11/2/06 Rural American leans left & Beef Back in K

The GOP may not be able to count on rural America in next week's mid-term elections. According to a Center for Rural Strategies poll - the rural electorate in contested House and Senate races has moved to the Left in the past month. Among participating voters in districts with contested House races - 52-percent favor Democrats versus 39-percent in favor of the Republican candidate. In a September poll of the same areas - participants were split evenly between parties. In contested Senate races - rural voters favor Democratic candidates by four-percent - reversing a four-point Republican lead in the September poll. After three years of being shut out of the Korean market - U.S. Ag Secretary Mike Johanns says the shipment is a step forward for the U.S. beef industry. But he says there's still more to be done. JOHANNS: It's obviously a very small shipment. We still have work to do with Korea. In order for this to be a viable market we need to make sure we have solved the issues relating to tolerances and how their going to work with us. But I don't want to minimize it. It is good news. We finally have beef back into this marketplace. It is our hope that this first beef is just a step to get that market open and U.S. beef back on the shelf for Koreans. Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Susan Allen. The proverbial question begs an answer, is organic food healthier than conventionally grown? One Christian Zorb of the Federal Research Center for Nutrition and Food answered this question once and for all with a resounding, no. In an extremely controlled setting, wheat fields near Basel Switzerland were planted with identical varieties of wheat that received the same crop rotation and tilling. Zorb and his buddies at the research center than did a series of analysis of the majority of compounds that make wheat, wheat. Amino acids, sugars, urea and vitamin B5 were among some of the 50 plus components measured and Zorb found virtually no difference, hear me again, no difference in organic or conventionally grown wheat. If you still can't bring yourself to believe that organic food is no more nutritious than conventional, read the paper Mr. Zorb published in the Journal of Ag and Food Chemistry. As I have said before, there may be many valid reasons you and other consumers choose organic. Better nutrition just isn't one of them. Thanks Susan. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.