Dennis T. Avery
They May Not Harvest The Usual Bumper Crop of Government Cash In The Years Ahead
CHURCHVILLE, Va.–For the New Year, farmers looking to Washington will see a new president, George W. Bush, the first female secretary of agriculture, Ann Veneman–and a huge, bipartisan farm problem.
If farmers are expecting the next Congress to wave its [...]
Dennis T. Avery
Thanks To Technological Advances In Farming, We Can Both Feed The World’s People And Take Care of the Environment
CHURCHVILLE, Va.–We are told the baby Jesus was born in a stable because there was no room for his family at the inn in Bethlehem.
Many people say the overcrowding in Bethlehem that night 2,000 years [...]
Dennis T. Avery
A Growing World That Wants To Both Preserve Habitats And Feed Inself Will Require Biotech Food
CHURCHVILLE, Va.–A few days ago, a panel of science advisers for the Environmental Protection Agency refused to recommend human-use approval for StarLink corn–not because it would cause allergies, but because they couldn’t prove it wouldn’t.
(StarLink is the genetically [...]
Dennis T. Avery
CHURCHVILLE, Va — India’s Vandana Shiva, one of the world’s most prominent opponents of genetically engineered crops, recently took part in a demonstration against Rice-Tec, a plant-breeding company in Alvin, Texas.
Looking out at Rice-Tec’s experimental field, Ms. Shiva said, “The plants look unhappy. The rice plants at home look very happy.”
A Rice-Tec representative [...]
Dennis T. Avery
An Ambitious Autopsy Program in New York Finds That Modern Pesticides Aren’t the Culprit in Bird Deaths
CHURCHVILLE, Va.–New evidence from New York state shows that modern pesticides aren’t killing off our bird populations.
The fear of West Nile virus, which is spread by birds has lately energized New Yorkers to collect every dead bird [...]
Dennis T. Avery
Given The Atmosphere Surrounding Biotech Crops, Aventis Should Not Have Accepted the EPA’s Feed-Only Approval of StarLink Corn
CHURCHVILLE, Va.–Why did the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offer any approval at all for StarLink corn if it thought the genetically engineered corn might trigger allergies? The potential for the corn to leak into human consumption [...]
Dennis T. Avery
In This Era Of Parents Holding Jobs No One Understands, It’s No Wonder We Get Nostalgic Over The Farmily Farm
CHURCHVILLE, Va.–My granddaughter, at 18 months of age, demands to feed the horses and chickens on our little farm. She wakes up in the morning, points to the barn and yells “Horse!” Then we [...]
Richard A. Halpern
Earlier this year, when EPA Administrator Carol Browner was refining a sweeping new clean water rule, she said it would finally enable us, twenty-eight years after passage of the Clean Water Act, to “finish the job of restoring the nation’s waters”— in only another fifteen or twenty-five years. The environmental groups pushing for [...]
Dennis T. Avery
CHURCHVILLE, Va. — Chinese peasants and today’s organic farmers have long shared an important idea: We can’t afford to waste our wastes.
Today, that includes “biosolids”–residue from sewage treatment plants. Some of my neighbors are nervous about living near fields where biosolids are being applied.
Oddly enough, they seem totally secure about the idea of [...]
Dennis T. Avery
American Farmers Could Double Their Exports If Farm Trade Opened Up With India And China
CHURCHVILLE, Va. – The presidential debates finally got around to farm policy, and we discovered Vice President Al Gore has moved sharply to the left on yet another issue.
A year ago, Gore was asserting that American farmers needed access [...]
