Some of the biggest news in the food industry this year was the moment of General Mills (GM) converting Cheerios to a non-GMO cereal. In January, GM announced that it would halt the use of genetically modified ingredients in original yellow-box Cheerios. This cultural milestone signals not only the swelling consumer exodus from industrial GMO foods, but also the rise of the use of social media by foodies to change the conversatio

The GMO Inside coalition (yes—full disclosure—I am co-founder and co-chair) started targeting Cheerios in 2012 for many reasons, including that the brand’s corporate parent, GM, was a large funder of “no” on California’s Prop 37, the failed right-to-know labeling campaign. In the following 14 months, GMO Inside got 50 thousand anti-GMO comments placed on the Cheerios Facebook wall.

About 15 percent of the total Cheerios cereal content was GMO corn and sugar. With GM’s declaration in January that its classic yellow-box cereal was going non-GMO, a great crack formed in the brick wall of “Big Food.” The startling GM announcement resulted in the strongest adverse media coverage in the history of GMOs.

The Cheerios conversion is representative of a broad trend: the entire North American food industry has been going through radical changes toward non-GMOs. In March 2013 Whole Foods Market (WFM) announced that GMO foods and supplements must be labeled by 2018—an earlier indication that the non-GMO movement is becoming big business. In another historic victory, in late 2013 WFM dropped Chobani yogurt because its milk ingredient comes from cows fed GMO grains. Chobani recently announced the pending introduction of several new certified organic yogurt items. And in mid-January of 2014, Post Foods announced it was rolling out a non-GMO third-party-certified Grape-Nuts cereal.

A dozen years ago, it would have been hard to find even one in a hundred thousand Americans who could explain GMOs. Today, many are looking for the source of the huge rise in autism, cancer and gluten intolerance. People are asking how their food is grown, and, thanks to the Food Babe, why their yoga mat is in their sandwich.

Tens of millions are realizing the stakes of turning over the food supply to be “improved” by a cabal of war-chemical giants that include Monsanto, Bayer and Syngenta. In the wake of the Cheerios changeover, CPG brands Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Smuckers Jam and Land O’Lakes—and even Starbucks lattes—are now caught up in an epic fight for public opinion, with Monsanto and friends on one side and the real food movement on the other.

The adversaries are two competing systems of agriculture: industrial foods based on aggressive GMO technologies that include ever-increasing levels of Monsanto Roundup/Dow 2,4-D toxic herbicides vs. a nature-honoring food system, without GMOs, based on regenerative cultivation and designed to be free of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

The British environmental journal The Ecologist reported in April 2014 that all the individual samples of GM soy in one test contained residues of both glyphosate and aminomethylphosponic acid (AMPA), on average 9.0 mg/kg—an amount greater than is typical for many vitamins. AMPA is the principal breakdown product of glyphosate (MonsantoRoundup®). How alarmingly efficient our industrialized food system has become! Roundup is now in the rainwater that falls from the heavens.

It is in the blood and urine of newborn babies and in the mother’s milk that nourishes early life. It’s time for our society to wake up, smell the Roundup, and choose life-affirming foods grown in a way that honors all the generations to come.

Americans vote three times a day—that is, at every meal—for their preferred version of a food system. For many, cost is an issue, due in large part to the giant subsidies paid to GMO industrial-ag corn used for cheap junk foods, but mostly for animal feed and non-sustainable energy fuels. Access to high-quality whole foods is a social justice issue in which the less fortunate lose out due to the misguided policies that enrich “Big Food.”

But current labeling can only get us so far. As author and longtime organic farmer Will Allen recently declared, we have to deal with meat and milk in addition to labeling, because labeling is only going to affect processed food. It won’t impact the GMO corn, soy, cottonseed, alfalfa and sugar beets that are fed to animals—which is 80+ percent of the nonfuel grains. Hence the fight to curb GMO crop production must also go after milk and meat.

GMO Inside’s latest campaign targets Starbucks “Monsanto Latte,” due to the fact that their milk is sourced from cows fed GMOs and injected with antibiotics on factory farms. It’s time for Starbucks to live up to its marketing claims of “ethical sourcing” and “sustainability” by sourcing its dairy products from local, organic family farmers. GMO Insiders are also directing their efforts against the factory-farmed “Monsanto butter” produced by Land O’Lakes and Alta Dena Dairy.

Social media has become an effective tool for anyone with a stomach and a desire to create a better food system. One part of the answer to our crises in soil health and human health may just come down to a more effective use of online communication to help our friends, family, community members and ourselves make optimal food choices.

The Three-Prong Movement That’s Stopping the Beast in Its Tracks

The issue of how we grow and process our food, while it’s always been important, is now a hot topic both at the kitchen table and on Wall Street. From the recent scandal about a chemical used in yoga mats being found in Subway bread to the rising awareness of GMOs and demands to label their presence in foods, the public is fast awakening to the need for safe, whole, natural nourishment.

In early May 2014, the stock price of Whole Foods Market (WFM) dropped about 20 percent in 24 hours, based largely on fears that Walmart and other grocery giants will overtake WFM’s share of organic food sales. The number of equity funds looking to invest in the next Annie’s or Clif Bar is astounding. Astute investors now understand that food impacts not just waistlines but bottom lines.

The elephant in the room is that agriculture, not transportation, is globally the greatest contributor to greenhouse gases—an issue that gets glossed over by Al Gore and 350.org alike. The media, whether in the recent New York Times food reportage or in the May 2014 National Geographic cover story on “The New Food Revolution,” all fail to mention the three most pressing food issues: the climate change connection; the vast subsidies to corn, soy, and wheat; and the massive increase in the use of Monsanto Roundup with its human health and ecosystem impacts.

Central to the conversation are the questions How do we grow our food in a more sustainable way? and Who decides? Should America lead the world in turning over our heritage of ancestral seeds to Monsanto or DuPont for them to patent as intellectual property? It’s becoming ever more widely known that each firm has a long history of making lethal war chemicals, creating toxic manufacturing sites that leak carcinogens into disadvantaged communities everywhere, and influencing the EPA, USDA, Congress, and the White House so that decisions made—such as the recently passed Farmer Assurance Provision (widely called by its critics the “Monsanto Protection Act”)—favor biotech.

The recent good news is that, on May 8, 2014, per a law signed by Governor Peter Shumlin, Vermont became the first U.S. state to mandate the labeling of foods made with genetically modified organisms. The Grocery Manufactures Association (GMA) has challenged the new law in court in what is expected to be an epic legal battle of the people vs. corporations. Supporting members of GMA include Starbucks, Kellogg’s, and General Mills.

The Three Ways That Monsanto Is Being Defeated

In spite of Monsanto’s death grip on the food system, important progress is being made in three key areas: (1) public education via social media, leading to (2) wiser food choices and(3) more sustainable investments.

All great movements begin at a grassroots level. Think of the civil rights sea change in the 1960s: the government acted to pass the civil rights bill only after the people had reached a tipping point about racial injustice. Having started in a similar grassroots fashion, the organic food movement is now well on its way to changing the food system worldwide.

Yet Monsanto and Big Ag are much better at crafting propaganda than were the bigots of the 1960s. The three biggest lies: that GMOs will feed the world, that organic agriculture can coexist with GMOs, and that Roundup-tainted GMO foods have been proven safe.

Although tens of millions of Americans might not understand all the complexities, they have a gut sense that something is very wrong with our food system, and little faith that Monsanto should be in charge of a baby’s nourishment. They can’t help but wonder how much Monsanto herbicide content in a mother’s breast milk is safe.

Cheerios Go Non-GMO

Some of the biggest news in the food industry this year is the General Mills conversion of Cheerios to a non-GMO cereal. This cultural milestone signals not only the swelling consumer exodus from industrial GMO foods, but also the rise in the use of social media by foodies to educate the public.

The Cheerios conversion is representative of a broad and radical trend in the entire North American food industry, as exemplified by last year’s announcement from Whole Foods Market that GMO foods and supplements must be labeled by 2018—a revelation that the non-GMO movement was becoming big business.

The GMO Inside coalition (of which I’m co-founder and co-chair) had begun to target Cheerios, in part because General Mills, was a big funder of “no” on California’s Prop 37, the failed right-to-know labeling campaign. In subsequent months, GMO Inside got 50 thousand anti-GMO comments placed on the Cheerios Facebook wall.

The startling General Mills announcement was the result of the strongest adverse media coverage in the history of GMOs. And in early 2014, Post Foods announced it was rolling out a non-GMO Grape-Nuts cereal.

Tens of millions are now realizing the stakes of turning over the food supply to a cabal of war-chemical giants that also includes Bayer and Syngenta. In the wake of the Cheerio’s changeover, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Smuckers Jam, Land O’Lakes, and even Starbucks lattes are caught up in an epic fight for public opinion, with Monsanto and friends on one side and the real food movement on the other.

How alarmingly efficient our industrialized food system has become! Roundup is now in the rainwater that falls from the heavens, and in the blood and urine of newborn babies. Not a moment too soon, our society is waking up, smelling the Roundup, and choose life-affirming foods grown in a way that honors all the generations to come.

The hippy roots of the nascent organic food movement in the 1970s and ’80s held a vision of a revitalized food system—one that devoutly honors the health of the soil. Today’s devoted organic farmers realize that a healthy society must start with healthy soils.

Americans vote at every meal for their preferred version of a food system. Cost is an issue, largely due to the giant subsidies paid to the GMO industrial-ag corn, soy, wheat, and sugar beets used for cheap junk foods.

GMO Inside’s latest campaign targets Starbucks’ “Monsanto Latte,” due to the fact that their milk is sourced from cows fed GMOs and injected with antibiotics on factory farms. GMO Insiders are also directing their efforts against the factory-farmed “Monsanto butter” produced by Land O’Lakes and Alta Dena Dairy.

Social media has become an effective tool in the creation of a better food system.

A Monsanto Stock Plunge

An Iowa-based group, Food Democracy Now, is calling for all citizens who invest in mutual foods to close their account if their fund is invested in Monsanto. More details at http://bit.ly/1ozgKJo.

“Already, the phone lines at Fidelity, Vanguard, and State Street have been ringing off the hook as thousands have reported calling their financial advisors and discovering that they have inadvertently owned shares of Monsanto’s stock,” comments Dave Murphy at Food Democracy Now. “Unfortunately, if you have a retirement fund, a 401K, or mutual funds you could be profiting from Monsanto’s toxic products.” The movement is aiming for an unprecedented stock plunge for Monsanto.

According to Murphy, Food Democracy Now’s prime reasons for targeting Monsanto include the following: “As the manufacturer of Agent Orange, DDT, PCPs, and dioxin, Monsanto’s toxic legacy of harm to the environment and human health is without parallel. Now Monsanto owns patents on life and is genetically engineering the food that we eat. In the past two years alone, Monsanto has helped fund massive misinformation campaigns to the tune of $70 million to defeat GMO labeling.”

Connecting Carbon, Climate Change, and Food

In our efforts to reduce carbon emissions, it’s vital that we reduce the demand for coal, oil, and fracking via wind and solar systems and plug-in hybrids. From the Tesla Company to First Solar, exciting work is being done.

What’s not well understood about climate change is how agriculture is both the number one problem and the number one solution. As we race past carbon dioxide concentrations of 380 parts per million, not only is our atmosphere being overloaded with CO2. The dirty little secret is that the oceans are becoming the carbon sink.

While people debate whether the planet is getting hotter or storms stronger due to climate change, we know for a fact that the oceans are getting very acidic. Not one scientist—not even one on the payroll of the Koch brothers—can refute the fact of the oceanic pH fall. Fast-forward another two or three decades and this will have led to a massive fish and coral reef die-off.

The solution is simple, and already at our fingertips. We need to become carbon farmers, or the customers of carbon farmers. This means ending the use of synthetic fertilizers and toxic pesticides and growing via the organic methods that build healthy soils. Mainly it means moving from CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) to pasture-based systems for raising chickens, pigs, and cows. In the process, we’ll lock the massive amounts of atmospheric carbon atoms into the top six inches of our planet’s soil.

This is no pipe dream, but it will require continuance of the major shift in consumer habits that’s already gaining speed. That is, choosing grass-fed meats, with their much healthier omega-3 levels, over CAFO meats. And reducing our overall meat consumption by 50 percent or more is vital. Already many meat eaters are cutting back their total consumption by half or two-thirds and choosing to eat only pastured meats. We need to keep moving away from the carbon-centric, GMO-based industrial farming that releases vast amounts of greenhouses gases into the environment.

The United States also needs to restore the domestic farming of hemp, which locks carbon from the air into its fibrous stalks. Hemp fiber can be grown for construction (it’s more energy-efficient in walls than are wood–based walls), auto parts (it’s lighter in weight than fiberglass, and thus more fuel-efficient), and many other uses.

Another resource is Biochar, a name for charcoal when it’s used for particular purposes, especially as a soil amendment and it also holds great promise as a new tool for carbon farmers. Biochar is being seen as a possible approach to carbon sequestration to produce negative carbon dioxide emissions.

Finally, I am including this link to a recent article from Judith Schwartz on Yale’s Environment 360 website “Soil as a Carbon Storehouse: A New Weapon in the Climate Fight?” It looks at the degradation of soils from unsustainable agriculture and other development, which has released billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere. But new research shows how effective land restoration could play a major role in sequestering CO2 and slowing climate change. Read more at http://bit.ly/1j4lTZv.

In closing, to secure and ensure a vital and livable world, we need to keep shifting from Monsanto-style industrialized farming to the wisdom and foresight of such positive approaches as Biochar. Central to the implementation of this new food system will be the crop rotation, soil-building practices, and pasture systems that are the basis of sustainable organic foods.

Dear Friends, At Nutiva, we are passionate about food transparency and GMO labeling. I founded Nutiva in 1999 to disrupt the industrial food model that favors highly processed, nutrient-deficient foods over pure, organic nutrient-dense superfoods. Our every day food choices affect our health, families, communities and the planet.

I am thrilled to be running a company that allows and encourages people to make better choices every day. In addition to serving as the CEO of Nutiva, I am also the co-founder and co-chair of the non-profit organization GMO Inside, which works to educate consumers about genetically engineered ingredients. Large industrial companies are currently increasing their profits at the expense of our health and environment.

The days when a global company like Starbucks can hide GMOs from the customer are over. The age of transparency is here and I expect Starbucks will shortly realize it’s in its best interest to eliminate GMOs from its supply chain. We have the right to know if our food has been genetically engineered so that we can make an informed choice for our families and the environment.

GMO Inside mobilizes individuals to make their voices heard through social media and petitions. Recently, they successfully convinced General Mills to remove GMOs from Original Cheerios.

Now, they are focusing their efforts on Starbucks, asking them to stop using milk from cows fed GMO grains. Please support this campaign and hold corporations like Starbucks to a higher standard.

Take action HERE. Together, we can revolutionize the way the world eats.

In Health,

John W. Roulac