With the election of Barack Obama and the selection of a new Secretary of Agriculture, there has been an unusual amount of public discussion about food and agriculture.  If we dare to say it, it's a teachable moment when people seem to be open to hearing about at least a paragraph's worth of information about what the key issues are concerning agriculture. 

One of IWF's primary partners and an IWF Board Member, Rosalinda Guillen, has been profiled on Capital Press, one of the premier sources of information for agriculture on the West Coast.  Rosalinda is the executive director of Community to Community Development, a nonprofit women-led grassroots organization, that works for a just society and healthy communities.  Much of Rosalinda's life of organizing has been focused on assisting farmworkers and promoting sustainable agriculture.

Whatcom County farmers Roberto Bermudez and Jose Ramirez met with IWF's Kevin Fullerton to sign up for sunflower growing trials that could start next summer, if a recent grant application is successful. IWF and our frequent partner, Community to Community, joined with feed and fertilizer dealer Merritt Wolfkill on a proposal to the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program that would pay for training, planting, and harvest of experimental organic sunflower crops for participating farmers.

Startling research released this week indicates that males of all species, including human, are suffering from the flow of toxic "gender-bending" chemicals in the water around the globe.  CHEMTrust, a UK-based organization was set up in 2007 to protect humans and wildlife from harmful chemicals.  The report they just published, "Effect of Pollutants on the Reproductive Health of Male Vertebrate Wildlife - Males Under Threat" draws on 250 scientific studies on endocrine disrupters, also called gender-benders.

The report, which is available on their website in several forms, concludes:

Naturalists in Arlington County in Northern Virginia realized one by one that there were no acorns or hickory nuts this year.  Field botanist Rod Simmons went for a 2.5 mile hike in early fall and found not a one.  Not on the ground, not on the trees.  None.  He and others started calling around.  No acorns in any of the surrounding counties, none at Arlington National Cemetery.  Another naturalist, Greg Zell, got on the Internet.  Chat groups were reporting no acorns from any of the oaks anywhere.  Not in the Midwest, not in New York, not in New England, not in Nova Scotia.  

Michael Pollan was on The Journal with Bill Moyers the other evening talking about how the U.S.D.A, the government's agriculture department, manages farm subsidies and what that means for our economy, our healthcare needs, and the robustness of of our rural communities, .  Under Moyers' adept questioning, Pollan laid out the key hurdles that the nation faces around food issues.  In his nine-page "Letter to the Farmer-in-Chief" published in the New York Times on the Sunday prior to the election, Pollan had said that food policy will wind up occupying much of the new President's time, not something that has been the case almost anytime in the past.  Talking with Moyers, Pollan was pretty candid about wh