01/19/07 CSP Funding & Orange Cauliflower

CSP Funding & Orange Cauliflower. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. Senate Ag chair Tom Harkin went "head to head" with the Bush Administration on his long-thwarted conservation security program  part of the '02 farm bill. Harkin admitted congress capped CSP funding  but accused USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service of making it too difficult and costly for many producers to participate&while limiting CSP's scope to watersheds  only. HARKIN: So rather than the nationwide program that we enacted, the program has been limited to just 12.6 % of the watersheds in the continental United States. It was found in a Canadian field nearly 30 years ago  an orange cauliflower that may help scientists find a way to make food crops more nutritious. After eight years of working with the orange gene found in the cauliflower - a molecular biologist at the ARS U.S. Plant, Soil and Nutrition Laboratory in Ithaca, New York is able to induce high levels of beta-carotene in food crops. Beta-carotene is a carotenoid  fruit and vegetable compounds that the body converts into essential vitamins - and uses as antioxidants beneficial to health. Humans convert it into vitamin A. It is hoped this research will lead to strategies for increasing carotenoid content in food crops for improving human nutrition and health. Vitamin A deficiency has been reported to affect some 250 million children worldwide. Now here's today's Washington Grange Report. (GRANGE) That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.