President Dmitry Medvedev orders immediate inquiry into potential destruction of world's oldest seed bank Guardian By John Vidal, environment editor The Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, has ordered an immediate inquiry into the potential destruction of the world's oldest seed bank following a court case and a Twitter campaign by Guardian readers and others. The fate of the station appeared to be sealed last week when a court ruled in favour of the Pavlovsk research station and its surrounding farmland being turned into private housing. It holds the world's largest fruit collections and was protected by 12 Russian scientists during the second world war who chose to starve to death rather than eat the unique collection of seeds and plants which they were guarding during the 900-day siege of Leningrad.

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AARP Bulletin By Beth Goulart On an unseasonably hot day in early June, Carole Price went shopping at Whole Foods in Austin, Texas, the flagship store. On this day, the lean 51-year-old unloaded half-and-half, sharp cheddar cheese, and yogurt, among assorted leafy vegetables and other goods from her cart. Each dairy product that rode the conveyor belt toward the beeping scanner was marked by the contrasting half-moons of the “USDA organic” label. Carol Price always buys organic dairy. “I don’t want the antibiotics that they put in regular milk,” she says. “And I prefer to support a smaller-area industry than a big mega-farm.” Her routine is becoming a familiar sight. More and more Americans are selecting organics to fill their cabinets and bellies. Last year, Americans spent nearly $25 billion on organic food—as much as the gross domestic product of the entire nation of Estonia. Our organic food spending has quadrupled in the 10 years since the word “organic” took on a legal meaning, and a lagging economy didn’t slow it down. In 2009, organic food sales grew by 5.1 percent, as compared with only 1.6 percent of overall food sales. Of all American consumers, three-quarters purchase organic food and beverages; over a third of them are over 45, according to a report about organic food by the Hartman Group. And organic food spending is projected to keep on growing.

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Rapid City Journal By Adrea J. Cook After years of opposing the expansion of Roundup Ready alfalfa in South Dakota and across the nation, Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin’s endorsement of a Congressional effort to release the genetically modified perennial for fall planting frustrates alfalfa grower Pat Trask of Elm Springs. “It’s a frustrating disconnect when one’s congressional representative becomes an advocate for re-motivating the federal APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service) agency to go back in and do something that was just defeated in the Supreme Court,” Trask said. Trask was in Washington, D.C., last April when the Supreme Court heard arguments on a federal court’s permanent injunction banning the sale of Roundup Ready alfalfa. He has been an opponent of herbicide resistant alfalfa since Monsanto released the genetically altered perennial. The genetically modified forage has the potential to destroy the certified organic and conventional alfalfa industry because it will genetically contaminate and alter those crops, according to Trask.

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Rooftop Farm Report: Demeter Is In The Details The Huffington Post By Dave Snyder When I was coming up as a young nerd, tests in school were greeted with a weird mixture of anxiety and thrill. Now, lo these many years later, the feeling of being assessed can still cause a reflexive tinge of worry. Today an inspector on behalf of the Midwest Organic Services Association (MOSA) came by to make sure we were following procedure, which would determine our certification. On this blog, I've already talked about about organic certification and as I mentioned, the ethic of organic growing was very familiar to me but this was my first year being responsible for certification. The paperwork we filled out earlier in the year was very detail oriented and as the day approached, I became nervous that maybe I wasn't doing enough. Were my log entries detailed enough? What if I had improperly recorded a fertilizer application? Was my crop rotation plan reasonable? The folks at work teased me.

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The Hill By Julian Pecquet The Senate Health panel is scheduled to release a bipartisan food safety compromise later Thursday, along with a Congressional Budget Office score, several senators said. The bill would give the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the power to recall tainted food, quarantine geographical areas and access food producers’ records. The compromise was worked out between six senators who have been working on the issue: Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and ranking member Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.); food-safety bill authors Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Judd Gregg (R-N.H.); and lead co-sponsors Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Richard Burr (R-N.C.).

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