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Moderator’s Note: We are three days away from the global 2014 March Against Monsanto on May 24. Events and protests are planned in hundreds of cities across more than fifty countries. It will be another important day for political organizing, testimonials, educational workshops and classes, films, lectures, and much more. There will certainly be plenty of direct action protests. This year we have much to celebrate in the struggle for food democracy. There are multiple clear signs that the no-GMO movement is finally turning the tide against Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer CropScience, Dow Agriscience, and the rest of so-called Gene Giants. These include the successful passage of the Vermont labeling law last month; this week’s overwhelming voter support for the Jackson County, Oregon ban on transgenic crops; the ban on transgenic corn in Mexico in effect since October 2013 and upheld two months ago; another Mexican ruling against Monsanto, this one involving the planting of transgenic soybean...

GMO Agricultural ‘Coexistence’ Rule COEXISTENCE ≠ GMO CONTAMINATION PREVENTION Comment deadline:  March 4, 2014 Action Needed! Devon G. Peña | Shoreline, WA | February 9, 2014 Obama’s Agriculture Department wants to act on a specific set of implicit anti-science assumptions that undergird a coexistence policy for GMO and nonGMO farmers. This involves the genetic science equivalent of climate change denial: It requires we ignore the threats and damages posed by the indisputable facts of introgression, horizontal gene transfer, resistance of targeted organisms, and other effects meticulously documented by an emergent predictive ecology of transgenic crops and their impacts on native land race heirloom varieties and their wild relatives. The USDA is asking for public comments on a proposed policy for agricultural “coexistence”. This can be read as an attempt to impose a policy of détente between GMO and non-GMO farmers and handlers. How will this relationship of coexistence and ...