The dedicated Digest team trawls the Web for tasty news, features, op-eds and blog posts — everything from Farm Bill updates to backyard chickens, transgenic foods, E. coli recalls, and sustainable fish. No extra charge for the puns.

The big — and disappointing — Food and Farm Bill news this week is that the Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk Management blocked subsidy reform by unanimously voting against every single reform proposals and in favor, 18-0, of extending the 2002 commodity programs. Yesterday’s Digest had a few links to responses from […]

The Digest trawls the Web for tasty news, features, op-eds and blog posts — from Farm Bill updates to backyard chickens, transgenic foods, E. coli recalls, and sustainable fish. No extra charge for the puns.

A roundup of all the SOLE-food-related news articles, features, op-eds, and blog posts we think you’ll find tasty.

Longtime readers will know that we’re constantly tinkering with the Digest, the roundup of news articles, feature stories, opinion pieces, and blog posts. We know many of you read it, but it would be helpful to know how you read it, and why, so we’ve concocted a brief survey we’d appreciate you taking.

Spring is sprung — even though it is officially over in a few days — and our farmers markets are finally showing some local produce besides last years carrots.

Most importantly, asparagus is here. I have been buying and grilling it for almost a week now, and I don’t see Noshette and I getting bored of […]

Big Food is scouring the globe for exotic — or the cheapest — ingredients to compete in a more global marketplace, not unlike automakers shipping in parts from all over, and asks “is the trend to assemble food from so many far-flung locations heightening the risks of contamination?” (Ya think?) Rhetorical questions aside, there’s some interesting stuff in here about how the globalization of food brands has contributed to their dependence on chemical ingredients, so that Pizza Hut consumers in China can taste the same exact crappy pizza as in Chicago. The second article looks at the FDA’s efforts to investigate Haiti poisonings from fake Chinese glycerin in 1996, which demonstrate Chinese officials’ intransigence and the regulatory failings that allowed a virtually identical poisoning to occur 10 years later in Panama. “The cases further illustrate what happens when nations fail to police the global pipeline of pharmaceutical ingredients,” says the article…and, by extension, of food ingredients. Or anything, really

The ethanol boom is inspiring some surprising behavior in the food and farming community. Philip Brasher, the Des Moines Register’s Washington Correspondent, wrote about pushback from the food and drink industry over ethanol in Thursday’s newspaper. The article illustrates how the ethanol boom is leading to some hypocritical demands and Machiavellian strategies.
Let’s start with […]

We’re surprised that Japan — a nation where rice is almost sacred and is generally opposed to GMOs–is letting researchers tinker with the rice gene.(http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/06/11/national/w140450D64.DTL”>San Francisco Chronicle)http://www.record-eagle.com/2007/jun/12garden.htm”>An Edible Schoolyard in Traverse City, Michigan (Record Eagle)Sniffing around CAFOs: A team of researchers from eight universities kicked off a multiyear emissions measurement project this week…. (http://www.farmnews-iowa.com/News/articles.asp?articleID=5386″>Farm News - Iowa)Which exit has the peaches?: New Jersey, long the target of jokes about chemical plants and toxic waste dumps, is expecting a superb crop of peaches this year from the state’s much ignored agricultural lands…. (http://americanagriculturist.com/index.aspx?ascxid=fpStory&fpsid=28705&fpstid=2″>American Agriculturalist)Fixated on nitrogen fixation: Nitrogen-fixing plants like soybeans, clover and alfalfa are often planted in rotation with other crops because they naturally extract nitrogen from the air and store it in the soil…. (Full article http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/104/24/10282″>here) ( http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2007/june/science/rr_nitrate.html”>ES&T News)Ethanol ripples: The insatiable demand for corn by ethanol plants (driven by America’s insatiable demand for transportation fuels) is driving up the cost of milk, eggs, pork, beef, and other foods…. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/14/AR2007061402008_pf.html”>Washington Post)Bye-bye birdies: Urban sprawl and industrial agriculture are causing steep declines in the populations of “backyard birds” like Evening Grosbeak, the Eastern Meadowlark, the Greater Scaup, and the Boreal Chickadee, according to a report from the National Audubon Society.

The Bay Area is in the middle of its short season for fresh apricots.
The apricot is thought to have originated in China, with first cultivation by humans around 2000 BCE. The fruit spread west along the Silk Road as caravans carried gems, spices, ceramics and other fine goods between East and West. By the […]

NEWStk: The amount of organic farmland in the European Union has doubled since 1998. The EU has agreed to rules for an “EU organic label” for foods that have 95% or more of the ingredients produced using organic methods. One part of the rule is receiving some criticism: an allowance for 0.9% of genetically-modified content when it is “technically unavoidable.” (Houston Chronicle (AP))Ethanol projected to use 30% of U.S. corn crop in 2012 (Reuters)FEATURES & COMMENTARYReduced pesticide use in Britain helps river otter populations rebound.

On Monday the New York Times reported, as plenty have elsewhere, that the USDA is close to approving a list of non-organically certified ingredients that can be used in certified organic food.

Death, where is thy sting: This excellent update on the search for the cause of colony collapse disorder in bees says that neonicotinoids have probably been ruled out, cell phone signals are laughed at, and most signs are pointing to a biological pathogen or parasite. (Los Angeles Times)

Naming names and kicking ass: The Environmental Working Group will unveil its new 2007 Farm Bill Database of agricultural subsidy recipients at noon tomorrow, June 12. Watch for the link from EWG Prez Ken Cook’s blog, Mulch.

The Associated Press has a sneak peek at the stars of the new data, such as Texas oil billionaire Lee M. Bass, who got $242,787 from 2003-2005, and former NBA star Scottie Pippen, who received $78,945 in conservation subsidies for land he controls in Arkansas.

Transparency and containers: A new food-tracking technology called HarvestMark aims to let consumers look up produce specially packaged in HarvestMark-tagged containers to learn where the food was grown, when it was picked, and which crew picked and packaged it. While we think these are valuable things to know, we don’t need more packaging, period. (Statesman/AP)

Hungry world: The U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization has released its June 2007 “Food and Food Outlook” forecast, showing that food expenditures worldwide will rise a record amount, mainly because of biofuels cutting into cheap feed costs. Developing countries will be affected most. To illustrate, the New York Times reports that soaring pork prices in China are as painful for Chinese as gas prices are for Americans.

On Wednesday night, I attended an interesting panel discussion about the Food and Farm Bill, which is being written in the House Agriculture subcommittees and will be taken up by the Senate later in the summer. The panel was sponsored by the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA, the group that runs […]