Organic Bytes
Newsletter #932: The Farm Bill’s Toxic Trade-Off: Corporate Profits Over Public Health

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2026 FARM BILL

One Big Bayer Protection Act

Companies like Bayer that peddle pesticides and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) would get two big gifts if the 2026 House Farm Bill passes:

1. A free pass to poison us with impunity. The bill guts the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority over pesticides (including GMO crops engineered to produce their own insecticides), while stripping the states and the courts of their powers to protect us.

2. Money for industrial agriculture stolen from regenerative programs. Environmental quality and conservation programs would be earmarked for “precision agriculture,” the same old trifecta of GMOs, pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers, only with Big Tech’s artificial intelligence making the decisions instead of farmers.

TAKE ACTION: Tell Congress to Scrap the 2026 House Farm Bill!

FOOD SOVEREIGNTY

Mexico’s Fight To Keep GMO Corn off Its Plates Is Far From Over and It’s Heating Up

Organic Consumers Association:

Even after a United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) dispute panel ruled against Mexico’s ban on genetically modified white corn imports, claiming the policy “wasn’t science-based” and hurt U.S. exports, Mexico isn’t backing down.

The ban on planting GMO corn in Mexico still stands, and lawmakers are now exploring new legislation that would permanently prohibit GMO corn cultivation nationwide.

At the heart of this resistance is the “Demanda Colectiva Maíz” (Maíz Collective Lawsuit), a powerhouse alliance demanding the Mexican government defend native corn, food sovereignty, and public health. The Collective argues the U.S. has yet to prove GMO corn is safe for the Mexican people — and says Mexico has every right to protect its agricultural heritage.

Mexico’s battle to keep GMO corn out of its food supply is deeply rooted in preserving native corn varieties to secure the livelihoods of small-scale farmers who produce over 80% of Mexico’s maize, and its crucial role in the nation’s health and heritage. Native corn has been cultivated for thousands of years, resulting in 64 “landraces” and over 22,000 varieties adapted to different environments. This biodiversity is essential for Mexico’s food sovereignty and the health of its people.

Mercedes López Martínez, a leading voice in the Collective, has sharply criticized Mexico’s Ministry of Economy for putting corporate interests ahead of national sovereignty and emphasizes that native corn isn’t just a crop, it’s culture, resilience, and the living heart of Mexico.

The Collective, made up of 22 civil society organizations and 52 individual advocates, is standing firm to protect that legacy. OCA proudly supports this effort through our sister organization, Vía Orgánica, where Mercedes helps lead the charge.

In a significant win, a federal court has ordered Mexico’s Ministry of Economy to formally respond to the Collective’s petition to activate USMCA mechanisms against the U.S. over agricultural biotechnology.

Learn more

INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF THE WOMAN FARMER

The Women of Frey Wine: 3 Generations Working in Harmony With the Earth

Gwendolyn Alley, winepredator.com:

“‘When we say that we are pioneers in organics, we’re not just paying lip service to our pioneer status. We’re actually situating ourselves as the fundamental players that brought organics into the wine industry,’ says Molly Frey in conversation with her mother Katrina Frey, her sister Eliza, and Derek Dahlen, vineyard manager. Organic and biodynamic pioneers Frey Vineyards Ranch became a bonded winery forty five years ago, making them Mendocino’s winery number twelve. This year, they’re opening up their new winery facilities and making more plans for a green future with their extended family. 

Today, multiple generations of Frey women live on the ranch and work with the winery, including 100-year-old matriarch Beba Frey, her daughter-in-law marketing maven, executive director aka CEO Katrina Frey, who married Beba’s son, winemaker Jonathan Frey, their daughters Molly Frey, who handles social media, and Eliza Frey, who is on the winemaking team. Many more of Beba’s extended family are involved in all aspects of their operation on the slopes of Redwood Valley, in Mendocino County, California. In 1962, Paul and Beba Frey, two doctors from New York, bought a 95 acre ranch in Mendocino.

In 1967, the couple and their 12 children planted vineyards farmed organically. In the 1970s, the family started making their own wine.”

Frey Wines is a generous supporter of the OCA. If you are a wine buyer, please consider this delicious way to get a great price on organic wine and support OCA, and organic and biodynamic farming! Use the code ORGANICCONSUMERS when you shop Frey Vineyards.

MICROBIOMES

Genetically Modified Microorganisms: Risks and Regulatory Considerations for Human and Environmental Health

By Prof. Dr. André Leu D.Sc., BA, Com., Grad Dip Ed.:

Currently, numerous microbes are being genetically modified and released, or proposed for release, with minimal or no oversight.

These genetically modified microbes (GMMs) pose substantial risks and require proper regulation to protect the public and the environment from potential pandemics and epidemics, as well as unplanned ecological alterations. This area is like the wild west, an uncontrolled free-for-all with the potential for numerous disasters if it is not properly regulated.

I am one of the authors of this paper. My coauthors are all experts in their fields, and we spent 2 years researching and writing a scientific paper titled “Genetically Modified Microorganisms: Risks and Regulatory Considerations for Human and Environmental Health.” It was published on February 16 in the peer-reviewed journal Microorganisms.

The paper references an extensive body of peer-reviewed science to inform regulators about:   

The critical role of the microbiome for human health and the environment

The potential for GMMs to cause long-term and potentially irreversible damage

Unique characteristics of microbes that make their regulation more difficult and more important than that of genetically modified plants and animals

Serious risks that must be considered during assessments

We hope to spark a critical conversation and prompt policymakers to take a more cautious and informed approach to regulating these potentially hazardous microorganisms, prioritizing human and environmental health over unchecked innovation

Download the PDF version of the paper here

SUPPORT OCA & RI

Defend the Rights of Farmers and Communities

The Organic Consumers Association is pushing back against corporate giants, like Bayer and their toxic agenda.

The 2026 House Farm Bill is a huge threat to our health, environment, and food sovereignty.

We need to stop this bill. If passed, it’d give corporations a free pass to poison us with GMOs and pesticides, while gutting programs that support regenerative organic farming.

We’re not just fighting for organic food – we’re fighting for a food system that prioritizes people over profits. That’s why we’re joining forces with Mexico’s brave resistance against GMO corn imports and supporting with the Demanda Colectiva Maíz, a coalition of 22 organizations and 52 advocates defending native corn and food sovereignty.

Please consider making a donation to help us take on corporate power and push for a toxic-free food system, support regenerative farming practices that prioritize soil health, biodiversity, and ecosystems and defend the rights of farmers and communities to make their own food choices.

Join us in this critical work! Donate today and help us create a healthier, more just food system for all.

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 gift from your IRA?

ENVIRONMENT

Judge Sides With Salmon Against Trump Administration in Hydropower Ruling

Gabrielle Canon, The Guardian:

“A federal judge in Oregon sided with salmon against the Trump administration on Wednesday, ordering the federal government to change hydropower system operations long considered at the heart of native fish populations’ sharp decline.

At the center of the dispute are eight dams and reservoirs on the Columbia and Snake Rivers in the Pacific Northwest that have created devastating obstacles for salmon and steelhead, unable to breach their deadly turbines or navigate through the large, warm, artificial pools.

The Columbia River basin, which sprawls across a swath of land the size of Texas, once produced more salmon than any other system in the world. But out of the 16 stocks of salmon and steelhead that once thrived here, seven are listed under the Endangered Species Act and four have already been wiped from existence.

In the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement, a landmark salmon recovery plan brokered in late 2023, the federal government committed more than $1bn over a decade to support depleted salmon runs. The plan, however, would be short-lived. Trump pulls US from plan to recover salmon population, calling it ‘radical’.”

Read about the new ruling and the encouraging news that the court has granted immediate, commonsense relief that will help protect imperiled north-west salmon and steelhead

FOOD SYSTEMS

Big Tech and Big Ag Firms Gaining Control of Farming

IPES Food:

“These Big Tech titans are providing cloud platforms and AI-driven decision tools being integrated into all parts of industrial agriculture, from seeds to chemical inputs to machinery. As a result, they are shaping what technologies are developed, how food production decisions are made, and what the future of farming looks like.

Public institutions and private actors are investing billions in these Big Tech agricultural innovations – framed as indispensable for productivity, soil and crop health, labor, and climate challenges. But they are betting on the wrong model.

Corporate-led digitalization of agriculture is failing to deliver ecological resilience, equity, or sustainability. Instead, it is deepening dependency on risky corporate schemes and locking agriculture into high-cost, high-energy, and high-input pathways. These innovation models tend to be extractive, expensive, polluting, and misaligned with farmers’ real needs.

Control over data is thus becoming a new source of power and profit in agriculture. Continuing along this pathway risks leaving us with declining ecological resilience, rising farmer debt and bankruptcies, loss of rural jobs, erosion of farmer knowledge and autonomy, widening inequality between farms and between Global North and Global South countries, and shrinking democratic oversight over food systems.”  

Read about the path ahead: innovation for just and sustainable food systems

REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE

Bats Are Not a Side Note in Regeneration — They Are Central to It

Roger D. Jones:

As primary pollinators of wild agave, bats carry pollen across vast night corridors, ensuring genetic diversity, resilience, and the continuation of agave’s ancient life cycle. Without bats, agave cannot fully regenerate itself. This makes their role inseparable from the the Regeneration International’s game-changing ecosystem-regeneration strategy: “Billion Agave Project”.

The Billion Agave Project is about restoring degraded lands, rebuilding soil, capturing carbon, supporting small farmers, and creating climate resilience through large-scale agave systems. But true regeneration depends on biodiversity. Agave fields must remain biologically connected to the ecosystems that sustain them — and bats are essential to that connection.

When we protect bats, we protect the future of agave and the future that agave makes possible. They complete the circle: protecting bats strengthens agave, agave restores soil, soil cools the climate and sustains rural livelihoods, making bats regenerative allies and silent partners in our path of ecological restoration; when we protect bats, we protect the future of agave and the future it makes possible.

Bats are regenerative allies of Madre Earth and silent partners in the path of ecological restoration. When we protect bats, we protect the future of agave — and the bright future that agave makes possible.

To learn more about the fascinating world of bats and the essential role they play in regenerative agriculture, read this interview by Roger D. Jones, in conversation with Dra. Celia “Bat Woman” Selem, a renowned advocate for bat conservation

Read more about the Billion Agave Project, a project of OCA’s sister organizations, Vía Orgánica and Regeneration International

FOOD CHAIN

Let Them Eat Patents

Interview by Dora Mengüç with Pat Mooney, Jacobin:

“The true magnitude of farmers’ importance reveals itself in moments of crisis. They are a keystone in a fragile global food system. If their work is jeopardized, the consequences will not be abstract.

The world’s food system is not only buckling under the climate crisis, wars, and logistical breakdowns; it is also suffering the long-accumulated structural fractures of the neoliberal agricultural regime. From seed to fertilizer, from data flows to logistics, the entire chain has been consolidated into the hands of an unprecedentedly small corporate core.

Just four corporations — Bayer, Corteva, Syngenta, and BASF — now control roughly 60 percent of the world’s commercial seed and pesticide markets, an unprecedented level of consolidation across the food chain. The seed — humanity’s foundational agricultural innovation — now sits under the guardianship of multinational corporations.”

Seed is the first link in the food chain. If you control the seed, you control the entire food system.

READ: Gardening Is Important, But Seed Saving Is Crucial

Colorado bill would curb uses of crop seeds coated with harmful pesticides

PLANTING PEACE

Unauthorized War Is Unconstitutional

Every elected representative swears an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the U.S. Constitution reserves the power to declare war to the Congress. The President’s job, as Commander in Chief, is to wage the wars Congress commits him to–not the other way around.

Congress has only declared war 11 times and not since the 1940s. In recent decades, Congress has approved resolutions that have the same effect, like the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that got us into Vietnam and the Authorization for the Use of Military Force after 9/11.

Congress has not declared war or authorized the use of military force in Iran.

U.S. soldiers and Iranian civilians are already dying, but it’s not too late for Congress to stop this, with a War Powers Resolution to remove the U.S. military from unauthorized hostilities. Congress can also refuse to fund President Donald Trump’s war on Iran.

A vote in the Senate was scheduled for Wednesday. It was projected to be a largely party-line vote, with every Democrat except Sen. John Fetterman (Pennsylvania) voting for the resolution to end the war and all Republicans but Sen. Rand Paul (Kentucky) voting against.

The House is expected to vote today, Thursday. In addition to sending an email by clicking the link below, please call the House switchboard at 202-224-3121 to urge your Rep to vote “yes.”

If you are reading this after Thursday, please check the action alert for the latest news, including links to the recorded votes.

TAKE ACTION: Tell Your Members of Congress to Vote for a War Powers Resolution to Stop Trump’s War on Iran!