agriculture definition

     As I posted previously about synthetic biology, I thought I would post about an article that WIRED published.      Amateur scientists build Lego-style synthetic BioBricks in public lab      Tuesday, September 25, 2012      By Joel Winston      While some may believe that science is better left to scientists, hundreds of amateur biologists around the world have been setting-up makeshift biology labs in their homes, garages, and community centers.   Read full article at www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-09/24/synthetic-biology .

My last post, Arsenic and Rice , summarized the recent controversy regarding arsenic levels in rice and linked to the primary sources.  I ended the post by commenting that it was my hope that would use this issue as impetus to "demand a more holistic assessment of agricultural production methods - an assessment that takes into account the full spectrum of considerations and not just product-specific economic justifications."  This post explains what I meant. While much of the press this week has focused on the concerns that a consumer may have about arsenic residues in food, what intrigues me most about this story is how we got here. The Arsenic Facts website produced by the rice industry correctly notes that some arsenic is naturally occurring in the air, soil, and water.   Consumer Reports responds, however, that the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry considers human use of arsenic-based products to be the largest source of arsenic contamination in t

I offer a summary and some links on the issue of arsenic levels in rice -  my students in our Food Law & Policy course raised it in class this week, and the issue has been all over the news. Consumer Reports issued a study,  Arsenic in your food: Our findings show a real need for federal standards for this toxin  (Nov. 2012).  The study reported "worrisome" levels of arsenic in rice and called upon FDA to take action through additional monitoring, testing, and the establishment of a limit on the amount permissible. The FDA set up an arsenic in rice website with information for consumers on its monitoring activities and preliminary testing results. FDA also issued a press release stating their full data collection would be completed by the end of the by end of 2012, and that the FDA would be prioritizing "further assessment to provide scientific basis for additional recommendations."  FDA stated that '[b]ased on the currently available data and scientific l

A truck is loaded with soybeans near Rondon�polis, Brazil, presumably for export to China. Source: The New York Times . Marcelo D. Varella , Intellectual Property and Agriculture: The Case on Soybeans and Monsanto : This article analyzes different strategies of an agricultural company (Monsanto) to enforce intellectual property rights on soybeans in South America, especially in Brazil, during the last ten years. A recent court decision ordered Monsanto to pay up to $3 billion in compensatory damages. This is probably one of the most important cases on agricultural intellectual property. On one hand, there is complex company strategy to create intellectual property rights through patents, plant variety protections, import market controls, and thousands of direct agreements with actors throughout the production chain, as well extensions of those rights through different lawsuits. This makes for a very interesting case study on intellectual property rights and on control of eme

The Kentucky Journal of Equine, Agriculture and Natural Resources Law  (KJEANRL), a multi-disciplinary journal of law, science, and policy is published twice annually by the University of Kentucky College of Law.  The Journal is edited entirely by students of the College of Law. A forum for articles by practitioners, academicians, policy-makers, and other professionals throughout the United States and abroad, the Journal welcomes original manuscripts focusing on the legal, policy, and ethical issues related to the environment, natural resources, land use, and energy. Shorter discussion pieces, descriptions of creative solutions to persistent problems, and commentary on policy and politics are also suitable for publication in the Journal. Each issue also includes notes written by Journal staff members. KJEANRL was named one of the Top 100 Law Journals of 2010 by Washington & Lee University School of Law.  Authors who wish to submit an article to be considered for publication can sub

Gunnison River, where water is diverted via tunnel to irrigate the Uncompahgre Valley, Colorado I wrote this post a few weeks ago about the conflicts between ag interests and natural gas extraction in Australia.  The New York Times reports today on similar conflicts in the United States.  Kirk Johnson's story focuses on the competition for water between farmers on the one hand and oil and gas interests on the other.  His dateline is Greeley, Colorado, and the headline is "For Farms in the West, Oil Wells are Thirsty Rivals." Johnson reports that oil and gas interests in Colorado are paying record high prices for excess water that they buy or lease from cities.  While farmers have tended to pay between $30 and $100 for an acre foot of water (about 326,000 gallons), depending on scarcity, oil and gas companies are now paying as much as $1K to $2K for that amount of treated water purchased from cities.  Farmers say they can't match those bids.  Peter Anderson, a corn

D. Kershen, Food Crises and Technological Phobia (original post on BioFortified.org) is available at http://www.biofortified.org/2012/09/food-crises-and-technological-phobia/ .       Excerpt:  "I do not write to enter the debate focused on fuel standards, markets and commodity speculators.  I acknowledge that other factors also contribute to food crises, particularly in developing nations -- e.g., underfunded agricultural research and extension, inadequate infrastructure, and insecure land tenure.  However, I write to highlight another often overlooked factor in the on-going food versus fuel debate:  technological phobia that has either exacerbated the food versus fuel dilemma or doomed public policy that may have avoided a food versus fuel dilemma from arising."

I was discouraged to read about an increasing trend in my home state of Minnesota.   Minnesota Farm Drain Tiling: Better Crops, But at What Cost? by Dennis Lien and Dave Orrick,  Pioneer Press (August 31, 2012). Farmers, largely in response to high land values and high prices for corn and soybean commodity crops, are installing drainage tiles at record rates. From southeastern Minnesota's porous karst to the fertile Red River Valley, machines and workers have been surveying the land with GPS technology, digging trench lines, unrolling flexible plastic drainage tubing and burying it -- all to maximize tillable acreage and to make farming operations more productive and profitable. Farming has already been profitable in recent years in Minnesota, and many farmers have the money to, as they say, plow back into the land. Investments in the farming operation present tax advantages and serve to increase the acreage under production and the productivity of that land. There are, however, s