Here is a story from the left, they are finally acknowledging the militarized police state that is putting the jackboots on the ranchers and farmers necks. Maybe they will come to the realization that if people would protect themselves from tyranny with the Second Amendment, tyranny would never gain a foothold. Editor.

By Charles McFarlane modern farmer

According to a USDA press rep, the guns are necessary for self-protection.

“OIG Special Agents regularly conduct undercover operations and surveillance. The types of investigations conducted by OIG Special Agents include criminal activities such as fraud in farm programs; significant thefts of Government property or funds; bribery and extortion; smuggling; and assaults and threats of violence against USDA employees engaged in their official duties,” wrote a USDA spokesperson.

Those seem like legitimate enforcement activities, but still: submachine guns? Not everyone believes the USDA being armed to the teeth is justifiable. On Aug. 2, the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund launched a petition to support a bill that would curb the ability of agencies like the USDA to arm themselves. They see it as overkill and scare tactics, especially for smaller producers.

“What we have seen happen, with the FDA especially, is they have come onto small farms, raw milk producers, and raided the heck out of them with armed agents present,” says Liz Reitzig, co-founder of the Farm Food Freedom Coalition. “Do we really want to have our federal regulatory agencies bring submachine guns onto these family farms with children?”

The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund petition focuses on two now infamous blows to the raw milk community – the 2010 and 2011 raids on Rawsome Food Club in Venice, California. These raids were carried out by armed federal agents, from the FDA and other agencies.

The OIG’s Investigation Development bulletins show there have been three incidents in the last year that involved firearms and two in which USDA agents were verbally threatened. Still, most of their enforcement operations surround white-collar fraud of government programs, often involving SNAP programs. “If there is fraud in the SNAP program, look at how it is implemented and make changes in the entire program,” says Reitzig. “Don’t bring machine guns onto farms.”

The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund are not the only ones interested in taking guns out of the hands of USDA agents. Utah Congressman Chris Stewart is the sponsor of the bill on the FTCLDF petition. “At its heart it comes down to this: To myself, and for a lot of Americans, there is great concern over regulator agencies with heavy handed capabilities,” Rep. Stewart told Modern Farmer.

His bill, H.R. 4934, hopes “to prohibit certain federal agencies from using or purchasing certain firearms, and for other purposes.” When asked about the USDA’s plan for submachine guns, he said, “I can’t envision a scenario where what they are doing would require that.”

Another concern is simply accountability. The request for submachine guns from the USDA doesn’t say how many guns — asking them seems like a non-starter. “They have been very unhelpful in trying to find out any information about this,” said Rep. Stewart. “We couldn’t get answers — it doesn’t seem right to me.”

However, he also cautioned: “We have never argued that federal regulators don’t need to protect themselves.” But if USDA investigations were perceived to be potentially violent he suggested, “They should do what the rest of us do, call the local sheriff.”

Zero Hedge – by Tyler Durden

When we reported on the government’s decisiosn to withhold irrigation water to California for the first time in 54 years, we warned there would be consequences: farmers are hit hardest as “they’re all on pins and needles trying to figure out how they’re going to get through this.” Fields will go unplanted (supply lower mean food prices higher), or farmers will pay top dollar for water that’s on the market (and those costs can only be passed on via higher food prices). Sure enough, as Bloomberg reports, farmers in California’s Central Valley, the world’s most productive agricultural region, are paying as much as 10 times more for water than they did before the state’s record drought cut supply.  

As Bloomberg Briefs’ Alison Vekshin reports,

Costs soared to $1,100 per acre-foot from $140 a year ago in the Fresno-based Westlands Water District, which represents 700 farms, said Gayle Holman, a spokeswoman. North of Sacramento, the Western Canal Water District is selling it for double the usual price: $500 per acre-foot, about 326,000 gallons.

The most severe water shortages are in the San Joaquin Valley, in an area from Bakersfield to Patterson and Chowchilla, said Mike Wade, executive director of the California Farm Water Coalition, a Sacramento-based group representing farmers and most agricultural irrigation districts in California.

The drought gripping the state that supplies half the fruits, vegetables and nuts consumed in the U.S. has led federal and state providers to curtail the water they distribute to farmers. That’s prompted districts representing growers to buy and sell for escalated prices from other parts of the state.

The drought threatens to boost produce costs that are already elevated following a December frost, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department. The price of fresh fruit is forecast to rise as much as 6 percent this year, the department said last month.

Dairy products, of which California is the biggest producer, may rise as much as 4 percent. After three years of record-low rainfall, 82 percent of the state is experiencing extreme drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a federal website.

The rising prices are “a function of supply and demand in a very dry year and the fact that there are a lot of competing uses for water in California,’’ said Mat Maucieri, a spokesman for the Bureau of Reclamation.

*  *  *

Seems like it’s time for The Fed to print some more rain…

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-24/food-inflation-watch-california-farmers-water-costs-surge-700-after-government-cuts-

An important message from Mark Baker.

by CHRISTINA SARICH | INFOWARS.COM

In an appalling attempt to patent yet another seed, Monsanto has resorted to fraud to try to gain rights to a tomato which contains a naturally occurring resistance to a fungal disease called botrytis. The tomato is not genetically modified, but Monsanto manipulated documents to make the plant look ‘invented’ by biotech when the plant’s true maker is Mother Nature, herself.Representatives of No Patents on Seeds! have called attention to this shady play of the biotech industry to try to outrun their failing genetic experiments. The original tomatoes used for this patent came from the international gene bank in Gatersleben, Germany, and they have shown this resistance for ages, well before biotech started monkeying with our food supply.

“Because crossing tomatoes is not patentable, Monsanto deliberately rephrased the patent during the period of examination to make it appear as if genetic engineering was involved. However, careful reading of the patent shows that this is simply fraudulent. These tomatoes were not produced by transferring isolated DNA. The European Patent Office should have picked up on this,” says Christoph Then for No Patents on Seeds!. “This patent shows just how easy it is for companies like Monsanto to avoid existing prohibitions in patent law.”

Current patent law states that “essentially biological processes for the production of plants and animals” are excluded from patentability.

Read: Organic Tomatoes Contain more Nutrients than Conventional

Many plants have a natural resistance to disease. For example, ‘super cukes’ are an heirloom variety of cucumber that are naturally tolerant to anthracnose, powdery and downy mildew, angular leaf spot, and scab. Should Monsanto get to patent those too?

Similarly (almost), biotech would like you to believe that their new purple GMO tomato is some kind of ‘cure’ all for cancer (even though several, non-patented natural plants already do this job) even though nothing of the sort has been proven. What’s worse, the scientific community is recruiting sick individuals to test their new poison food.

Organic gardeners are well versed in picking plants that are naturally resistant to pests and even weather in their location. They also use companion planting and organic pesticides to avoid the use of harsh, carcinogenic chemicals like RoundUp. If Monsanto thinks it can patent farming practices that go back 10,000 years, then something is absurdly wrong with our legislative system.

This article first appeared at NaturalSociety.com.

Sayer Ji
Activist Post

A concerning new study published in Chemosphere shows that the classical toxicology model, based on the testing of individual molecules, is incapable of accurately estimating the global environmental and health risks of mixtures of agrochemicals like glyphosate (aka Roundup) and its degradation byproduct AMPA, which are now ubiquitous environmental and food contaminants and much more harmful than previously believed.

Following closely on the heels of a study showing that Roundup herbicide is 125 times more toxic than its active ingredient glyphosate studied in isolation, the new study adds to an increasingly damning body of evidence that reveals agrochemicals used in GMO food production are vastly more harmful than their manufacturers, regulators and proponents will admit.

The study, titled, "Genotoxicity of mixtures of glyphosate and atrazine and their environmental transformation products before and after photoactivation,"evaluated the light-induced cell-damaging toxicity (i.e. photo-inducible cytogenetic toxicity) of glyphosate, atrazine, aminomethyl phosphoric acid (AMPA), desethyl-atrazine (DEA), and their various mixtures.



Glyphosate (aka Roundup) is the world's most popular pesticide, used primarily in GMO farming as a systemic herbicide. When glyphosate is metabolized within plants or within the liver of animals, it produces AMPA, a substance that while classified as inert and/or harmless by regulators, has been known for some time to be at least as toxic as glyphosate, the latter of which has been linked to over 30 adverse health effects.[1] Atrazine is used to control weeds in crops such as corn and surgarcane, and is used widely in residential lawns and golf courses. It was identified as the most commonly detected pesticide contaminating drinking water in the United States,[2] and is believed to a potent endocrine disrupter affecting animal hormonal systems.[3]-[4]

Herbicide Mixtures And/Or Metabolites 20-1,000 Times More Toxic Than Regulators Believe

The new study demonstrated that the cell-damaging (cytogenetic) potentials of pesticides greatly depended on their physicochemical environment. Also, it was found that the mixture made with the four pesticides was not only 20-fold more toxic to tested cells than those of the most active compound AMPA, but that the toxicity increased 100-fold after light-irradiation, which would be a common reaction given that these chemicals persist and accumulate in the environment.

Additionally, researchers discovered that, "AMPA displayed a direct cytogenetic toxicity which was 1000 fold higher than that of its parent compound [glyphosate]." Since AMPA – the breakdown product of glyphosate -- is a ubiquitous toxicant, found in all glyphosate exposed plant food, and is known to persist for prolonged durations in the environment (76–240 days in soil), and is even produced in the mammalian liver following consumption of glyphosate contaminated food, the significance of this finding can not be underestimated.

When you consider that glyphosate is presently allowed in human food at levels up to six orders of magnitude higher than research has revealed may be harmful to the human body,[5] AMPA's potential for being 1,000 times more toxic than glyphosate implies that present day 'acceptable levels' may be up to 9 orders of magnitude -- 1,000,000,000 times -- too lax than required to protect exposed populations from significant bodily harm.

Given the growing body of evidence suggesting that glyphosate and its metabolite, AMPA, are extremely toxic, the precautionary principle should be implemented and unnecessary exposure should be avoided. If Roundup herbicide use is not restricted or banned until undergoing review, at the very least, consumers deserve the right of informed consent. The choice to avoid non-GMO and non-Roundup laden foods must be made available through truthful labeling of food products. Failing to make this choice possible, or worse, levying massive financial and political resources against such a right through industry front groups like the Grocery Manufacturers Association, amounts to forced chemical poisoning, an egregious crime against humanity.

Notes:

[1] GreenMedInfo.com, Glyphosate Adverse Health Effects 

[2] A Valuable Reputation: Tyrone Hayes said that a chemical was harmful, its maker pursued him" by Rachel Aviv, The New Yorker, 10 February 2014

[3] Atrazine: Chemical Summary. Toxicity and Exposure Assessment for Children's Health(Report). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 4/24/2007.

[4] Hayes, Tyrone B.; Anderson, Lloyd L.; Beasley, Val R.; de Solla, Shane R.; Iguchi, Taisen; et al. (2011). "Demasculinization and feminization of male gonads by atrazine: Consistent effects across vertebrate classes". The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 127 (1–2): 64–73. doi:10.1016/j.jsbmb.2011.03.015. PMID 21419222.

[5] Greenmedinfo.com, Roundup May Be Carcinogenic in the Parts-Per-Trillion Range, 2013

This article first appeared at GreenMedInfo.  Please visit to access their vast database of articles and the latest information in natural health. 

by PAUL JOSEPH WATSON 

The United States Department of Agriculture is set to purchase an unknown quantity of submachine guns, leading to questions about where the weapons will be heading and for what purpose they will be used.

A solicitation (replete with spelling errors) posted on the Fed Biz Opps website states;

“The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Inspector General, located in Washington, DC, pursuant to the authority of FAR Part 13, has a requirement for the commerical (sic) acquisition of submachine guns, .40 Cal. S&W, ambidextrous safety, semi-automatic or 2 shot burts (sic) trigger group, Tritium night sights for front and rear, rails for attachment of flashlight (front under fore grip) and scope (top rear), stock-collapsilbe (sic) or folding, magazine – 30 rd. capacity, sling, light weight, and oversized trigger guard for gloved operation.”

Hopefully, those operating the semi-automatic weapons will be better skilled than whoever is writing solicitations on behalf of the USDA, but the fact that the law enforcement division of the United States Forest Service, which operates under the USDA, is not mentioned in the request has prompted some to question where the guns will be going.

“They will no doubt attempt to justify their purchase of military hardware by explaining that they conduct criminal investigations and may need to do armed raids,” writes Bob Owens, adding, “This is part of a trend to arm every branch of federal government, whether the individual agency has a legitimate need for a paramilitary force or not.”

Concerns over large ammunition purchases by the Department of Homeland Security have raged over the past two years, although a recent Government Accountability Office investigation downplayed the issue as nothing out of the ordinary.

More pertinent than the amount of bullets purchased has been the type of ammunition and the DHS’ insistence that companies be able to supply them quickly if needed, which some have linked to the federal agency’s preparations for domestic unrest in the United States.

In May last year, the DHS sent out a request for information asking companies if they could provide 2 million bullets within a 30-60 day turnaround period.

In October 2013, the DHS acknowledged it was hiring armed guards to secure government buildings in the event of “public demonstration(s)” and “civil disturbances,” while also spending half a million dollars on fully automatic pepper spray launchers and projectiles that are designed to be used during riot control situations.

In February last year, Law Enforcement Targets Inc., a contractor that had previously done $2 million dollars worth of business with the DHS, was forced to apologize after producing “no more hesitation” shooting targets which depicted pregnant women, children, and elderly gun owners in residential settings as “non-traditional threats.”

More recently the DHS issued a solicitation for over 141,00 rounds of sniper ammunition, bullets known commercially as “Zombie Max,” a reference to their high power.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor at large of Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com.