By Hardly Kephart:

“Sow native plants. The Xerces Society has a list of guidelines that make it easy.

Tear out your lawns. Many species of solitary bees require access to bare ground and cover for nesting, so a wall-to-wall green carpet prevents that. Wild mason bees love to nest in hollow tubes, and are encouraged by dried canes, such as raspberry, elderberry and snowberry.

View invasive plants as your mortal enemies and smite them with your righteous wrath. Flora such as: Himalayan blackberry, Scotch broom, Japanese knotweed, English ivy, pokeweed, gorse, tree of heaven…and many others. Native bees need native plants.

Avoid synthetic pesticides, fungicides and herbicides, especially those containing glyphosates (Roundup) and neonicotinoids. Neonics will appear on the label as acetamiprid, clothianidin, dinotefuran, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam.”

Read why you should pay careful attention to the instructions when using any “organic” chemicals and more

TAKE ACTION: Tell Your State Legislators to Ban Neonic Seed Treatments!

NEW STUDY: Neonicotinoids Found to Drive Butterfly Declines More Than Any Other Environmental Variable

Ryan Hanrahan reports for Farm Policy News:

“The Wall Street Journal’s Patrick Thomas reported that ‘Roundup’s time may be up. Pharmaceutical and agriculture conglomerate Bayer said it could stop producing the world’s most popular weedkiller, unless it gets court protection against lawsuits blaming the herbicide for causing cancer.

Roundup has generated tens of billions of dollars in sales over time for Bayer and Monsanto, the biotech seed giant and developer of Roundup that Bayer acquired in 2018,’ Thomas reported. ‘Bayer currently produces about 40% of the world’s glyphosate, which farmers spray across fields to tame crop-threatening weeds. But over the past decade, the herbicide has also brought Bayer a wave of litigation, pressuring its share price and costing about $10 billion in payouts to plaintiffs,’ Thomas reported. ‘In early March, Bayer told farmers, suppliers and retailers that it may stop selling Roundup, which would leave U.S. farmers reliant on imported glyphosate from China.’

‘We’re pretty much reaching the end of the road,’ Bayer Chief Executive Bill Anderson said in an interview,” according to Thomas’ reporting. ‘We’re talking months, not years.’”


Read more

Tega Egwabor writes for Rolling Out:

“Daily usage of a popular over-the-counter medication may compromise immune function while offering temporary pain relief, recent findings indicate.

Neutrophils, the most abundant white blood cells in circulation, form the first line of defense against bacterial infections. These cells respond quickly to invading microorganisms, traveling to infection sites where they engulf and destroy pathogens. This process, called phagocytosis, requires energy and coordinated cellular signals to operate effectively.

Common pain medications containing acetaminophen interfere with neutrophil function by disrupting the oxidative burst needed to kill ingested bacteria. Research indicates neutrophils exposed to therapeutic levels of acetaminophen show reduced ability to eliminate pathogens, with effectiveness decreasing by 22-38% depending on dosage. This impairment occurs even at recommended doses, with effects lasting up to 24 hours after taking the medication.”

Learn more about the relationship between common pain medications and immune function

Stephen Burgen, The Guardian:

“All schools in Spain will be legally obliged to serve fruit and vegetables as part of their lunches and fish at least once a week under new rules aimed at reducing the amount of fried and fatty food served to children.

Hailed by the government as a key plank of the fight against childhood obesity, the rules brought in by royal decree this week will also compel schools to offer vegetarian and vegan meals.

Although Spain is famous for its Mediterranean diet, more than 40% of Spanish children aged six to nine were found by a 2019 study to be over the recommended weight, and 17.3% were classed as obese.”

Read about how from now on, all children will have access to healthy and nutritious food, regardless of their family’s income

It’s not just the bees that are dying. Butterfly and bird populations are in decline, too.

And it’s not just the neonicotinoids that are to blame. Other herbicides and pesticides, especially Monsanto’s Roundup, used to grow GMO crops–and also used to contain (kill) weeds in cities and home gardens –are decimating pollinators, fish and wildlife, and now we are finding they threaten humans too.

When in 1962, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, her seminal work on the impact of chemicals on our environment, she probably didn’t imagine a world in which millions of tons of evermore powerful chemicals are used not just to eliminate unwanted weeds and insects, but to grow the majority of the corn, soy, beets and other crops that are found in more than 80 percent of our processed foods, and are fed to an equally high percentage of the animals that eventually enter the human food supply.

But here we are. Will we change course, and reverse the damage? Will we save the bees, birds, butterflies–and ourselves–by driving GMOs, neonics and Roundup off the market?

Please help us work towards transitioning our industrial food system away from a toxic degenerative model to organic/regenerative practices that will create a healthy environment and a future we can look forward to.

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 making a grant request from your Donor-Advised Fund?

Slow Food reports:

“What’s the Deal? Is Slow Food’s new digital campaign exposing the hidden costs of global food trade—and the power we have to transform it. While today’s system fuels injustice, corporate control, and environmental destruction, people everywhere are building fairer, local, and resilient alternatives. This is a call to rethink how food moves—and who it should truly serve. Help us spread it!

At the same time, small-scale farmers across the globe—particularly those practicing agroecology—struggle to compete with the low prices of industrially produced foods. These ‘cheap’ products come with hidden environmental and social costs: biodiversity destruction, land grabbing, heavy pesticide use, labor exploitation, and the erosion of local food cultures. This undercuts sustainable local production and pushes farmers out of business.

For consumers, there’s little transparency on how food travels and is grown —whether it’s safe, fair, or environmentally friendly, making it hard to choose better options. Trade rules prioritize industrial agriculture, leading to more pesticides in our food, more antibiotics in meat, and less control over what we eat.

Rather than feeding people, global food trade fuels poverty and deepens inequality, all while enriching big corporations, destroying agrobiodiversity, and worsening the climate crisis.”



Learn more in Slow Food’s new report

By Lisa Held, Civil Eats:

“In the midst of cuts to staff, programs, and grant funding, as well as news that it may move more staff out of Washington, D.C., the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has adorned its D.C. headquarters with giant banners of Presidents Donald Trump and Abraham Lincoln, side by side.

In an Instagram video unveiling the new banners, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins wrote that ‘the People’s Department is being restored—leaner, stronger, and laser focused on its mission of putting farmers first.’

Lincoln signed legislation establishing the USDA, which he called the ‘people’s department,’ in 1862. Over the years, Trump has repeatedly compared himself to Lincoln, more than once referencing how his first administration impacted Black Americans. During the 2024 campaign, at the National Association of Black Journalists conference, he said, ‘I have been the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln.’”



Read how, since Trump, the agency has rooted out and canceled grants to organizations that prioritize serving Black farmers and other groups that have long faced discrimination

By Emily Surpless, The Healthy:

“If it seems like you’ve been extra jittery after checking headlines recently, just know you’re not alone. A recent survey found 54% of Americans have experienced increased stress levels since January, particularly when it comes to political news. However, the number jumps to 69% when focused on adults between the ages of 21 and 24.

About a third of the survey’s participants said improved physical health and self-care would help them feel better—and the good news is that one of the most healing remedies costs nothing at all. That’s right, we’re talking about hugs.

One study, published in the journal PLOS One, highlighted past findings on the health benefits of hugging, including:

• Reduced blood pressure
• Decreased inflammation
• Lower risk of infection
• Faster recovery from viral diseases
• Better overall well-being”

Learn more

By Sandee LaMotte, Life, But Better:

“Only one fourth of sunscreens on store shelves in the United States deliver safe and effective protection against the harmful rays of the sun, according to an annual report which analyzed more than 2,200 sunscreens available for purchase in 2025.

‘Our criteria include the ability of the sunscreen’s active ingredients to provide balanced protection against both UVA and UVB rays, as well as any hazardous chemical ingredients in the product,’ said David Andrews, acting chief science officer at the Environmental Working Group, or EWG, a consumer organization that has produced the annual sunscreen guide since 2007.

Released Tuesday, the 2025 Sunscreen Guide lists the best baby and child sunscreens, including those with the best ‘bang for the buck;’ highly rated daily use sunscreens, including moisturizers with SPF; the best lip balms with SPF; and the top recreational sunscreens designed for outdoor activities such as sports or spending time at the beach.”

Learn about concerns with chemical sunscreens and more

Joe Hernandez writes for NPR:

“Bonneau decided to “break up” with plastics in 2011 over concerns about pollution but also came to recognize the potential health benefits of avoiding the synthetic in the kitchen.

Instead of using a plastic cutting board, she uses wooden ones. One recent study called plastic cutting boards a “potentially significant source of microplastics in human food” and found that a polyethylene chopping board could shed between 7.4 and 50.7 grams of microplastics per person per year.

Bonneau stores food in glass or metal containers and saves all her jars to reuse later. Heating plastic containers can cause millions of microplastics and billions of nanoplastic particles to be released, one study found. (Microplastics have turned up in takeout food containers, plastic water bottles, paper coffee cups and more.)”

Read how restaurants are also making changes and more

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Unearthing the Mysteries of Hawai’i’s Ancient Agriculture

Energy and Memory: A New Neural Network Paradigm

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Meet the Teen Activist Who Got Plastic Banned on Bali

Grizzlies Could Make a Comeback in California, New Study Suggests

How Women Farmers Are Reviving Indigenous Rice Varieties

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