on a side note: News on GMO wheat
Small-scale regional grain initiatives continue to spread throughout North America and beyond, with many looking back to the older varieties of wheat-- landrace and heritage -- for genetic traits that show resistance to disease, and also, from the bakers perspective, to these varieties that present flavors and texture not found in modern wheat. Trial plots of wheat, from the USDA'a Agricultural Research Stations to non-profits like Monica Spiller's Whole Grain Connections, academic research such as North Carolina State University's North Carolina Organic Grain Project and Cornell's trials at Willsboro Research Farm, to Eli Rigosa's Northeast Organic Wheat, and those 100 bakery customers in Massachusetts's that planted trials in their backyards, and the work being done at The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas-- the list goes on...trials of heritage, landrace and modern wheat, classical breeding, no-till, cover crops, inner plantings-- this is all taking place. And then, on the other side of the coin are multinational agricultural biotechnology corporations such as Monsanto, who continue to strive to introduce Genetically Engineered (GE) wheat. Fresh in the news: Monsanto's Genetically Engineered Wheat Rejected Globally: Groups Respond to Industry Plans for GE Wheat