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Marc Pacchioli, known as Crophugger on Twitter, has written an excellent post on secondary plant metabolites on HubPages: Natural Plant Chemicals: Vital Nutrients for a Healthy Diet, Natural Chemical Arsenal, or Both? What are these chemicals that plants produce? What are they for? For the answers to these and many more questions about plant secondary metabolites, check out the teaser below and continue on to read Marc’s full post.  
Caduceus with DNA via Ancestry.com Francis Thicke, agronomist and organic dairy farmer in Iowa, asks: Do you think there are unanswered questions about the health effects of GE foods? I have heard GE critiques frequently contend that there have been very few feeding trials on the health effects of GE foods, and that in the feeding trials that have been done, the results have raised questions about the safety of GE foods. For starters, what is your opinion on the case of Arpad Pusztai and the results of his GE potato feeding trials that abruptly got him fired. Has anyone ever replicated his experiment? There are a lot of important things to discuss in relation to these questions.
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Alfalfa by TwoWings via Wikimedia Commons. Alfalfa is an awesome plant that is quite unique among field crops. It’s a legume, which means it can fix nitrogen (meaning less nitrogen fertilizer needs to be added) as well as being one of very few perennial crops, which means it can be left in the field to grow year after year and keep being harvested. It’s roots can grow quite deep so it can be very drought tolerant. It produces a high quality forage for animals, and is especially great for dairy cows. One problem with alfalfa is that, as it is left to grow for multiple years, weeds can accumulate and the alfalfa stand will need to be plowed under. Weeds can be controlled to some degree with harvesting at just the right time (before the weeds make seeds) but at some point that isn’t enough. Enter Roundup Ready alfalfa which can be sprayed with the herbicide glyphosate to control weeds while leaving the alfalfa healthy.
Continue reading… As described briefly in my last post, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack is trying to find a regulatory solution to the plague of lawsuits regarding coexistence of biotech and organic. While there are some positive aspects to the proposed partial deregulation, there are better ways to ensure that all farmers get to grow what they want. First, there already exists case law to solve problems between individual farmers. The two current big lawsuits (sugar beets,alfalfa) aren’t about individual farmers, though, they are carefully orchestrated efforts by special interest groups. Anyway, as I understand it, if two neighboring farmers can’t work out things on their own, the case law is clear. Hopefully if I have it wrong someone with relevant expertise will stop by and comment. When things move from one person’s land to another person’s land, that is trespassing. Every person has a responsibility to keep their things to themselves, using reasonable methods to control their things.
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Extraordinary claims… require extraordinary evidence.
Within the past few weeks, a letter written by a Dr. Don Huber to Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack has been making the rounds on the ‘net. The letter was allegedly given to the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, and they claim to have confirmed that it was written by Dr. Huber. You can find the full text of the letter on the FRFA site with the ominous title Researcher: Roundup or Roundup-Ready Crops May Be Causing Animal Miscarriages and Infertility.
The story has been picked up by many bloggers, including Jill Richardson, and even made an appearance on Reuters. I haven’t seen any posts dedicated to a critical analysis of the letter, instead there is a rush to assume that it is correct, despite the lack of citations or other evidence provided for the extraordinary claims in the letter. The story is often accompanied with horrific pictures of dead fetal calves and the words “Emergency!” and “Danger!
Continue reading…