How many people know what "bovine spongiform encephalopathy" is? We know it better as "mad cow disease". I've dealt with many mad cows that put me over the fence, but that isn't the madness we're talking about. MCD (Mad Cow Disease) is a serious problem around the world that kills people who never entered a pen with the cow. I won't try to explain the disease, except that it is detectable before the meat is ever processed.

Globally, food prices have almost doubled over the last three years, and the futures for basic commodities – wheat, corn, and soybeans – have jumped up by two-thirds in the last 12 months. Since poor people in developing countries spend the bulk of their income on basic commodities, world hunger has increased significantly. High food prices have incited riots and other social unrest in about thirty countries.

This makes the issue of solving the world’s hunger crisis not just vital for those in need but also important for the political stability of the world. However, measuring the role that subsidies for corn-based ethanol play in increasing domestic hunger is more nuanced and requires a more thoughtful discussion...

How much of the run-up in food prices is attributable to [corn ethanol] fuel mandates is a question on which reasonable people disagree. Modeling done by the International Food Policy Research Institute puts the effect at between 25 and 30 percent. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization puts the impact at 10 to 15 percent, while the Bush administration reported at a May 1 press briefing that the impact of increased ethanol on global food prices is only 2 to 3 percent. - David Beckmann, President, Bread for the World, May 7, 2008

A couple of days ago, Ally wrote a blog at EverydayCitizen.com about the corn-ethanol's role in (or the lack of its role in) inflating the cost of food. Her blog attracted a record number of comments.

The world is in a food crisis! The rich American farmer is to blame. Congress just ignored this fact and passed the Farm Program Bill, over the President's veto. (They do something right, once in awhile.)

Our nation is in an economic crisis! Too many old folks expecting to collect on their retirement funds and asking for adequate health care are to blame.

Farm Program payments and the Social Security entitlements are being blamed for all our troubles. I'm to blame! I'm an active farmer, drawing Social Security and partially covering my medical expenses with Medicare benefits.

Anyone from Hays, Kansas knows the finer things in life revolve around: (1) beer, (2) German food, (3) family, and (4) Oktoberfest. Having deep roots in this pleasant Kansas town, I have always had a strong affection for the Founding Farmers who trekked across America to lay the hay bails for future generations. Placing a yardstick in time, the challenges of the Founding Farmers could be measured in drought, family illness, poverty, and America’s progression into two world wars. The names Staab, Dreiling, Pfeifer, Urban, Leiker, and Pfannenstiel may only resonate with a few reading this post, but to Hays America, the names represent an interconnected community.

There was an interesting piece in the Fashion section of the NYTimes this Sunday that is a little weird but it gets into some pretty fun stuff.

The piece follows a kid from Brooklyn who is hell bent on becoming an organic farmer. Trucker hats, Carhartts, and Pabst were the fashion but now some are putting the heart behind the fashion and finding the funk in farming.

"The Billyburg scene has changed, said Annaliese Griffin, who contributes to a blog called Grocery Guy. “Having a cool cheese in your fridge has taken the place of knowing what the cool band is, or even of playing in that band,” she said. “Our rock stars are ricotta makers.”

Recently, I received a report on our summer lunch and reading program. We call it "Nurture, Knowledge and Nutrition."

We were provided a break down of the percentage of children in each area served who qualify for the free and reduced lunch program offered in our public schools.

Even though I thought I pretty well knew the ins and outs of this initiative, the report I received shocked me.

AMES, IA—My uncle tells stories about the Farm Crisis. It was the mid-80s, and he, like many others, was struggling to keep the family farm. It’s a hard story to tell, so he leaves out how difficult it was to go through threats of bankruptcy and debt, but he lights up the room when he tells of his friends riding in convoys of tractors to Washington, DC.

For hundreds of thousands of farm families across the United States, the mid-1980s was the end of an era. For family farmers, business had been good for the past few decades, and many had invested heavily in their businesses. But, then, against the rising competitive pressure of big agribusiness, family farmers everywhere found themselves unable to keep up with their bank payments.

First, let me clarify a point from my earlier blog on biofuels and farm subsidies. Food should cost more than it does for two reasons: because the true costs of production are not factored in to the price, and because a large portion of the price is currently paid by government in the form of subsidies. What I failed to clarify adequately was my view that these costs should be borne by American consumers - not the farmers.

When I criticized farm subsidies I was not criticizing the farmers who have become dependent upon them, but rather an inefficient and undesirable way of funding agriculture.

We pride ourselves on being a democracy that thrives on a free market system. Subsidies distort free market forces, hide the true cost of food to consumers, and often encourage wasteful production practices.

For example, subsidizing diesel for agriculture encourages excessive tillage, a practice we are trying to discourage to improve soil and moisture conservation. It is generally agreed by economists in the World Trade Organization, including the American representatives, that agricultural subsidies are not a good thing, do not encourage sustainable and efficient agriculture, and should be ultimately abolished. But no country is willing to take the first step in eliminating subsidies because in doing so they put their own farmers at an immediate economic disadvantage. Only if all countries acted simultaneously would no single country be disadvantaged by acting first. Farmers would obtain the same profits, but consumers would pay more of their actual food bill at the supermarket and less of it through taxes.

As a scientist involved in agricultural production for many years, I have long said that food is undervalued and under priced in our society. Now the price of our food is set to skyrocket -- but for all the wrong reasons.

There are two reasons the price of basic foods was held at artificially low levels for so many years in America. The first was taxpayer subsidies that stimulated excess production of corn, wheat and soybeans.

These are "key" commodities because they are converted into many other forms of food, including chicken, beef and dairy products. We have been fooling ourselves with low food prices at the supermarket because we have already a paid a large portion of the price with our tax dollars.

At the same time, by depressing the value of these commodities with our overproduction, we have pushed subsistence farmers into ever deeper poverty in poor countries where subsidies are not available.

Things have been moving along at a brisk pace in the Senate agricultural committee. With a few important tweaks accomplished, the committee should be ready to present the Farm Bill to the Senate body by Thursday.

"We need to have farm policy that protects farmers from the vagaries of economic and weather cycles, but also protects the environment from unintended consequences like encouraging crop production on land that should remain in conserving uses like rangeland," said Tom Harkin (D-IA), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry. "Today, rising prices for commodities are creating powerful incentives to put marginal acres into crop production. So the need for federal policy to actively promote good conservation on working land is greater than ever."

Grassland, and particularly native grassland, is a vital part of the American landscape. The prairie pothole region in the Northern Great Plains is critical nesting and brood-rearing habitat for waterfowl. People call the prairie potholes "the duck factory," because it is responsible for producing 50 percent of the total number of ducks for eight of the 12 most common species that breed there.

However, the grasslands of the plains have been declining, with almost 25 million acres lost between 1982 and 2003. The leading cause has been conversion to cropland.