Have higher yields been due to genetic modification? Monsanto would have us think so, and now wants to patent more seed with "stacked traits."

Lynda Waddington at the Iowa Independent reports that there's been a 20% increase in calls to a hotline set up to serve farmers in seven Midwestern states.  Not only are there more calls to the Sowing the Seeds of Hope hotline, Waddington reports, the "content of the calls is changing," said a hotline supervisor. "The callers are reporting much more severe economic turmoil, more mental health symptoms and significant increases in mental stress." 

This isn't a good sign. During the farm crises of the 1980s, farm suicides spiked. Iowa and Nebraska developed their hotlines then to serve ag workers. Waddington's argument in her Independent story is that the hotline works. Suicides appear to be down in the state where the hotline. And that as farm troubles appear to be on the rise — particularly within the dairy sector — she says this would be the time for Congress to fully fund the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network.

Congress approved the Network with the 2008 farm bill. "The network creates a national crisis hotline for rural workers and also mandates additional behavioral health services in geographically rural regions," Waddington writes. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack, however, says he doesn't see much hope for additional funding.

The nomination of Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein (above) to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs has hung up on the question of whether animals have the right to sue other animals, notably of the human kind. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, a Georgia Republican, has blocked Sunstein's nomination, according to The Hill, "because Sunstein has argued that animals should have the right to sue humans in court."

Sunstein is a prolific author and a long-time friend of Obama. (Sunstein just recently moved to Harvard from the University of Chicago.) In one of his books, Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions (2004), Sunstein wrote: “I will suggest that animals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives, to prevent violations of current law....Laws designed to protect animals against cruelty and abuse should be amended or interpreted to give a private cause of action against those who violate them, so as to allow private people to supplement the efforts of public prosecutors.” Sunstein has also suggested, in a speech, that hunting should be banned. 

This has caused all kinds of consternation in the ag community. Cattle Network asks "Who Is Cass Sunstein & Why Should You Care?" hThe Hill reports that Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas has met with Sunstein and was told the nominee would not promote onerous regulations. Chambliss remains to be convinced. "I'm going to talk to him," Chambliss said. "He has not had the opportunity to look me in the eye."

The Financial Times reports that the G8 countries will announce a "food security initiative" at a summit this week that will commit "more than $12bn (£7.3bn) for agricultural development over the next three years, in a move that signals a further shift from food aid to long-term investments in farming in the developing world." The change in tactics comes at a time when increased commodity prices and stagnant agricultural investment have led to an increase in the number of people worldwide who are hungry to over one billion. 

For the past two decades, the U.S. has provided mostly food aid. The Obama administration is shifting to a policy that encourages increased agricultural productivity in poorer nations. "For too long, our primary response [to fight hunger] has been to send emergency [food] aid when the crisis is at its worst," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last month. "This saves lives, but it doesn't address hunger's root causes. It is, at best, a short-term fix."

The change in policy could cause some conflict in U.S. farm communities. The U.S. spent over $2 billion last year on American-grown crops shipped overseas. A shift to local production in poorer countries could diminish U.S. exports. The U.S. spends 20 times more on food aid in Africa than on efforts to boost food production, however. According to the FT, "annual spending on African farming projects topped $400m in the 1980s, but by 2006 had dwindled to $60m...."