The administration has urged Congress to use the farm bill, which is in House-Senate talks, to allow up to 25 percent of United States food aid to be bought from local or regional providers. In 2007, the United States donated more than 1.5 million metric tons of food, valued at $1.2 billion.

The Senate proposed a much more modest pilot program to buy up to $25 million in food for donation from producers overseas. Farm bill negotiators continued to debate that on Monday.

there has to be another shoe to drop here. it’s hard to believe the ethanol-in-chief would dump a farm subsidy in an election year without having another equally cozy target in mind for the money. or maybe it’s in the nice-talk-never-happen column.

Wonder if George composts his coffee grounds?

Do you think George even knows what a 100-mile diet is? That is, other than the number of pretzels he can eat through 100 miles of bike-riding?

The Bush administration has slipped a controversial ingredient into the $770 million aid package it recently proposed to ease the world food crisis, adding language that would promote the use of genetically modified crops in food-deprived countries.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/ news/ nationworld/ chi-food-crops_14may14,0,7229990.story