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USDA is Loco for Local: Everyone’s excited about the new Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative (henceforth to be known as KYFx2) the USDA rolled out this week, which includes a focus on rural development and direct marketing, the opening of the new farmers’ market near the White House and funds for farm-to-school programs and community food projects. Tom Philpott brings us back down to earth.

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Because I didn’t manage to post the News Feed last week, enjoy an extra dose of food news this weekend, some of it a bit fresher than others.
$20 billion food security initiative announced at G8 World leaders dug a little deeper than expected today, pledging an extra $5 billion in food aid to poor countries.  [...]

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Monsanto according to Change.org Hot on the heels of Secretary of State Clinton’s love letter to genetically modified food technology as a solution to global hunger, Natasha Chart has a 4-part series on the subject. (1 2 3 4) Tom Philpott also takes Clinton’s science czar to task on Seed Magazine Forum and gives [...]

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Have a great Memorial Day! We’ll be back on Tuesday.
Vilsack on CAFOs, swine flu H1N1 Last week, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack stood up for industrial livestock operations, saying that the “‘vast, vast, vast majority of farmers who are raising livestock are very sensitive’ to the need to be careful about the management of [...]

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Says WHO? Conflicting reports this week from the World Health Organization, which came out saying that in fact, it IS possible to contract swine flu from pork products from infected animals.  Then they backtracked.  Who can keep up?
Dear Oprah, can I have mine pasture-raised? The internet nearly exploded this week with the launch [...]

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Making the grade. Civil Eats stamped the Obama’s collective actions on agriculture policy with a B- during the first 100 days. The grade took into account Michelle’s encouragement to grow your own, but indicated that Obama and Secretary of Ag Tom Vilsack need to realize that the food system is intrinsically connected with [...]

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We’ll be running our usual News Feed tomorrow but couldn’t resist posting a little roundup for those of you who are following the likely connection between CAFOs and “swine flu” (now dubbed H1N1).
A US export? The Humane Society points to CDC documentation of similar flu bugs first identified over 10 years ago in North Carolina.
Big [...]

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Last Monday, as I boarded a commercial flight, I sneezed. I had sneezed in the car on the way to the airport, and I would sneeze more throughout the day. On my way to the W.K Kellogg Foundation’s Food & Society conference, a gathering of nearly 600 “good food” advocates, and excited about the trip, [...]

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Yes! The Spring issue of Yes! magazine is entirely devoted to food and mentions the Eat Well Guide. Thank you, Yes!
Failure to yield That’s the name of a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists on yield increases in Bt cotton and corn, which Elanor at The Ethicurean calls “stunningly lame.” [...]

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Calling for change “Progress has plateaued” on the food safety front, according to Robert Taux of the CDC. Salmonella infections in particular are lacking in improvement, but the overall numbers are staggering: 76 million are sickened every year, with 300,000 hospitalized and 5,000 deaths from food poisoning yearly.
Springing leeks Chef Kurt Michael Kriese at [...]

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