Archives for the 'Research and Extension' Category
Revised Senate Food Safety Bill Includes Important Amendments
Friday, August 13th, 2010
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee released a copy of the “manager’s amendment” to the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (S. 510) which is, in essence, the bill as reported out of the HELP Committee late last year as modified by a long and arduous set of negotiations that have taken place since that time to work out particular issues.
The manager’s package has the support of HELP Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Ranking Member Mike Enzi (R-WY) as well as the four lead sponsors of the underlying bill, Dick Durbin (D-IL), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Chris Dodd (D-CT), and Richard Burr (R-NC).
The manager’s amendment will be adopted if and when the bill comes to the Senate floor in September when Congress returns from its summer recess.
The full manager’s package is available at http://help.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/WHI10337.pdf.
The Congressional Budget Office has scored the Manager’s package version of the bill as costing $1.6 billion over the next five years.
In releasing the new version of the bill, Senator Harkin said, “For far too long, the headlines have told the story of why this measure is so urgently needed: foodborne illness outbreaks, product recalls and Americans sickened over the food they eat. This 100-year-old plus food safety structure needed to be modernized. I am pleased that after a great deal of time and effort from members on both sides of the aisle, we have a strong, bipartisan proposal that will overhaul our current food safety system – a system that right now fails far too many American consumers. I am confident that the remaining details will be worked out and am hopeful that the measure will come to the Senate floor as soon as possible.”
Most sustainable agriculture and family farm groups think the Senate bill is a very significant improvement over the companion bill passed by the House of Representatives (HR 2749) last year. We’ve been able to help make substantial improvements in the Senate bill through the HELP markup and in changes that will be adopted as part of the manager’s amendment when the bill comes to the Senate floor. Assuming the Tester amendment (see below) can be worked out and agreed to before Senate floor action, we will be able to support the Senate bill. However, we strongly oppose the companion House measure, and stand ready to defend the Senate bill in conference with the House should that prove necessary.
The Managers package includes the following important improvements to the bill as reported out of committee last year:
- The amendment sponsored by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) pertaining to farms that engage in value-added processing or that co-mingle product from several farms. It will provide the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with the authority to either exempt farms engaged in low or no risk processing or co-mingling activities from new regulatory requirements or to modify particular regulatory requirements for such farming operations. Included within the purview of the amendment are exemptions or flexibilities with respect to requirements within S. 510 for food safety preventative control plans and FDA on-farm inspections.
- The amendments sponsored by Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) to reduce unnecessary paperwork and excess regulation. The Bennet language pertains to both the preventative control plan and the produce standards sections of the bill. FDA is instructed to provide flexibility for small processors including on-farm processing, to minimize the burden of compliance with regulations, and to minimize the number of different standards that apply to separate foods. FDA will also be prohibited from requiring farms and other food facilities to hire consultants to write food safety plans or to identify, implement, certify or audit those plans. With respect to produce standards, FDA will also be given the discretion to develop rules for categories of foods or for mixtures of foods rather than necessarily needing to have a separate rule for each specific commodity or to regulate specific crops if the real food safety issue involved mixtures only.
- The amendment sponsored by Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) to provide for a USDA-delivered competitive grants program for food safety training for farmers, small processors and wholesalers. The training projects will prioritize small and mid-scale farms, beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers, and small food processors and wholesalers. The program will be administered by USDA’s National Institute for Food and Agriculture. As is the case for all of the provisions in S. 510, funding for the bill and for this competitive grants program will happen through the annual agriculture appropriations bill process.
- The effort championed by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) to strip the bill of wildlife-threatening enforcement against “animal encroachment” of farms is also in the manager’s package. It will require FDA to apply sound science to any requirements that might impact wildlife and wildlife habitat on farms.
- An amendment proposed by Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) to amend the traceability and recordkeeping section of the bill that will exempt food that is direct marketed from farmers to consumers or to grocery stores and exempt food that has labeling that preserves the identity of the farm that produced the food. The amendment also prevents FDA from requiring any farm from needing to keep records beyond the first point of sale when the product leaves the farm, except in the case of farms that co-mingle product from multiple farms, in which case they must also keep records one step back as well as one step forward.
Not in the package but still under serious negotiation for inclusion in the bill when it reaches the floor of the Senate is an amendment by Senator John Tester (D-MT) to exempt food facilities with under a certain annual gross sales threshold from preventative control plan requirements and to exempt farmers who primarily direct market product to consumers, stores or restaurants from the bill’s produce standards regulations. Our expectation is this amendment will be successfully negotiated over the coming weeks and will be accepted as part of the final bill once the bill reaches the Senate floor.
We also continue to note and emphasize the additional provisions NSAC helped secure when the bill was marked up in Committee last year. Those changes included:
- requiring FDA and USDA coordination (including with respect to organic farming);
- limiting recordkeeping for farmers to just the initial sale to the first purchaser of the crop; and
- language in the produce section directing FDA to create rules that are appropriate to the scale and diversity of the farm, that take into consideration conservation and environmental standards established by other federal agencies, that do not conflict with organic certification standards, and that prioritize high risk crops.
Still pending is an amendment from Senator Feinstein (D-CA) banning the use of Bisphenol A (BPA) in all food and beverage containers. The Grocery Manufacturers Association and other industry groups have come out strongly against the measure. Negotiations are ongoing to work out compromise language, but it is unclear to us what the status is of those talks.
Revised Chart on FY 2011 Ag Appropriations
Tuesday, July 20th, 2010
With both the House Agricultural Appropriations Subcommittee and the full Senate Appropriations Committee now having taken action on their Fiscal Year 2011 agricultural spending bills, NSAC is posting a revised version of its annual agriculture appropriations chart to our website. The chart provides detailed funding level decisions on a program-by-program basis for about 40 USDA programs that we follow closely each year.
Appropriations bills generally only become public once the full appropriations committees have voted on them. Since that has not yet happened for the House bill yet, the numbers represented in our chart for the House bill are based on the best available information we have been able to obtain. In a few instances there are blanks where information has either been lacking or inconsistent and therefore possibly unreliable. The Senate numbers are all confirmed. The Senate bill and committee report can be found here.
Looking ahead to later this year when a final bill is put together, we will be emphasizing:
- attaining the historic House Subcommittee-approved $30 million funding level for the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program;
- removing the cuts to mandatory farm bill conservation funding contained in the Senate bill for the Wetlands Reserve, Grasslands Reserve, Farm and Ranch Land Protection, and Agricultural Management Assistance program;
- achieving the higher Senate total funding level ($8.35 million) for the Rural Micro-entrepreneurship Assistance Program and farm operating and ownership loans;
- obtaining the higher House funding level ($7 million) for the USDA Office of Advocacy and Outreach that coordinates policy and programs for beginning and minority farmers and farmworkers; and
- inserting into the final bill funding for the groundbreaking Beginning Farmer and Rancher Individual Development Account program.
As the process continues, we will update our appropriations chart as information changes.
Senate Committee Adopts Ag Spending Bill
Thursday, July 15th, 2010
On Thursday, July 15, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved the Fiscal Year 2011 Agricultural Appropriations bill by voice vote. The action on the agriculture bill came after a lengthy partisan debate over the overall discretionary spending levels for the entire government for FY 2011, which concluded with the adoption of Chairman Inouye’s proposed spending allocations.
The agriculture bill proposes to spend $22.838 billion for all discretionary spending (net of a variety of cuts to mandatory programs) for the Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, and several smaller government agencies. This is nearly $300 million less than the FY 2010 level and $27 million less than what President Obama requested.
After winning support from USDA, the White House and then the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee asked for a $30 million funding level for the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program. We regret to say that today the Senate Committee adopted a far lower,, $23 million, SARE funding level. Both bills include $15 million for research and education grants and $5 million for extension and outreach grants, but they differ on funding for the SARE state matching grant program, with the House at $10 million and the Senate at only $3 million. NSAC strongly supports the $30 million funding level and will continue to urge the Senate to come up to that level before finishing work on its bill this year.
As with the House Subcommittee-passed bill, the Senate bill moves forward on two Administration initiatives. The USDA portion of the Healthy Food Financing Initiative would receive $30 million under the Senate bill compared to $40 million in the House bill and $50 million requested by USDA. The Senate bill, like the House bill, also approves a somewhat scaled-back version of the new Regional Rural Innovation Initiative, which includes funding for local and regional food system projects. Both bills also provide $2 million for USDA’s Farm to School “tactical teams” to help school districts source more local food.
Whereas the House Subcommittee-passed bill refrains from cutting any farm bill mandatory conservation programs other than the traditional $270 million cut from the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and $165 million cut from the Small Watersheds program, the Senate bill includes some but not all of the additional conservation cuts proposed by President Obama. The Senate Committee-passed bill adopts a $75 million cut to the Wetlands Reserve Program, a $14 million cut to the Grasslands Reserve Program, a $15 million cut to the Farm and Ranch Land Protection Program, and a $5 million cut to the conservation portion of the Agricultural Management Assistance Program. The Administration had also requested cuts to the Conservation Stewardship Program and the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program, but those cuts were rejected by the Senate Committee. NSAC appreciates the sparing of those two programs, but continues to oppose the additional raids on farm bill conservation spending, and will continue to urge the Senate to find alternative offsets before bringing their bill to conclusion later this year.
A few other bill highlights follow:
Research — In addition to the SARE news above, the Senate Committee bill includes $5 million for Organic Transitions research, the same level as the House bill and $5 million more than the zero budget requested by the President. For the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), the Senate bill provides $310 million, compared to $312 million in the House bill, $262 million in the current year, and the $429 million Obama requested level.
Rural Development — Like the House bill, the Senate bill would level funding for the Value-Added Producer Grants (VAPG) program at $20.4 million. The total Senate funding level for Rural Business and Industry Guaranteed Loans would provide $49.7 million in loan guarantees for local and regional food enterprises versus $47.1 million in the House bill (the same as the FY 2010 level). The Rural Microentrepreneur Assistance Program (RMAP) fares much better in the Senate bill than the House bill. The House bill would allow the $4 million in mandatory farm bill money to move forward, but provides no additional discretionary funds above that level, whereas the Senate bill provides an additional $4.35 million, for a total of $8.35 million. The President had requested an additional $7.7 million. Rural Coop Development Grants would get a modest increase to $12.4 million in the Senate bill. The ATTRA National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service program would receive $2.8 million in both bills, same as the current funding level.
Credit — With additional emergency funding for farm loans still pending in the supplemental appropriations bill slowly making its way through Congress, the Senate regular appropriations bill passed out of Committee today includes higher farm loan amounts than the House bill. Whereas the House bill provides $475 million for Direct Farm Ownership Loans, the Senate bill provides $650 million. For Direct Farm Operating loans, the Senate provides $1.1 billion versus $900 million in the House bill. The Senate bill also includes more for guaranteed operating loans.
Beginning and Minority Farmers — The majority of direct farm ownership and farm operating loans go to beginning and to socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers, so the credit numbers above are relevant here as well. Sadly, neither bill has provided funding for the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Individual Development Account (IDA) program. NSAC will continue to push both houses of Congress to find a way to provide $5 million for this important farm bill program. The two bills have a big difference of opinion over the new Office of Advocacy and Outreach, the central USDA coordinating and policy arm for minority farmer, beginning farmer, and small farm issues. The House bill would match the President’s request for $7 million, but the Senate proposes only level funding at $1.7 million. NSAC will continue to press for the full requested amount.
Organic – Both the House and Senate bills adopt the requested level of $10.1 million for the National Organic Program, and as noted above, both adopt $5 million for the Organic Transitions integrated research program. It also appears that the Senate bill has included $1 million for the Organic Data Initiative, though we are still waiting on confirmation.
NSAC will be posting a chart on its website with more complete details on sustainable food and farming programs in the two pending bills in the near future.
June ERS Reports: Opportunities & Constraints to Local and Alternative Production Systems
Friday, June 25th, 2010
This June the USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) published reports identifying the opportunities and constraints facing both local food supply chains and grass-fed livestock production systems.
In response to the exploding demand for local foods the ERS published, “Comparing the Size, Structure and Performance of Local and Mainstream Food Supply Chains.” The report looks at the determinants of structure and size for local food supply chains and compares the social, environmental and economic performance of local vs. mainstream supply chains.
The report is one of the outcomes of a 2008 Farm Bill effort by Senators Feingold, Menendez, and Harkin, supported by NSAC, to foster greater research into local and regional food systems.
Using case study analysis, the report focuses on 5 products from 5 urban areas; blueberries in Portland, Oregon; leafy greens in Sacramento, California; apples in Syracuse, New York; beef in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and fluid milk in Washington D.C. Click here to read about the case studies in detail.
The case studies followed each product along 3 supply chains; local, inter-mediated and mainstream. Local supply chains relied on direct marketing from producer to consumer, defining “local” as produced within a 400 mile radius or within the state, a definition that NSAC helped develop for use in the Farm Bill. Inter-mediated supply chains refers to producers who grow/ raise food locally but then employ a marketing intermediary to reach consumers.
Key findings from the report include:
- Direct marketing comprises a very small portion of the total sales for each product but producers using local food supply chains receive higher revenues per unit and receive a larger share of the retail dollar. Farmers selling into inter-mediated supply chains also receive a larger share relative to the mainstream supply chains.
- Economic benefits from local supply chains accrue locally, but mainstream supply chains can also contribute to local economies.
- Local food systems generate greater social capital and civic engagement.
- Local food supply chains often rely on a more diversified portfolio of market outlets such as farmers markets, CSAs, buying clubs, restaurants, Internet sales, etc.
- Costs associated with mainstream processing and distribution often block small to mid- sized producers from opportunities to scale-up.
In their monthly publication, “Livestock, Poultry and Dairy Outlook,” the ERS published another report in response to growing consumer demand for grass-fed meat.
Most cattle spend the first half of their lives grazing on pasture. However, in conventional production systems, cattle are confined into concentrated into feedlots and finished on grain feed. In addition to providing a large market for abundant gran supplies, the grain feed also results in more tender meat with a shorter production time.
Alternatively, many ranchers are returning to production systems that finish the livestock on high-quality grasses and forages. The resulting meat is leaner and also provides a healthier fat profile with more Omega-3 fatty acids. Producers can also differentiate their products as “grass-fed” or “grass-finished” as a marketing niche. According to this ERS report, grass-fed or finished cattle comprise about 3% of the industry, growing at about 20% per year.
This ERS report explains that although grass-fed beef is a commercially viable alternative to conventional systems, as demand for grass-fed meat expands, foraged based production systems will face increasing constraints. Specifically, the ERS cites the higher costs associated with relying on feeds that are in shorter supply (particularly in winter months), potential land shortages, and the greater production time required to fatten cattle on forages. The report also addressed the need for more processing facilities in local areas to handle the increasing demand.
Click here to read this report.
Farmers Fly to Washington D.C. to Have Their Voices Heard
Friday, June 25th, 2010
On June 23rd, 11 farmers from around the country flew to Washington D.C. to have their voices heard.
NSAC hosted the Budget and Appropriations “Fly-In” at a critical juncture as the USDA prepares it’s budget proposals for the Fiscal Year 2012 and Congress starts work to finalize 2011 agricultural appropriations. The farmers and NSAC staff spent the morning with officials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the afternoon in individual meetings with their Congressional representatives as they expressed funding requests for indispensable sustainable agriculture programs. Click here to read a direct account from Steve Warshawer from Mesa Top Farm in New Mexico.
These top officials from the USDA carved out their morning to meet with farmers:
- Kathleen Merrigan, USDA Deputy Secretary,
- Erroll Bragg, Director of the Marketing Services Division of the Agriculture Marketing Service,
- Cheryl Cook, Deputy Undersecretary for Rural Development,
- David White, Chief of the Natural Resource Conservation Service, and
- Meryl Broussard, Interim Deputy Director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
Participating farmers expressed their needs for conservation technical assistance and investment in research for transitioning to organic production in addition to their appreciation for ongoing funding opportunities such as the Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education (SARE) grant program and Value-Added Producer Grants and hoped-for new opportunities via the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Individual Development Account program. They also spoke to the utility of the Conservation Stewardship Program and other mandatory farm bill conservation programs.
“These programs offer more than capital or incentives, they are a vote of confidence in your farm,” said Amy Courtney a fruit & vegetable farmer from Santa Cruz County, California.
Although authorized in the 2008 Farm Bill, funding for most rural development, marketing, and research programs require annual appropriations to get started and to remain available. Click here to read more about the appropriations process. This “fly-in” allowed farmers to tell USDA officials and their Congressional representatives what programs to prioritize and to give specific budget recommendations. To read NSAC’s 2011 appropriations priorities, click here.
In the afternoon meetings on the Hill, farmers emphasized funding for the same programs in the context of the upcoming appropriations bill for 2011. For instance, Margaret Smith, an organic crop and livestock farmer from Ash Grove Farm in Iowa, explained to Senator Harkin’s (D-IA) staff how cost-share CSP funding helped her purchase fencing to transition to a more sustainable rotational grazing livestock system. She also emphasized the importance of investment in organic production research systems, for sustainable and conventional agriculture alike.
Farmers in this year’s budget and appropriations fly-in hailed from GA, PA, CT, WI, IA, KS, and CA. Co-sponsors of the event included Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, Organic Farming Research Foundation, Center for Rural Affairs, Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation, Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, Fay-Penn Economic Development Council, and California Farmlink.
House and Senate Agricultural Appropriations Subcommittees may be working on their funding bills for FY 2011 in the near future. You can stay on top of agricultural funding issues by signing up for NSAC action alerts.
USDA Seeks Nominations for Research Advisory Board
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010
Today USDA announced that it is seeking nominations for its research advisory board, the National Agricultural Research, Extension, Education, and Economics Advisory Board (NAREEEAB). The 25-member Advisory Board provides recommendations to the Secretary on food and agriculture research, extension, education, and economics. The Board also consults directly with congressional agriculture committees and agricultural appropriations subcommittees.
Members are appointed by the Secretary of Agriculture. Terms are for 3 years. Individuals from organizations, associations, societies, universities, councils, federations, groups, and companies from a range of agricultural and food interests can be nominated.
This year, nine slots are open, including the Rural Economic Development, the National Consumer Group, the National Conservation or Natural Resource Group, and the National Forestry Group slots. Those four slots are currently filled by Walt Armbruster (Farm Foundation), Robin Douthitt (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Edward Runge (Texas A&M), and Steven Quarles (Partner at Crowell & Moring LLP).
Current members whose terms are not expiring include Ralph Paige (Federation of Southern Coops), Jean-Mari Peltier (National Grape and Wine Initiative), Marianne Smith Edge (Former President, American Dietetic Association), Mary Wagner (Senior Vice President, Starbucks), and Steve Hamburg (Environmental Defense Fund).
In 2008, NAREEEAB made recommendations on organic agriculture research at USDA (pdf), in recognition of the growing role that organic agriculture plays in U.S. agriculture and the need for facilitating research into organic systems. To date, USDA has fulfilled one of the recommendations to hire a national program leader for organic agriculture at USDA’s extramural research agency, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Other recommendations, including creating an REE-wide roadmap on organic agriculture and support for higher education activities in organic agriculture, have not yet been fulfilled.
Nominations to NAREEEAB are due July 9, 2010. For more information, click here (pdf).
NSAC Delivers Research Comments; Opportunity to Comment Still Open
Friday, June 4th, 2010
On Wednesday, June 2, USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) held a stakeholder listening session on its largest competitive research grants program, the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI). NSAC’s Policy Director Ferd Hoefner and member organizations, the Organic Farming Research Foundation and the Union of Concerned Scientists, delivered oral remarks.
Significantly overhauled, the AFRI 2010 Requests for Applications (RFAs) focus on five “challenge” areas — climate change, childhood obesity, bioenergy, food safety, and global food security — and one foundational program area focused on funding smaller, research-only grants.
There is much room for improvement in the new RFAs with respect to the implementation of several new categories established in the 2008 Farm Bill, including classical plant and animal breeding, rural entrepreneurship, and domestic marketing strategies. While sustainability is a touted aim of the program, the RFAs fall short of supporting research into diversified crop-livestock sustainable and organic systems that stand to deliver positive outcomes in the five challenges areas.
Structurally, the 2010 RFAs raise two major concerns. First, the awards made in the five challenge areas are “continuation” awards, which means that projects awarded in 2010 will be funded for only one year at a time, even though they are awarded as 5-year projects. In this scenario, unless Congress appropriates additional funding for AFRI in future years, AFRI will have very limited funds with which to fund new projects, as each year’s appropriation will just keep funding the same projects awarded this year.
Second, the programs within the Foundational Program are limited to research-only grants, which is not appropriate for programs such as “Prosperity of Small and Medium-Sized Farms and Rural Communities” that would benefit from extension and education components. The 2008 Farm Bill, in fact, requires that at least 30 percent of all projects be integrated projects, combining research, education and extension, and what USDA is designating as the “Foundational Program” is in fact the program that was authorized by Congress in the farm bill.
NSAC comments also addressed the need to have separate grant categories for Small and Medium-Sized Family Farms and for Rural Development and Entrepreneurship, rather than the combined approach that AFRI adopted for the first time this year. We also urged that funding for these programs should rise in line with rising appropriations, rather than the level funding they received this year, consistent with USDA Secretary Vilsack’s priority on rebuilding rural economies and local and regional food systems.
NIFA is accepting input on the AFRI RFAs through June 7, 2010. For more information about how to submit comments, click here.
USDA releases comprehensive Local Food Systems Report
Friday, May 21st, 2010
This week, USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) released a comprehensive report on Local Food Systems drawing together findings from the existing academic literature and ERS analysis. The report is divided into five main sections:
- local food definitions
- characteristics of local food suppliers
- demand for local food from consumers and institutions
- government programs and policies affecting local food systems
- and existing research on the benefits of local food systems.
As acknowledged in the first section of the report, “local” is difficult to define; because of this, the report tends to uses direct-to-consumer and direct-to-institution markets as a proxy for measuring and evaluating the market for local food.
Much of the report covers well-trodden ground; it outlines the growth of direct markets for local food citing evidence like the growth in farmers markets and CSA programs; it describes the typical suppliers of local food: small, located in metro areas, generally selling produce, and often engaged in other entrepreneurial activities such as agritourism, value-added products, or alternative energy production.
The section on “Barriers to Market Entry and Expansion” begins to move the conversation beyond the traditional focus on direct markets to the challenges to scaling up local food. The report highlights farmer capacity for marketing activities and quality assurance, supply chain infrastructure like storage facilities or processing plants, recordkeeping, and regulatory uncertainties as some of the major barriers to increasing supply to match market demand.
The section on programs and policy outlines some federal, state and local level policies that might impact markets for local food, but does not include a deep analysis of these policies to-date and does not include analysis of policies that might hinder the development of local food systems.
The final section of the report reviews existing research on the benefits of local food systems in the four main areas of economic development, health and nutrition benefits, food security, and effects on energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. It also mentions that local food systems have the potential to generate a number of public benefits beyond the four areas identified, including in the area of food safety.
In general, ERS concludes, there are a number of gaps in the research on the effects of local food systems; for example, research on the economic benefits of local food often doesn’t take into account the cost of substituting local products for the alternative. The effects of local food systems could also be “difficult to discern” because of their proportionally small share of the national food market.
The report ends with a call for further investigation: more research on these topics will “help to determine situations when supporting local foods can support policy goals.”
NSAC continues to work on policy to support the development of local and regional food systems. Click here to access our Guide to USDA funding for Local and Regional Food Systems.
GE Crop Roundup for April 2010
Friday, May 7th, 2010
April was an eventful month for genetically engineered (GE) crops, with release of a National Research Council report and litigation developments, plus a news story on the concern of scientists about Roundup Ready crops, whose use has resulted in the application of massive volumes of glyphosate herbicide to the nation’s farmland.
On April 13, Reuter news service posted an article with scientists’ concerns about the harm to soil quality from prolonged use of the herbicide glyphosate. The article featured long-term research conducted by Robert Kremer with the USDA Agricultural Research Service and others, whose papers were published in the European Journal of Agronomy in 2009.
Adverse effects of glyphosate included toxicity to beneficial soil microorganisms, stimulation of detrimental disease-causing microorganisms, and impaired nutrient uptake by non-target plants, including crops intended to benefit from glyphosate weed control. In addition, repetitive and dedicated use of glyphosate has resulted in selection of glyphosate-resistant weeds in countries around the world. These adverse effects were documented in a wide array of conventional and transgenic agroecosytems, including plantation, orchard and row crop systems.
On April 14, the National Research Council’s Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources issued a report entitled The Impact of Genetically Engineered Crops on Farm Sustainability in the United States. The Committee preparing the report was charged with looking at farm level economic, environmental, and social effects of widespread adoption of GE crops on all farmers, not just those growing GE crops.
The report purports to look at the effects of agricultural biotechnology from the view of the farmer but because the study limits itself to peer-reviewed published papers, the farmer’s view is largely absent. In addition, the report limits its comparisons primarily to the “sustainability” of large-scale, monoculture conventional row crop production versus large-scale, monoculture GE row crop production without considering more diversified cropping systems.
The report acknowledges that the biotech seed industry can use the privilege granted under U.S. patent law to block research use of patented GE seeds. It includes a reference to a 2009 comment letter from 26 corn insect researchers to EPA that states “ . . . as a result of restricted access [to GE seed], no truly independent research can be legally conducted on many critical questions regarding the technology, its performance, its management implications, IRM, and its interactions with insect biology.” But the report itself buries the issue in a discussion of the structure of the seed industry and farmer decisions.
In contrast, a 2009 editorial in Scientific American clearly highlighted that only the studies assessing GE seed performance approved by the biotech seed companies see the light of a peer-reviewed journal and charged that the biotech seed companies have blocked from publication selected studies that did not show positive results from the use of GE crops.
The NRC report’s Introductory Summary and Findings states that: (1) comprehensive evidence on soil quality, biodiversity, water quality and quantity, and air quality is sparse; (2) recent information on economic evidence is sparse; and (3) there has been relatively little research on the ethical and socioeconomic effects of the adoption of agricultural biotechnology at the farm or community level.
In our view, the committee preparing the report would have better served both farmers and the public by concluding its task at that point, with a call for adequate research and the revision of patent law that allows GE seed companies to restrict independent research on patented GE seed.
The New York Times also referenced the NRC report in an article published on May 4 that focused on major and growing weed resistance problems with Roundup Ready crops.
On April 15, a jury in Arkansas awarded $47.9 million, including $42 million of punitive damages, to a group of Arkansas farmers who claimed they were harmed in 2006 when an experimental stock of GE rice, engineered to resist the herbicide Liberty Link, was found throughout commercial rice stocks. The Liberty Link rice was not approved for any commercial markets. Rice growers sued the GE seed producer Bayer Cropscience, claiming economic harm from the drop in rice prices and lost sales following USDA’s announcement that commercial rice stocks were contaminated with the Liberty Link rice. After the announcement, the European Union demanded that rice shipments be tested for the Liberty Link GE traits and Japan banned sales of all rice from the U.S.
The farmers sought the punitive damages based on their claim that Bayer had acted maliciously by not announcing the contamination of commercial rice stocks as soon as the company knew of it. Bayer is appealing the jury verdict.
This case was the fourth case among dozens of cases that have been filed by U.S. rice farmers against Bayer Crop Science. Awards in three other cases decided against Bayer CropScience so far have totaled $4.5 million.
On April 27, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case Monsanto Company v. Geertston Seed Farms. A California federal court had ruled that the USDA violated the law by approving the commercialization of Monsanto Roundup Ready GE alfalfa without preparing a full Environmental Impact Statement addressing numerous potential impacts. The court vacated the USDA decision to “de-regulate” the GE alfalfa for commercial sale and use and imposed a nationwide injunction limiting the planting of the GE alfalfa. Monsanto appealed the decision to impose this injunction to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the injunction. Monsanto then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. A decision on the appeal is expected this summer.
The U.S. Solicitor General filed a brief and argued on behalf of USDA that rather than imposing a nationwide injunction, the trial judge should have deferred to USDA’s less restrictive planting and growing conditions for GE alfalfa, pending completion of the EIS.
Amicus briefs supporting the Geerstons were filed by organic groups, including the Organic Farming Research Foundation, by conservation and wildlife groups, by the Arkansas Rice Growers Association, by the states of California, Massachusetts and Oregon, and by the Union of Concerned Scientists and individual scientists.
The transcript of the oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court and the briefs filed in the case are posted on the ScotusWiki website.
Opportunity to Give Input on AFRI RFA
Friday, May 7th, 2010
The USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) is accepting public comments on its Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) to help guide the development of the 2011 Requests for Applications (RFAs).
NIFA will also host a public meeting on Wednesday, June 2, 2010 from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm at One Washington Circle Hotel, 1 Washington Circle NW, Washington, DC, 20037. See below for details on submitting comments or pre-registering for a five-minute comment period.
In late April, AFRI released six comprehensive RFAs representing $233 million of the $262 million in available funds. The RFAs included some specific programs that are particularly relevant to organic and sustainable agriculture research, including funding for projects on Small and Medium Farms and Rural Communities, Sustainable Food Systems, and Conventional Breeding and Climate. A seventh RFA supporting pre- and post-doctoral fellowships is scheduled for release in May.
NSAC submitted comments in September 2009 to inform these 2010 RFAs. While AFRI does include some opportunities for sustainable and organic researchers, extension agents, and educators to read themselves into the RFA, there is still room for significant improvement, for example, allowing the option for integrated projects within the Foundational RFA rather than limiting to research-only projects without education or extension components, providing for a greater diversity of grant sizes, and including clearer sustainability criteria.
NSAC plans to present comments at the stakeholder listening session in June and will also submit written comments to NIFA at a later date. To stay up to date on these and other NSAC activities, click here to sign up for NSAC’s weekly roundup and action alerts.
To preregister for a five minute comment period at the public meeting, contact Ms. Terri Joya at (202) 401–1761, by fax at (202) 401– 1782 or by email at tjoya@nifa.usda.gov.
Written comments can be submitted until close of business on June 7, 2010. Click here to submit online. Comments can also be submitted by email: afri@nifa.usda.gov (include Docket Number NIFA– 2010–0001 in subject line of the message); by fax: 202–401–1782; by mail or courier. Click here to read the full notice in the Federal Register.