03/09/05 Our budget view; W.H.I.P. for salmon

A group of U.S. Senators are getting into the battle over future ag budgets. And it comes at a time when both the Senate and the House this week plan to officially respond to President Bush's proposed fiscal year 2006 budget by issuing versions of their own budgets. The coalition of thirty-two Democratic Senators, eighteen Republicans, and one Independent, recently wrote a letter to the Senate Budget Committee saying there should be no more cuts in ag spending, as proposed under the President's budget. Through the letter, Senators point out that federal commodity payments have already come in at $16 billion dollars less than projected under the 2002 Farm Bill, and that U.S. farm policy for commodities amounts to one half of one per cent of the total federal budget while representing seventeen per cent of the nation's gross domestic product. The three Northwest states are among the beneficiaries of U.S.D.A.'s recent release of Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program Salmon Habitat Restoration funds. U.S.D.A. released $2.8 million dollars to Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, along with Alaska, California, and Maine to help landowners restore salmon habitat through projects ranging from improving gravel spawning beds to removing agricultural runoff. U.S.D.A. reports that more than 18,000 participants have enrolled 2.8 million acres in the voluntary program over the next five years. Now with today's "Food Forethought", here's Susan Allen. ALLEN: Buried in the New York Times most undesirable local, lower left column, tiny headline, was a piece that undoubtedly was overlooked. I am guessing that it was designated to run in that dire position under a column that betrayed the text precisely because the subject, plant biotechnology happens not to be most popular in publications of this sort. Now if you lived in Addis Abba, or Nairobi most likely this would be the lead story. And quite a story it is. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have generously donated 42.6 million dollars to the Institute of One World Health to support the dynamic work of Dr. Jay Keasling who is currently in the process of taking bio engineered sweet wormwood plants and developing them into an affordable Malaria Drug. Despite biotechnologies' many naysayers, technology visionaries like Bill Gates are convicted and convinced that plant biotechnology will be paramount in reducing the over 300 million cases of Malaria diagnosed each year that desperately ravage third world countries. I'm Susan Allen and this is Food Forethought.