Yesterday the President’s Cancer Panel released a report that is nothing less than monumental for the organic food movement. It urges consumers to choose food grown without pesticides or chemical fertilizers, antibiotics and growth hormones to decrease their exposure to chemicals that can increase their risk of developing cancer.

As the year draws to a close, here is a list of the top 9 environmental stories in 2009 that had absolutely nothing to do with climate change:

Bill Gates is investing tens of his millions along with the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto Corporation, Syngenta Foundation and the Government of Norway, among others, in what is called the ‘doomsday seed bank.’

Farms, freeways and front yards are flooding underground aquifers with dangerous toxins, slowly poisoning many communities’ water supplies. But how can this happen?

Learn about Monsanto wanting to control the world’s food supply through genetic engineering, the information in this movie is both horrifying and amazing! To me, oddly echoing aspects of Soylent Green…

As your members of Congress debate health care, we need to make sure they’re considering the impact of corporate agribusiness on the public’s health. To give you an example, just one hog company….

Pants for Poverty work with over 7,000 tribal cotton farmers of India who run and own their own organization, the world’s first farmer owned marketing company for fairtrade and organic cotton. Your Pants to Poverty purchase supports change for India’s poorest farmers, most of whom are in “Suicide Belt,” an area where on average 26 farmers commit suicide every day due to unfair trade.

Given America’s addiction to coffee, a few alterations to your daily caffeine fix can have a big impact on how farmers treat the land where coffee is grown. The nice thing about words like “organic” and “fair trade” is that they make people who care about the Earth also care about buying a particular product.

This fall, Farm Aid will get back to its Midwest roots when it hits St. Louis, Mo., to raise a fresh round of funds for the farmers who protect our soil, air, water and biodiversity while also producing high-quality, healthy food for us all.

WIN TWO TICKETS TO THIS YEAR’S FARM AID!