove or kill the oocysts – and then released into waterways and can be used to irrigate crops.

The five treatment plants whose processes included disinfection with chlorine were able to get rid of a high percentage – but not all – of the protozoa in their discharged wastewater. Some cysts and oocysts remained intact, with the potential to cause disease, even in water that had gone through the entire treatment process, as it is known that wastewater chlorination does not kill these protozoa.”

From that data, it seems reasonable to assume that at least some small proportion of cyclospora oocysts also survive sewage treatment processes.

Watch the Sludge Trailer: When a young woman discovers her community was built on land contaminated by a secretive program designed to make toxic waste disappear, she embarks on a five-year investigation to uncover one of the most consequential public health crimes in U.S. history.

OCA’s northwoods regenerative farm, The North Shore AgroEcology Center, is looking for WWOOFers (World Wide Organization of Organic Farms) volunteers through fall 2026. Located in the beautiful Baptism River Valley boreal forest of Finland, MN, 6 miles up from Lake Superior and Tettegouche State Park. We’re a working farm focused on cold-climate food systems, permaculture, and agro-ecological land stewardship. It is one of the most picturesque parts of our state for people who enjoy outdoor activities in their spare time.

Volunteers commit to helping out ~5 hours a day, five days a week, in exchange for housing and farm-fresh food from the garden and food stipend. Tasks range from caring for the fruit trees and perennial gardens to vegetable production, composting, and seed saving. Minimum stay is two weeks; longer stays welcome.

This is a great fit for curious, hands-on folks who want real farm experience and time in one of the wildest corners of the upper Midwest.

Learn more here.

Rowenna Hoskin, BBC Wales:

“Michael Phillips spent his childhood in the 1980s playing with friends at a lagoon, firing air guns at rusty barrels that released clouds of coloured powder – completely oblivious to the toxic chemicals within. Decades later, several of those friends and Phillips himself have developed rare cancers, which they believe may be linked to this.

Researcher and whistleblower Douglas Gowan tried to raise the alarm about 14 such sites – 12 of which were in Wales – but died before his warnings were heeded. ‘What he told me made my blood run cold,’ said Hollywood actor Michael Sheen, who spoke to Gowan just months before he died and has now continued his investigation in a new BBC iPlayer documentary.”

Gowan, a former farming consultant, alleged that chemical giant Monsanto had dumped “huge amounts of industrial chemicals all around Wales.”

Natural Ragweed Allergy Remedies Deliver Relief in as Little as 5 Minutes, MDs Say
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Mining Executives Bought Stock in Their Own Firm Days Before Trump Shrank Bears Ears
Days before Trump cut Bears Ears National Monument by 90%, the CEO of a uranium mining company made the largest insider stock purchase in the company’s history. Congress wants to know why.

New Evidence Challenges What Experts Said About Working From Home
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‘Not What We Want!’ Farmer Torches Trump Over ‘Raw Deal’ That Puts ‘American Farmers Last’
John Boyd Jr., head of the National Black Farmers Association, isn’t holding back on Trump’s plan to import foreign beef. He says it helps meatpackers while 77 farmers lose their operations every single day.

Lettuce and the Big Food Nightmare
A cyclospora outbreak has now touched 49 states, traced back to contaminated fresh produce. This piece looks at how a consolidated, industrial food system let one pathogen slip through and spread across the country.

The Most Impactful Food Policy Stories of 2026
Civil Eats has tracked over 100 major food policy shifts this year. This roundup pulls together the ones that mattered most, worth bookmarking if you want the bigger picture.

Gen Z’s New Anti-Tech Rebellion: Making Eye Contact and Listening to Each Other
A growing number of Gen Zers are ditching their phones on purpose. Groups like the Luddite Club are meeting up just to talk, read, and actually be present with each other.

Why Crops Are Becoming Less Nutritious
Rising CO2 levels are quietly changing what’s in our food. Nutrient content in fruits and vegetables has dropped by as much as 38% since 1950, and researchers don’t expect that trend to reverse.

World Must Look to the Past To Prepare for Likely Unprecedented El Niño
Forecasters are calling the coming El Niño possibly the strongest ever measured. Brazil, Peru, and India are already bracing for it, and this piece looks at what past El Niños can teach us now.

Scientists Left This Farm Field Alone. Thousands of Orchids Appeared
Sometimes the best restoration plan is no plan at all. Researchers let a farm field sit untouched for over a decade, and it turned into a wildflower meadow full of rare orchids, no seed mix required.

Massive Study Links The Time You Eat Breakfast to How Long You’ll Live
A study of over 31,000 adults found a link between when you eat your first and last meal and how long you live. It doesn’t prove cause and effect, but it’s worth a second look at your own eating window.

7 Japanese Leg Exercises That Double Leg Strength In Just 5 Minutes A Day
Inspired by movement traditions from Okinawa, one of the world’s longest-living populations, these quick daily exercises are built to keep your legs strong well into old age.

Trump Administration To Rescind Rule Protecting Old-Growth Forests
A 25-year-old rule that’s kept roads out of untouched national forests is on its way out. That could open up 45 million acres to logging, drilling, and road construction.

U.S. Army Corps Approves a Pipeline Project It Knows Harms Indigenous Lands
The Army Corps fast-tracked approval for a new Line 5 pipeline tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac, over objections from tribal nations who say it threatens waterways central to their way of life.

9 Zucchini Dessert Recipes
If your garden has buried you in zucchini this year, here’s a reason to put down the fritter pan. Nine dessert ideas that put all that squash to sweeter use.

Why Farmworkers Can No Longer Afford To Live Where They Work
As farmland gets swallowed up by development, the people who actually grow our food are being priced out of the towns they work in. One Connecticut farmer breaks down just how steep that squeeze has gotten.

6 Rules for Organizing a Grassroots Regeneration Revolution
Ronnie Cummins shares hard-won lessons on grassroots organizing, starting with a simple idea: people respond to hope, not fear, no matter how serious the problem in front of them.