Amy Coombs - Revenge of the Weeds

It’s a story suited for a Hollywood horror film, yet it’s also a tenet of evolutionary biology. Introduce a toxin to a system, and you inevitably select for resistant survivors. These few individuals gain a reproductive advantage and multiply; sometimes they can’t be stopped with even the most potent chemicals.

For years, this general plot line made headlines in the fields of antibiotic resistance and cancer research. More recently, plants have become a common protagonist. Weeds around the world are developing resistance to glyphosate—one of the most common herbicides on the market—and like bacteria and tumor cells, many plants can also withstand multiple other toxins, each with unique molecular targets.

In January, a hair-raising infestation of the kochia shrub was confirmed in Alberta, Canada. Originally introduced to desert climates as forage for cattle, the tenacious weed can now survive glyphosate, which targets an enzyme involved in the biosynthesis of aromatic compounds. It can also withstand chemicals that inhibit the ALS enzyme, involved in the production of amino acids. At least 2,000 acres are now impacted, and “we expect more cases will be confirmed after a field survey this fall,” says Hugh Beckie of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the government department that manages farming policies.

The United States are also being taken by storm. Palmer amaranth recently developed resistance to the same two classes of chemicals in Tennessee. Since 2009, the tall, spindly weed has swept across 1 million acres of cropland, causing some farmers to abandon their fields. And in California, a plant named hairy fleabane recently crept into vineyards. It is now able to withstand both glyphosate and Paraquat—a chemical that hijacks photons from proteins involved in photosynthesis.

Read More:

http://the-scientist.com/2012/05/20/revenge-of-the-weeds/

Raffi Cavoukian - The Environment Is Dead: Long Live Mother Nature

“Environmentalism has failed” is a statement that deserves attention. It comes from famed environmentalist David Suzuki marking 50 years since Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, helped spark the modern environmental movement.

Suzuki’s recent essay, Environmentalism Has Failed: On Adopting a Biocentric Viewpoint, on the fundamental failure of environmentalism is ominous. The world faces not only environmental calamities such as deforestation, coral reef depletion, and freshwater shortages, it is also mired in economic crises and harsh political realities. Despite the promise of “Arab Springs” and the global Occupy movement, we are increasingly in planetary peril. Throughout his life, David Suzuki has been a leading educator on planetary health; his conclusion about the environmental movement’s failure must be agonizing. Perhaps that’s why his blog offered no new way forward.

What now?

If decades of environmental campaigns produced significant gains but have lost the overall struggle to protect planetary life, that raises key questions:

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/23-1

Tom Philpott - What Do the World's Most Powerful Pesticide Honchos Eat For Dinner?

I've made a career of sorts writing about the "big six" agrochemical companies—Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, DuPont, Syngenta, and BASF—that produce the great bulk of the world's pesticides and, increasingly, seeds. [1] But last week, I did something different. Rather than investigate and critique these companies in print, I broke bread with some of their executives. And then, in a public forum live-cast on the internet from DC's Newsuem, I told them bluntly what I thought of their industry.

They seemed a bit stunned by the spectacle, rapt in attention but increasingly silent as my critique went on. From my perspective, I was looking into a sea of dark suits, red ties, and wide eyes, with only the stray vigorous shake of the head to register open dissent from my critique.

The event was the annual policy summit held in Washington, DC, by CropLife America [2], the trade group representing Big Agrochem/Biotech and the suppliers and retailers that sell their goods throughout farm country. The group had invited me to speak at the behest of my friend, green-business journalist Marc Gunther [3], who has an annual gig moderating the event.

My foray into agrochem-exec shoulder-rubbing began the night before the conference, when I attended the pre-event speakers' dinner in a private dining hall of a DC hotel.

Read More:

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/05/dinner-pesticides-monsanto-bayer-syngenta-dow-croplife

Graham Harvey - The New Day Age

One of Britain's leading agricultural scientists fears we may be entering a new dark age. Professor Maurice Moloney – director of Rothamsted Research – is worried by green activist threats to trash a trial plot of GM wheat at the Hertfordshire research site. "We face the destruction of a technology that could not just help wheat production in Britain," he says, "but could boost crop yields elsewhere in the world."

Down here in Candleford we take a rather different view. We think that if there’s a new dark age being ushered in, it's because of the decisions made by Prof Moloney and the BBSRC – the funding body that appointed him. Rothamsted's chief responsibility is to conduct research aimed at improving our food security. Britain already has a secure food production system – it’s called the mixed farm. It's capable of producing large amounts of healthy food through biological processes. And it has an inbuilt resilience to climate change by virtue of its biological diversity.

A World Bank-funded study by more than 400 scientists around the world concluded that diverse farming systems like UK mixed farming were the most secure and effective way to feed the world, now and in the future (IAASTD, 2008). You might think –as we do – that a leading research station concerned with food security would concentrate its energies on understanding and refining this established model. But under Professor Moloney, the scientists seem content to gamble our food security on an unproven and potentially unstable technology.

Read More:

http://grahamsquest.co.uk/the-new-dark-age/

Haemorrhaging Heartland Institute Still in Denial

Well the old adage is when you are in a hole, stop digging. Someone though hasn’t told Joe Bast, the head of the Heartland Institute.

Poor old Joe is feeling rather sorry that at his time of need his colleagues are deserting him. In a recent blog he criticizes one saying that rather than “speaking up for me and The Heartland Institute” you are “abandoning us in this moment of need.”

Written on the eve of its latest denier-fest in Chicago, Bast’s outrageous blog shows he is still not only in denial about climate change, but he is still trying to denigrate his critics. He is also still trying to twist the truth.

He argues that “for 28 years, The Heartland Institute has tried to stay above the fray,” producing “high-quality research and commentary and staying focused on the issues, even as the political dialogue became more and more polarized and corrosive.”

Read More:

http://ecowatch.org/2012/haemorrhaging-heartland-institute-still-in-denial/

Tiny Plants Could Cut Costs, Shrink Environmental Footprint

Tall, waving corn fields that line Midwestern roads may one day be replaced by dwarfed versions that require less water, fertilizer and other inputs, thanks to a fungicide commonly used on golf courses.

Burkhard Schulz, a Purdue University assistant professor of plant biochemical and molecular genetics, had earlier found that knocking out the steroid function in corn plants would create tiny versions that only had female sex characteristics. But brassinazole, the chemical used to inhibit the plant steroid biosynthesis, was prohibitively expensive.

One gram of brassinazole could cost as much as $25,000, so Schulz started looking into other options. He found that propiconazole, used to treat fungal dollar spot disease on golf courses, is more potent and costs about 10 cents for the same amount.

"Any research where you needed to treat large plants for long periods of time would have been impossible," Schulz said. "Those tests before would have cost us millions of dollars. Now, they cost us $25. This will open up research in crops that was not possible before."

Read More:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120515104638.htm

Meghann Myers - Grant to boost use of food stamps at farmers markets

Farmers markets are a popular source of reasonably priced fresh produce, but across the country many accept only cash or checks – a big problem for low-income shoppers using food stamps. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is trying to change that.

Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan this week announced a $4 million grant for states to help implement wireless technology that will allow more farmers markets to accept Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, or food stamps.

Markets need wireless Internet or land-line connections in order to accept payments from customers using government benefits, a system known as Electronic Benefits Transfer. The system isn’t always available for outdoor markets in parks or parking lots, and small markets often can’t afford to set up the technology.

Two years ago, Jeff Dabbelt of Lexington Farmers Market in Lexington, Ky., set up a machine on his own to accept EBT payments. “I had to convince my directors that it was going to be worth the additional cost,” he said.

Last year, the market brought in $14,000 from EBT cards, Dabbelt said.

Read More:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/05/10/148443/grant-to-boost-use-of-food-stamps.html

Anne Peterman - New study on Monsanto corn suggests GMO trees could devastate forest ecosystems

Bioengineering agricultural giant Monsanto has touted the safety of genetically modified crops, but a new study has found that insecticide-containing corn can be harmful to the overall health of soil ecosystems.

Genetically modified corn has been linked to a decrease in a subterranean fungus that forms a symbiotic bond with plant roots, allowing them to draw in more nutrients and water from the surrounding soil in exchange for carbon.

Researchers at Portland State University conducted a study to examine the effects of corn genetically engineered with the bacteria-derived insecticidal toxin, Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, on growth of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF).

AMF is important for the overall health and fertility of soil ecosystems, and was found to form less bonds with the roots of Bt corn than with non-Bt corn.

“Because these fungi rely on a plant host for nutrition and reproduction, they may be sensitive to genetic changes within a plant, such as insect-resistant Bt corn,” Tanya Cheeke, a PhD student in biology at Portland State, told theAmerican Journal of Botany.

Cheeke conducted the study as part of her doctoral research into the impact of genetically modified crops on soil ecosystems.

Read More:

http://foodfreedomgroup.com/2012/04/24/new-study-on-monsanto-corn-suggests-gmo-trees-could-devastate-forest-ecosystems/

Martha Rosenberg - Processed Foods: 9 Things You Need to Know About the Food You Eat

Thanks to factory farming's massive economies of scale, a lot of food today is disgusting or cruel or disgusting and cruel. Just when people stopped talking about cantaloupes with deadly listeria, "pink slime" hit the news. And just when people stopped talking about pink slime, ground beef treated with ammonia to kill germs, mad cow hit the news. Does anyone even remember the arsenic in the fruit juice?

Food scandals are so costly to Big Food, it has repeatedly tried to kill the messenger rather than clean up its act. In the 1990s it pushed through "food disparagement" laws under which Oprah Winfrey herself was sued by cattlemen in 1997 (Winfrey said she would never eat a hamburger again upon learning that cows were being fed to cows). Winfrey was acquitted and cow cannibalism was made illegal but the US still lost $3 billion in beef exports when a first mad cow was discovered in 2003. April's new mad cow will not help foreign trade.

Last year, Big Food introduced Animal Facility Interference laws in several states which make it a crime to "produce, distribute or possess photos and video taken without permission at an agricultural facility." The bills also criminalize lying on an application to work at an agriculture facility "with an intent to commit an act not authorized by the Owner"--in an effort to stop the flow of grisly undercover videos. The first facility interference offense would be an aggravated misdemeanor but subsequent offenses could be felonies.

Read More:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martha-rosenberg/processed-food_b_1501073.html

Leeann Brown - Chemical Agriculture Goes to the Mattresses: A Short History of the Pesticide Lobby

The U.S. Department of Agriculture began testing fruits and vegetables for pesticide residues in 1991 after the public became concerned about their potential risks to children. Remember Alar? In 1993, at the request of Congress, several top public health experts released a seminal report, Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children. Three years later, Congress responded by passing unanimously the federal Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA), which required the Environmental Protection Agency to implement health-based standards for all pesticides used in food, with special safeguards for infants and babies.

This flurry of activity grew out of one overarching conclusion embraced by scientists, physicians, policy makers, parents and the public interest community: Pesticides used in the cultivation of fruits and vegetables can cause serious and lasting harm to young children.

That didn't stop conventional agribusiness interests from trying hard to water down or remove provisions of the proposed law designed to protect infants and children. The industry argued that it would cut into their profits if they had to take children's health into consideration.

Read More:

http://www.enviroblog.org/2012/05/chemical-agriculture-goes-to-the-mattresses.html