Echo

Reseeding project gets to rice’s historic roots

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(WI) Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – Like canoe-paddling Johnny Appleseeds, John Patrick and others are trying to change northern Wisconsin’s landscape back to the way it used to look, one handful of wild rice at a time. Efforts to restore ancient wild rice beds are paying off as rice gatherers – who recently finished one of the best harvests in recent years – now collect as much as one-third of the annual crop from reseeded beds, said Peter David, a wildlife biologist with the commission. More

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From Science, Plenty of Cows but Little Profit

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(NY) The New York Times – Three years ago, a technological breakthrough gave dairy farmers the chance to bend a basic rule of nature: no longer would their cows have to give birth to equal numbers of female and male offspring. Instead, using a high-technology method to sort the sperm of dairy bulls, they could produce mostly female calves to be raised into profitable milk producers. Now the first cows bred with that technology, tens of thousands of them, are entering milking herds across the country – and the timing could hardly be worse. More

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Specter of bovine TB haunts cattle producers in Indiana

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(IN) The Indianapolis Star – Indiana’s cattle producers — their billion-dollar-a-year industry threatened by an obscure bacterium — turn their eyes anxiously to Franklin County. There on a small farm lived a cow that had bovine tuberculosis. The disease was detected in the cow at a slaughterhouse in Pennsylvania in December. More

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International research team cracks potato genome

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(MI) The Detroit News – A global team of researchers has mapped the genetic code of the world’s most popular vegetable – the potato. The draft of the potato genome released last week represents the work of more than 50 scientists from 16 institutions and will provide a starting point for other researchers to develop sturdier, more nutritious potatoes. More

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Researchers study environmental impact of free-range pig production

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By Haley Walker
Walkerh4@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
Sept. 25, 2009

Big Blue, Gus, Chomsky, George and Leonidasto buried their snouts in leafy greens, rolled in the mud, and grunted happily when they arrived recently at Michigan State University’s student organic farm. They had traveled from their birthplace at MSU’s old swine farm to a garden at the university’s organic farm. It was only a physical distance of a few miles, but light years in the way the 6-month-old pigs were raised. These animals are part of a university experiment that will look not only at their growth but also on their impact on the land.

Echo

Southwest Michigan leads state in agriculture

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(MI) Kalamazoo Gazette – Allegan, Berrien, Cass, Kalamazoo, Kent, Ottawa, and Van Buren lead the state in total value of agriculture production  – including sales of crops and livestock. Food and agricultural county profiles for each of Michigan’s 83 counties and nine agricultural regions released Tuesday in a report by the Michigan Department of Agriculture show the region’s importance to the state’s agriculture industry. More

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Judge Rejects Approval of Biotech Sugar Beets

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(NY) The New York Times – A federal judge has ruled that the government failed to adequately assess the environmental impacts of genetically engineered sugar beets before approving the crop for cultivation in the United States. The decision could lead to a ban on the planting of the beets, which have been widely adopted by farmers. In a decision issued Monday, Judge Jeffrey S. White of Federal District Court in San Francisco, said that the Agriculture Department should have done an environmental impact statement. He said it should have assessed the consequences from the likely spread of the genetically engineered trait to other sugar beets or to the related crops of Swiss chard and red table beets.  More

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Local-food advocates point out hidden costs in groceries

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(OH) Cleveland Plain Dealer – Despite the clamor for local food, only about 1 percent of the food eaten in Ohio is grown in Ohio. And of the 14 million acres farmed in our state, 8 million produce corn and soybeans. Those crops are subsidized by the government, shipped out of state to make processed food, then shipped back for sale. Mary K. Holmes gave those statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to those attending a forum Saturday, Sept. 19, sponsored by the Innovative Farmers of Ohio, a small-farm support group.

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Farmers defend Great Lakes crops from deer

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By Sarah Coefield
Coefield@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
Sept. 23, 2009

Countless deer descend on crops in the Great Lakes region, leaving in their wake torn corn silks, leafless soybeans, devastated orchards and millions of dollars in damage.  It’s a drop in the bucket for the agriculturally rich region but nonetheless painful for individual farmers. “In the grand scheme of things, it’s a minor amount, but it can be your entire crop,” said Paul Zimmerman, the public affairs executive director for the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation. While damage may be little noticed on large farms, it can be devastating for small operations where deer can quickly wipe out a field of young soybeans. “Welcome to raising crops in Mother Nature,” Zimmerman said.

Echo

Was paradise lost?

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(WI) Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – Health care as we know it didn’t exist 3,000 years ago. But along the Georgia coast, the Pacific Northwest, and coastal Brazil, people grew tall and strong and lived relatively free of disease. They ate game, fish, shellfish and wild plants. But as corn farming spread through various regions of the Americas, people got shorter. Many became prone to anemia and began dying of tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.More