by Karl Haro von Mogel on 24 February 2010 This Friday and Saturday, I will be attending the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service (MOSES) Organic Farming Conference (OFC) in La Crosse, Wisconsin. By the time I had hear about it last year, it was too late to go, so this year I had it marked on my calendar, and I contacted the organizers months ago about a media pass. Now with my cheap hotel room reserved and fuel in the car I’m all set to go. What will I find at the conference?
This is the first conference of this type that I have gone to, although I have been to an organic show-and-tell shindig here at the UW, this conference will be new to me. From looking at the schedule, it seems that it is mostly oriented toward farmers, but there should be plenty for me to check out.
The first thing I will see when I get there is the seed swap, which will be a first for me. There is a possibility that I will be able to interview someone about seed saving and/or backyard breeding. Otherwise I’ll take a good look around and maybe get some comments from people.
Saturday will be an interesting day for me, though.
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by Karl Haro von Mogel on 12 February 2010 A few weeks ago I talked to Matthew Herper from Forbes Magazine, he was writing a story about Monsanto and was looking for some outside perspectives, and had already talked to Pam Ronald. I ended up talking ad nauseum about the blog and what we hope to do with it. Shortly thereafter, the story went up, called The Planet versus Monsanto, and after reading it, I thought, aw, no plug! It’s a good story,
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by Karl Haro von Mogel on 11 February 2010 I just received word* that a special webcast will be happening tomorrow, Friday the 12th, called Now Serving 9 Billion: Global Dialogue on Meeting Food Needs for the Next Generation. The webcast will occur from 10 am-12 pm U.S. Eastern Standard Time (-5 GMT), which will be 9-11 am in the U.S. Central time zone where I am. Here are the panelists that will be appearing in the webcast:
- Dr. Nina V. Fedoroff; Science and Technology Advisor to the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and to the Administrator of USAID Rajiv Shah. Author of “Mendel In The Kitchen” Bio here.
- Dr. Robert Paarlberg, Wellesley College. He is the Betty Freyhof Johnson Class of 1944 Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College and Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. Author of: Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out Of Africa. Bio here.
- Dr. Calestous Juma, Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Professor of the Practice of International Development. Director, Science, Technology, Globalization Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Bio here.
- Mark Cantley, former Advisory in the Directorate for Biotechnology, Agriculture and Food, of the Directorate-General for Research of the European Commission, and formerly head of the OECD’s Biotechnology Unit. Bio here.
- Frank Sesno, moderator, Director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University, Emmy-award winning journalist, and host and creator of Planet Forward, a ground-breaking web-to-television show seen on PBS. Bio here.
- Dr. Gale Buchanan, CAST report lead author; College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, The University of Georgia, Tifton Campus; former USDA Under-Secretary for Research, Education and Economics. Bio here.
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by Karl Haro von Mogel on 9 February 2010 Ah, it is so nice to have a video program that does what I want it to do! This is an interview with Robert McDonald at The Nature Conservancy about genetic engineering, agriculture, and how the panel discussion went that he participated in at the 2009 BIO Convention in Atlanta last May. What I find refreshing about The Nature Conservancy’s position on genetic engineering – agnostic – is that it allows them to criticize
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by Karl Haro von Mogel on 9 February 2010  For the second week in a row on my radio show on WSUM in Madison, I talked about plant genetics. Not that I’m trying to bore a general audience by discussing this topic over and over again, it’s just not every fortnight that you get to go to Berkeley to grub and elbow-rub with Michael Pollan. So naturally, I invited Anastasia on to the show for a half-hour discussion about blogging about plant genetics, our weekend in the Bay Area, Dinner with Michael, and we also talked about his new book, Food Rules. If you happened to listen to the mp3 I put up from our conversation at the Maize Genetics Conference, and you care to compare how we sound talking about genetic engineering 11 months later, I have just uploaded it to Inoculated Media, feel free to hop on over there to punch up the audio. The interview begins at 18:30 into the program.
One of the things that we discovered while kicking around my place of origin is that we could very easily keep talking about GE crops and related issues until our voices ran out. We covered a lot of ground and have since thought that it would be nice to share some of those thoughts in more ways than just through written paragraphs. We recorded a video conversation right after we got back to my folk’s place from Chez Panisse, which I should have edited pretty soon, for example, and then there’s also the interview for my radio show. But we would like to do more. What do y’all think about a Biofortified podcast?
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