“Mother of organic” Merrigan at work on food policy
Kathleen Merrigan, who helped craft the organic food law in 1990 as a Senate staffer and implement it a decade later at USDA, "is an agricultural policy workhorse who calls the public policy arena her 'playground,'" says a profile story at Greenwire.
Senate panel approves bill to override clean-water rule
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved a bill to obviate the recently issued "waters of the United States" rule that defines the upstream reach of the Clean Water Act.
Uncertainty slows arrival of new-generation biofuels
Commercial-scale production of new-generation biofuels has been slowed by a year and a half of uncertainty about federal support for the fuels, which use grass or corn stover as feedstocks rather than food crops, reports DTN, based on a panel discussion at a trade meeting.