"Tests on Treasured Maize Ignite Fears in Mexico"
"As scientists race the clock to increase food production worldwide, new trials to plant genetically-modified maize have stoked anger in Mexico, the cradle of corn."
Source: AFP, 10/30/2009
Agriculture
Report Documents Foreign Ownership of U.S. Farm Lands
Foreign ownership of privately-held US agricultural lands, on the rise for the second year in a row, can affect the local economy, politics, culture, foreign investment in the US, food security, and agricultural subsidies.
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"Back Where Virus Started, New Scrutiny of Pig Farming"
"Many experts think pig farming presents a serious and overlooked risk to public health. Proof of that assertion -- indirect but indisputable, in the opinion of virologists -- is the 2009 H1N1 pandemic influenza."
Source: Wash Post, 10/26/2009
"Prairie Pioneer Seeks To Reinvent The Way We Farm"
"In the prairies of Kansas lives Wes Jackson, a man who has spent his long and rich career trying to invent a new kind of agriculture -- one that will last indefinitely."
Source: NPR, 10/22/2009
"Agriculture Critic's Appearance Angers University Alumni"
A big-money rancher alumnus caused Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to change a scheduled lecture by best-selling sustainable food writer Michael Pollan -- raising questions about academic freedom.
Source: LA Times, 10/15/2009
"Where They Grow Our Junk Food"
To get to the root of the obesity epidemic, one Canadian reporter went in search of a junk food farm. There were no fields of Dorito bags waving in the breeze. "What you do see are vast operations growing the raw materials for junk food: soybeans and corn."
Source: Toronto Star, 10/12/2009
Keeping The Breadbasket From Drying Up
Right now, America's Bread Basket relies on an aquifer that's nearly drained. And, many say, it will dry up if farmers keep pumping water from it at the current rate. The Environment Report's Devin Browne reports the government plans to pay farmers as one way to get them to cut water use.
Source: Environment Report, 09/18/2009
"Tomato Blight Spreading"
"If you've been waiting all season for that quintessential taste of summer -- a juicy, ripe tomato from the garden -- you might be disappointed. This year a tomato blight has swept across the Northeast and is moving into Midwestern gardens and farms."
Source: Environment Report, 08/27/2009
"Farm to Hub to Table: New Nonprofit Feeds Appetite For Local Food"
The Local Food Hub in the Charlottesville, Va., area is an example of a new trend: nonprofit distribution enterprises that aggregate food produced by small-scale local farmers and move it quickly to local customers such as restaurants, schools, and retirement homes.
Source: Wash Post, 08/27/2009
Judge Orders USDA To Release Data on Wolf Program
The locations of conflicts in New Mexico and Arizona between livestock and Mexican gray wolves, which were reintroduced in 1998, will now be made public in hopes of identifying problem areas and taking preventive steps.
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