This interview with Churdan, Iowa farmer Patti Naylor is the second blog in our series focusing on key issues of concern in the Farm Bill to those in our network. In this blog, Patti focuses on her vision for a Farm Bill process that better serves her farm and community. Many provisions in the Farm Bill legislation introduced in the House of Representatives will be harmful to farmers, rural communities, workers and the environment. Meanwhile, debates on the federal legislation are moving full steam ahead.

This week, the Hawaiʻi legislature made a momentous decision to pass a bill that would ban the neurotoxic pesticide chlorpyrifos.

The bill, SB 3095, includes several other protections from and disclosures around pesticides that can harm children, including buffer zones around schools. The bill now heads to Hawaiʻi Governor David Ige — who can sign or veto the legislation.

Despite widespread opposition, The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has green-lighted the Bayer-Monsanto merger.

The Bayer-Monsanto merger was approved on the heels of the authorization of the Dow-DuPont and Syngenta-ChemChina mergers. As a result, just three corporations will control 59 percent of the seed market and 64 percent of the pesticide market — globally.