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Are you a sustainable Southeastern farmer? If so, the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) would like you to fill out their survey to help focus future research efforts at North Carolina State University. This survey is part of an effort to understand farmers' opinions on the benefits and challenges of cover crop use, and to estimate current levels of cover cropping on Southeast farms.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a proposed rule for the new Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP) that intends to spur the expansion of dedicated non-food crops for renewable energy and biofuel production. A public comment period will continue for 60 days after the rule is published in the Federal Register. "Advancing biomass and biofuel production holds the potential to create green jobs, which is one of the many ways the Obama Administration is working to rebuild and revitalize rural America," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. "Facilities that produce renewable fuel from biomass have to be designed, built and operated. Additionally, BCAP will stimulate biomass production and that will benefit producers and provide the materials necessary to generate clean energy and reduce carbon pollution."

For a limited time Florida Organic Growers (FOG) and collaborators are offering free social justice certification; free technical assistance, marketing, and publicity; and free research data on customer priorities and support for fair employer and trade practices. FOG was awarded a grant in 2009 to bring the Agricultural Justice Project to the South, and is seeking farms, processors, grocery stores and food co-ops that want to capitalize on the recent stir about social justice and fair trade. The Agricultural Justice Project (AJP) is a non-profit initiative to create fairness and equity in our food system through the development of social justice standards for organic and sustainable agriculture.

Florida Organic Growers (FOG) invites consumers and specialty crop growers to provide their input in a short survey that will assist in better understanding important agriculture issues. The responses will help inform agricultural researchers, service providers and policy makers about the challenges faced by Florida specialty crop producers and provide insight into consumers' and growers' perceptions about organic production.

Agriculture Secretary Vilsack announced that USDA will develop a new, flexible framework for animal disease traceability in the United States, and undertake several other actions to further strengthen its disease prevention and response capabilities. "After concluding our listening tour on the National Animal Identification System in 15 cities across the country, receiving thousands of comments from the public and input from States, Tribal Nations, industry groups, and representatives for small and organic farmers, it is apparent that a new strategy for animal disease traceability is needed," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. "I've decided to revise the prior policy and offer a new approach to animal disease traceability with changes that respond directly to the feedback we heard."

While the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is considered the most influential federal agency when it comes to our food system, many other government agencies combine to deeply affect what, and how, food is raised and consumed in the U.S., finds a new paper published by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP). "Beyond the USDA: How other government agencies can support a healthier, more sustainable food system," by Maggie Gosselin, reports on federal agencies and their role in administering programs, grants and regulatory oversight that affect food. This agency-by-agency review covers food safety regulations, community economic and housing development, health education, food procurement, labor standards, trade negotiations and transportation infrastructure.

With funding from a three-year SARE Professional Development grant, the Farmers' Market Federation of New York used market experiences and research to develop an innovative new "Farmers Market Manager Training Manual." The manual describes the role of market managers and provides checklists, sample policies, worksheets, and other hands-on tools to help managers start markets, build market communities, and harness the power of these communities to sustain the markets and their local food systems.

Organic Link is the new email newsletter from the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF). Sign up for the newsletter now, and you'll get monthly updates on all the work the Organic Farming Research Foundation is doing to transform agriculture. It will give links to information on research developments, policy actions, and OFRF events.

The nation's organic farms and ranches have higher average sales and higher average production expenses than U.S. farms overall, according to results of the 2008 Organic Production Survey released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. "This was USDA's first wide-scale survey of organic producers, and it was undertaken in direct response to the growing interest in organics among consumers, farmers, businesses, policymakers and others," said Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan.

Three portable greenhouses outside a Baltimore high school campus provide a model that could be repeated around the city, bringing locally grown food to schoolchildren and to poor neighborhoods where fresh produce is rare, urban farming advocates say. The plastic-skinned hoop greenhouses are known as Hoop Village, and supporters gathered there earlier this month to celebrate the harvest of its first crops--including arugula, kale, radish, Swiss chard and spinach. The greens will be provided to the cafeterias at some city elementary schools starting this winter. And students at the three schools on the Lake Clifton campus are helping to raise the food they'll be eating.

The Pork Checkoff is funding research to determine the pork industry's carbon footprint. Greg Thoma, a professor of agriculture chemical engineering at the University of Arkansas, presented the research team's preliminary results Jan. 20 during Minnesota Pork Congress in Minneapolis. The team put together a life cycle assessment to learn how much greenhouse gas emissions are made in the process of delivering one serving of pork to a U.S. consumer. Their evaluation worked through the process of growing crops for feed to disposal of the meat's packaging. The result: It takes somewhere between 1.8 to 2.7 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalents for a four ounce piece of pork to be cooked and consumed.

The sign-up for the FY2010 Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP) Organic Initiative has begun. The National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is taking applications and the deadline for applications will be March 12, 2010. For FY 2010, applications will be treated as two separate ranking pools, one for transitioning farmers and ranchers without any current certified organic production, and one for existing certified organic producers who are either adding new transitional production or adopting new conservation measures on existing organic production. In both cases, those in these special funding pools will be competing only against others in the special pool rather than in the much, much larger general EQIP pool. ATTRA will keep up-to-date resources for this program on its Organic EQIP page.

While we all cheer this Administration's emerging emphasis on local and regional food production, let’s not forget that the Food Safety Modernization Act (S 510) now on its way to the Senate floor could erect a formidable barrier to those markets for many small and moderate sized farms. The Act would considerably ramp up FDA regulation on farms that even minimally process their crops and sell them to restaurants, food coops, groceries, schools or to wholesale markets. One of the best ideas for improving this legislation has been introduced by Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). The Stabenow Amendment is called the Growing Safe Food Act (S. 2758) and it would create a national food safety training and technical assistance program. If you value safe, local, and healthy food, please call your Senators and encourage them to co-sponsor the Growing Safe Food Act.

This past year the first Pest Management Strategic Plan (PMSP) for an organic crop was created for organic potato production in the West, creating the first organic PMSP and paving the way for similar plans for other organic crops. The Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides (NCAP) spearheaded the plan, with Organic Farming Research Foundation grant support. PMSPs help to identify research, education and regulatory needs for a particular crop and region. The three year planning process for an organic potato PMSP included input from 40 workgroup members in five states -- California, Colorado, Idaho, Oregon and Washington.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) is awarding $900,000 to the Wallace Center at Winrock International, Little Rock, Ark., to run the Healthy Urban Food Enterprise Development (HUFED) Center. This center will work to increase access to healthy, affordable foods, including locally produced agricultural products to underserved communities. "This ambitious effort will create a national center to help establish local and regional food systems and get healthy food into low-income communities, which are important components of USDA's 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food' initiative," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

California Department of Food and Agriculture Secretary A.G. Kawamura announced three listening sessions to discuss proposed regulations for the State Organic Program. Proposed additions to the California Code of Regulations will make specific procedures for registration, spot inspections, and sampling as authorized in COPA 2003. The additions will also incorporate by reference the National Organic Program regulations. The proposed organic regulations can be found on the CDFA website at: www.cdfa.ca.gov/is/Regulations.html.

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) has posted an article with updated information about USDA's NRCS High Tunnel program. USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service has launched a 3-year pilot program to provide cost-share funding to farmers who want to extend the growing season on their farms by using high tunnels (sometimes referred to as hoop houses). At the time of the December announcement there were 37 states that opted to participate in the pilot. Now there are 40.

Increased demand in metropolitan areas for locally grown food could have a positive impact on neighboring rural economies in southwest Iowa, a new report from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture shows. Iowa State University economist David Swenson worked with the Leopold Center, two local food councils and the Southwest Iowa Food and Farming Initiative (SWIFFI) to conduct an analysis for 10 counties in southwest Iowa. Results showed that a modest increase in fruit and vegetable production could bring an additional $2.67 million in labor income and the equivalent of 45 farm-level jobs to the region. Swenson's report, "The Economic Impact of Fruit and Vegetable Production in Southwest Iowa Considering Local and Nearby Metropolitan Markets," is available on the Leopold Center Web site.

The 2009 Minnesota Directory of Organic Buyers lists approximately 100 Minnesota-based retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers, and other buyers of organic commodities and food products. Within the Directory, buyer listings are organized by company name, county, and product. Listings include company contact information as well as company purchasing preferences to help farmers better connect with buyers.

Growing vegetables in the Rockies is challenging for many reasons, but Montana horticulturists Bob Gough and Cheryl Moore-Gough have written a new book that explains how to do it. The "Guide to Rocky Mountain Vegetable Gardening" is the couple's fifth book in five years, the latest edition in the Cool Springs Press vegetable gardening series and the only vegetable guide designed specifically for the tough zones of the Rocky Mountain states, said Gough, a professor of horticulture and associate dean for academic programs in the College of Agriculture at Montana State University. The 320-page book advises beginning to intermediate gardeners how to plant and harvest more than 40 types of vegetables in the region that includes Montana, Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming.

Farmers cultivating organic produce often use winter cover crops to add soil organic matter, improve nutrient cycling and suppress weeds. Now these producers can optimize cover crop use by refining seeding strategies, thanks to work by an Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientist. ARS horticulturist Eric Brennan, looked at how seeding rates and planting patterns affected cover crop performance. Brennan’s findings suggest that increased seeding rates could provide organic producers with a cost-effective weed control strategy.

USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) will release the results of the Organic Production Survey on Wednesday, Feb. 3 at 3 p.m. ET. The survey, which is a follow-on to the 2007 Census of Agriculture, is USDA's first-ever, wide-scale survey of organic producers. NASS will publish state- and national-level data on organic farm numbers and acreage, sales, production, marketing practices and more.

The Leopold Center and the Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination jointly funded swine air quality work recently published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene (Thorne et al. 2009). The overall goal was measure and compare airborne contaminant concentrations inside and outside upwind (100 ft) and downwind (500 ft) of hoop barns and conventional confinement buildings. The study also investigated variables influencing contaminant concentrations such as number of pigs, pig housing density, temperature, wind speed, season and humidity. Statistical tests that compared contaminants between hoop barns and conventional confinement buildings demonstrated significantly higher levels of hydrogen sulfide and odor in confinements and significantly higher total microbes and viable bacteria in hoops. Hoops were found to produce substantial toxicant air emissions and cannot be considered less polluting than conventional confinement operations.

The new Farm to School Tips, Tools & Guidelines for Food Distribution & Food Safety manual is intended to provide information, insight and useful tools for farmers and school food service directors interested in FTS program participation, distribution and food safety. The manual also includes information on two new tools for use by farmers and school food service directors that are currently being used in Oklahoma: a distribution cost template which will help producers understand the true costs of produce delivery and assists in the determination of "farm gate" values for their crops, helping them to make determinations regarding the optimal delivery methods for their FTS produce and a produce calculator which will help farmers determine the amount of produce to be delivered to meet the demands of a school nutrition program and figure cost per serving of produce. Both calculators are downloadable at www.okfarmtoschool.com.

To develop informed business development strategies for Wisconsin farmers and other supply chain start-ups, the UW-Madison Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems (CIAS) and UW-Extension Agricultural Innovation Center studied and documented eleven models of regional food aggregation and distribution. "Scaling-up: Meeting the demand for local food" [PDF/12MB] highlights several local food case studies.

The persistence and movement of transgenic DNA in agricultural and natural systems is largely unknown. This movement poses a threat of horizontal gene transfer and possible proliferation of genetically modified DNA into the general environment. To assess the persistence of transgenic DNA in a field of Roundup Ready® corn, researchers from Canada quantified the presence of the transgene for glyphosate tolerance within a soil food web. They identified the cp4 epsps transgene in bulk soil microarthropods, nematodes, macroarthropods and earthworms sampled within the corn cropping system. These results are the first to demonstrate the persistence of transgenic crop DNA residues within a food web.

Most Americans have never heard of the term "sustainable food." Tell someone its your career focus and be prepared to explain yourself. Rest assured... this site understands what you mean with no elevator speech required! Typically, job listings are dispersed among environmental conservation and individual non-profit websites. But what if job seekers new to this and aren't familiar with all of the non-profits that specialize in sustainable food? That is where this website comes in! It will provide job seekers with the most up-to-date job opportunities available in the domestic sustainable food sector.

Extending the growing season to year-round in a Northern climate, and using only renewable energy to do so, Minnesota organic farmer Steven Schwen, explains how his thermal banking greenhouse works, and with the help of the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) grant, how it came into being. This video is intended for all farmers, and those interested in renewable energy practices that may serve as successful models toward a sustainable future.

The Patch-Burn Grazing Team, an Iowa State University restoration ecology team whose work is funded in part by the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture’s Ecology Initiative, is working to change the perception that fire is bad. Team members are looking at both the promise and the practice for adoption of a grasslands management technique called patch-burn grazing. "This project uses a new method of burning called fire-and-grazing interaction, which allows animals to follow the fire that is applied to specific portions of the landscape where the fresh, new, green growth emerges," said David Engle, a professor in natural resource ecology and management at Oklahoma State University, who began the project while at Iowa State University.