FEED - January 2008

FEED – Food & Environment Electronic Digest - January 2008 Read FEED online Contents Senate passes Food and Farm Bill High yields from new breeding technique Defending real food in An Eater's Manifesto 1. Senate passes Food and Farm Bill Shortly before Christmas, the Senate finally passed its version of the Food and Farm Bill, the massive package of legislation that authorizes programs and funding for agricultural research, crop subsidies, food stamps, farmers' markets, organic farming, conservation, and much more. Although the Senate bill did not include significant reforms, such as cuts to commodity crop subsidies to free up funds for conservation programs, the legislation features an increase in spending for organic agriculture and a number of other improvements over the 2002 Food and Farm Bill. The Senate bill differs significantly from the House bill passed last fall. Now that Congress is back in session, members of the Senate and House agriculture committees will negotiate their differences and hammer out a compromise to send to the president. 2. High yields from new breeding technique Farmers don't need genetic engineering to boost crop yields, according to professors from Kansas State University and the University of Minnesota. Using a sophisticated plant breeding technique called marker-assisted selection (MAS), the scientists are working to develop high-yielding varieties of corn, sorghum, wheat, and barley without inserting foreign genes. They have found that analyzing the entire crop genome (the full set of chromosomes), rather than just short segments of the genome, increases the efficiency of the MAS process. This important find, combined with the ever-decreasing cost of analyzing molecular "markers," makes genome-wide marker-assisted selection an efficient, low-cost alternative to genetic engineering. Read more about marker-assisted selection and see a press release from Kansas State University. 3. Defending real food in An Eater's Manifesto Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. These seven simple words of dietary advice are at the heart of journalist Michael Pollan's new book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. Having covered the ecological repercussions of our food choices in his bestselling The Omnivore's Dilemma, Pollan turns now to consequences for our personal health. He questions why decades of nutritional advice have left U.S. eaters fatter and less healthy than ever. His conclusion? In place of real food, Americans today are eating "edible food-like substances" that come largely from factories instead of farms. But we can, in Pollan's words, "reclaim our health and happiness as eaters." Read an excerpt from the book. Also, read Pollan's recent article in the New York Times Magazine about what's wrong with our food system. This message was sent to tsb713@hotmail.com. Visit your subscription management page to update your personal profile. From this page you can change your email address, mailing address, name, congressional districts, email format preference, or add or remove yourself from various UCS newsletters, networks, and mailing lists. To stop receiving FEED emails, click to unsubscribe.

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