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Agriculture Briefs Rob Sivak Washington 3 Feb 2002 
In this edition of Agriculture Briefs, the U.S. Agriculture Secretary says biosecurity remains a top priority of her administration…the U.S. Congress prepares to resume debate on new farm legislation…and researchers unveil a gene-altered alfalfa plant that thrives in poor soils.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Anne Venneman says that since the September eleventh attacks on New York and Washington, keeping the American food supply safe from terrorism has become the top priority at the Department of Agriculture. In a nationally televised interview (C-SPAN) marking her first year in office, Secretary Venneman said the Agriculture Department is also playing a key role in the Bush Administration's Homeland Security operations:
"We continue to be on our guard, to make sure that our programs are as strong as possible, to make sure that we are examining best management practices all through the food chain. From the on-farm level to the transportation, distribution, and processing levels every level of the food chain, we want to make sure that our food supply is protected, and we are taking every avenue that we can," she said.
Secretary Venneman noted that the Defense Appropriations Act President Bush recently signed into law includes $360 million for the Agriculture Department to "beef up" its biosecurity programs. These include stationing hundreds of extra USDA officials at all U.S. ports and border posts, stricter policing of slaughterhouse and food processing operations, and stepped up surveillance of U.S. farms and ranches for signs of suspicious, as well as natural, disease outbreaks.
The U.S. Congress is back in session after a winter recess, and controversial new agriculture legislation is back on its agenda. The House of Representatives passed its version of a new Farm Bill last October, but the Senate's efforts with a similar version stalled in December, amid partisan bickering.
The proposed ten-year, $70 billion Farm Bill is a response to several years of record-low commodity prices and cries of financial distress from the U.S. farm community. The new measure would restore what supporters call a "financial safety net" under farmers by re-authorizing many of the crop subsidies and farm income supports the current law has been phasing out. But efforts by Senate Democrats last year to limit the size of those subsidies and to target them at the neediest farmers met stiff Republican opposition.
Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran, a Republican, said he's hopeful that when debate on the Farm Bill resumes, lawmakers from both parties will find ways to compromise. "Individual farmers, they don't farm as Republicans and Democrats, they're just farmers, and we ought to rise above partisan politics and do what's right for American agriculture," he said.
President Bush has also urged the Congress to avoid too much political wrangling over the Farm Bill, and to find a way to be generous to farmers in a time of badly strained federal budgets.
Crop researchers in the midwestern American state of Minnesota have created a genetically engineered strain of alfalfa that thrives in very poor soils. They say the development could mean higher yields of the important feed grain in the United States and eventually, other parts of the world.
Crop scientist Debra Samac and colleagues at the U.S. Agricultural Research Service laboratory in St. Paul, Minnesota, endowed an alfalfa plant with a root gene from another alfalfa strain that makes the modified plant more tolerant of acid, aluminum-rich soils. That type of soil, which is toxic to many important crop plants, is found on forty percent of the world's farmland.
The scientist says the added gene also improves the plant's ability to produce nitrogen, an important plant nutrient and soil enhancer.
Debra Samac believes the successful engineering of the acid-tolerant alfalfa suggests that other crops could be improved in the same way: "The same gene can be transferred into other crops, such as beans and even corn, possibly cassava and chick peas, that are important in other countries," she said. "And we do have some evidence that the alfalfa gene can work in some other crops such as oats. It is too early to know for sure whether it will be useful in those other crops, but the evidence that we have so far suggests that it will be."
The American crop researcher says the new acid-tolerant alfalfa is suited only for U.S. soils and climate. But she says local adaptations of the plant could make it available to farmers elsewhere within a few years.
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