When it comes to food, `local' and `organic' aren't separate trends.
Byline: GUEST VIEWPOINT By Natalie Reitman-White For The Register-Guard The subtitle on a Jan. 2 article in The Register-Guard's Entree section repeated a popular new mantra: "local is the new organic." While I am a huge supporter of the local food movement and volunteer to support many...

Vegetable dealers complain of harassment.
The Department of Agriculture (DA) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) met recently to craft measures to rid highways leading to the National Capital Region (NCR) of policemen who harass vegetable dealers and extort money from them for imagined violations. Aside from them, traffic enforcers also establish...

Food fight: making sure our food is safe is harder than it seems.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] This year was filled with large-scale food recalls: E. coli in spinach, salmonella in peanut butter, melamine in pet-food, anti-freeze in toothpaste. In today's global economy, how does a consumer know what is safe? Would Popeye still rely on spinach, not knowing where it was...

Clinton kids loading up backpacks; Program helps them stock school supplies.
Byline: Lynne Klaft CLINTON - School starts in just 16 days, and 275 children in the Clinton public school system have registered a need for a backpack filled with back-to-school supplies. "It's exciting to be part of the Back to School Backpack and Supply program;...

A burning issue: palm oil shows promise as a biofuel, but the environmental cost of production can be high.
Tour guide Asok Kesavan has brought his multinational group of tourists to see some of the oil palm plantations in the countryside in his homeland, Malaysia. He asks his driver to stop the bus and the tourists unload briefly for a walk through the rows of palm. There are...

Ilocos Sur governor bares 3-year program.
NARVACAN, Ilocos Sur -- Ilocos Sur Gov. Deogracias Victor "DV" B. Savellano presented his three-year program to the mayors of the province during a meeting that capped a program for the induction of the new officers of Ilocos Sur chapter of the mayors league at the Bagong Lipunan Lodge...

Execs at Cancun meet: it's almost `business as usual' now. (Foreign Investment).
Over 160 executives representing 70 U.S. companies spent two days at the Mexican resort of Cancun last month, expanding on business contacts that have led to over $225 million worth of U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba in just over a year. The U.S.-Cuba Business Conference, which also...

A cultural economy study of beef as a commodity: a preliminary analysis from Central Queensland.
Abstract This paper provides a preliminary analysis of research being undertaken in the Central Queensland region exploring beef as a commodity. The research takes as its starting point the desirability of understanding the relationships between production and consumption of agricultural commodities. It is also concerned with emerging...

The socio-economic impacts of rice policies implementation in rural Burma/Myanmar.
Introduction Burma is a predominantly agricultural country: About 75 per cent of the population, and 64.1 per cent of the labour force (1995-96) still live in the countryside, where farming is their main occupation. Agriculture constitutes 37 to 49 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) and...

Software teaches the tools of trading. (Update June/2003).
Passing grain elevator after grain elevator on a Kansas highway, an unsuspecting motorist has no understanding of the complex mix of mathematics, risk management, and markets that go into buying and selling the steel building's contents. But Andrew McKenzie, assistant professor of agricultural economics at the University of Arkansas,...