The poultry industry, just one small part of our factory farm nation, has a massive waste problem. Today, national consumer group Food & Water Watch criticized the plans of poultry processing giant Perdue Agribusiness and Fibrowatt LLC to build a power plant on Maryland’s Eastern Shore that generates electricity from chicken manure.

Press Release: With children wearing t-shirts reading “Don’t Frack My School,” families from the city of Erie were joined by the national consumer advocacy organization Food & Water Watch as they delivered over 21,000 petitions to Encana President Jeff Wojahn urging him to halt plans to frack a well located next to Red Hawk Elementary School in Erie, Colo. The petitions were collected by the national consumer advocacy organization Food & Water Watch in support of grassroots, parent-powered organization Erie Rising, which is fighting to stop Encana from fracking in their community. After delivering the petitions to Encana, members of Erie Rising and Food & Water Watch delivered to Governor Hickenlooper copies of the petitions along with a personal invitation to attend their June 2 rally to stop fracking in and near Erie’s backyards and schoolyards.

“Today, the state of Maryland became the first state in the nation to ban arsenical drugs in chicken production and took a significant step in addressing one of many issues associated with industrial agriculture. “It is a testament to the power of grassroots organizing that this arsenic prohibition bill passed at all given the formidable opponents who fought for three years against removing the carcinogen from our food. “Governor O’Malley’s cozy relationship with the poultry industry hasn’t helped, either. The poultry industry continues to push agricultural policy in Annapolis that pads their profits at the expense of Marylanders and the Chesapeake Bay—even though Maryland’s entire agricultural sector contributes only .35 % of the state’s GDP. We will continue to fight the industry’s attempts to block environmental regulations and reforms that would benefit the state’s farmers.”

Press Statement: “T. Boone Pickens’s recent divestment from Chesapeake Energy shows that natural gas is a house of cards, and that even one of its biggest cheerleaders has grown wise to this fact."

Shale gas, shale oil and coal bed methane have arrived in Europe under the banner of energy security, and more worryingly, environmental protection. However, the reality is that shale gas and the process of hydraulic fracturing (or ‘fracking’) represent a dangerous experiment on both the health of European citizens and the environment, while the economic viability is debateable.

The poultry industry continues to influence lawmakers to prioritize corporate interests over public health, sound food policy and environmental concerns. Citizens in Maryland and in other states are being asked to bail the industry out of its massive waste problem by financing poultry litter incinerators.

Alabama isn’t called Alabama the Beautiful without reason. Anyone who has visited the state can attest to that. Then again, I may be partial to its splendor, seeing as how I am from Alabama and grew up across the street from endless fields of farmland, spending my childhood days climbing tall trees in the woods behind our house. Alabama has a rich and diverse geography. Open spaces are laden in valleys and rivers that roll through sloping hills. The Appalachian Valley characterizes several portions of the state, whereas the southern region consists of coastal plains, the Mobile Bay and the Gulf of Mexico’s sunny beachside.

By Miranda Carter Victory in Maryland, Arsenic is Banned from Chicken From left to right: Jorge Aguilar, Food & Water Watch; Kathy Phillips, Assateague Coastkeeper; Drew Koslow, Choptank Riverkeeper; Miranda Carter, Food & Water Watch Yesterday, Maryland became the first state in the nation to ban the use of arsenic in chicken production!


The path to a green economy is dotted with many mirages. Eco-compensation is one of them. World Resources Institute (WRI) describes eco-compensation as if it’s a just reward to companies for providing sustainable solutions to environmental problems, but it really just encourages business as usual for big polluters. It doesn’t solve the problem of poor water quality. In fact, it allows companies to profit while they continue to compromise our resources. It’s market-based pollution trading. WRI uses a water quality trading market as an example of a program that provides a cost-effective solution for agricultural contamination. But the program relies on the good actors to give their earned credits to bad actors, who generally keep on polluting.

On July, 28 2012 Brother Dave Andrews, Senior Representative for Food & Water Watch and a member of Nourishing the Planet’s advisory group, will be honored with the prestigious Distinguished Service to Rural Life Award for his commitment to enhancing the life of rural people. The award is the highest honor given by the Rural Sociology Society, a professional social science association founded in 1937 with the intent of improving the quality of rural life, communities, and the environment.

It sounds like a story ripped from the pages of a dystopian novel, but the horrors that the residents of Toms River (formerly called Dover Township), New Jersey have experienced thanks to their private water providers are all too real.

If you live in the United States, you’re never far from a land-grant university. There are more than 100 of these institutions, which go by names like Texas A&M, Iowa State University and the University of California. This system of schools was initiated in 1862 with lofty goals in mind—elevating agriculture to the realm of science, offering the common citizen access to higher education, and pursuing research that helps farmers improve their fields and fatten their hens. The program was a major success, providing invaluable research that was freely shared with farmers, which revolutionized American agriculture.