2001 - Agriculture

Agriculture

The sequencing of the genetic code for rice announced January 26 creates the possibility of new improvements in the staple food for half the world's population. The Swiss-based agricultural chemical and seed company Syngenta and the Utah-based biotechnology company Myriad Genetics make the announcement.

The detection of foot-and-mouth disease on an English farm February 19 leads to a devastating destruction of cattle and sheep throughout the British Isles and on the Continent as the epidemic spreads despite efforts to contain it. Animal raisers who have been damaged by fears of mad-cow disease suffer enormously, as do tourism and other industries.

U.S. hog farmers raise nearly 60 million pigs, up from 52 million in 1985, but the number of hog farms has fallen below 82,000, down from 388,000 in 1985, when a Pork Act adopted by Congress obliged pig raisers to kick in 40ยข per $100 in sales for support of a national marketing program. The National Pork Producers Council has administered a checkoff system to fund advertising under the slogan, "The other white meat," but smaller producers say the slogan misrepresents the meat they raise and a federal district court will rule in October of next year that the checkoff system is unconstitutional.

Oregon farmers in the Klamath River basin seize irrigation headgates after Bureau of Reclamation agents curtail water deliveries to protect endangered coho salmon and a similarly endangered Upper Klamath Lake sucker fish. The basin straddles the California-Oregon border, about 1,600 farmers cultivate some 200,000 acres, and their action produces a confrontation with commercial fishermen and native tribes who depend on the salmon for their livelihoods (see marine resources [fish die-off], 2002).