A36-Lancaster Farming, Saturday, June 1,1985
LOS ANGELES - Ever since
humans began growing food many
centuries ago, the war against
agricultural pests has been going
on unabated, with no signs of a
truce in sight. Despite enormous
successes achieved through
modem agricultural technology in
controlling Some of the pests, the
struggle continues, says a Cornell
University scientist.
“What’s missing from this en
dless cycle of susceptibility and
resistance is a clear understanding
of both the disease-causing
organisms and the plants they
attack and of the molecular bases
for their interactions,” says Milton
Zaitlin, a professor of plant
pathology from the New York
State College of Agriculture and
Life Sciences at Cornell.
But, modern genetic techniques,
more popularly known as
Block to attend World
Food Council meeting
WASHINGTON - Secretary of
Agriculture John R. Block will
visit the Netherlands, Belgium and
France June 6-11 to attend the
World Food Council meeting and to
discuss farm products trade issues
between the United States and the
European Community.
“We face many issues regarding
the agricultural trade relationship
between the United States and the
EC,” Block said. “There is no
substitute for face-to-face
discussions. I am hopeful we can
take steps toward easing tensions
on both sides through open
discussion.”
In France, Block will attend the
11th Annual World Food Council
Ministerial, an organization of 36
member nations that meets to
discuss world food problems. The
principal topic of this year’s
meeting is the food shortage in
Africa and other areas of the
Task force,
to study
structure
WASHINGTON - Secretary of
Agriculture John R. Block, calling
for a more streamlined and con
temporary Department of
Agriculture, today directed a
special task force to begin an in
tensive review of the Department’s
structure and how it is meeting the
needs of its modern constituency.
“We owe it to the farmer and the
taxpayer to do a better job of
delivering service,” Block said.
“Many of our program delivery
systems at USDA are more than 30
years old. They have grown and
evolved over the years with little
evaluation of their effectiveness.
It’s time that we change that and
take a progressive view of the
department’s structure. ’ ’
The review process is being
managed by a task force of key
department officials named by
Block. Working through special
task group, the team will look at
headquarters structure, program
overlap, field structure,
technology application and ad
ministrative support.
The intent is to reduce
duplication and to provide the most
effective delivery system.
Maximum participation is
creating and discussing the
changes will be sought through
constituent groups, USDA em
ployees, unions and the Congress
The Food and Agriculture Coun
cils, working with interested
constituent groups in their states,
will be used in designing changes
Biotech offers new tools in battle against plants
biotechnology, may now offer new
powerful tools to devise more
effective pest control measures, he
says. Such techniques make it
possible to gain the fundamental
knowledge of the pests and their
hosts in terms of genetics,
biochemistry, physiology, and the
interactions between them, among
others.
“It may be possible, in the
future, to devise the methods for
transferring desirable traits for
resistance into crop plants and,
conversely, to genetically program
certain organisms to attach some
of the pests, including weeds,”
Zaitlin predicts.
The Cornell scientist, who serves
as associate director of Cornell’s
Biotechnology Program, made his
observations in a presentation at
the annual meeting of the
American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS)
world. “We have a number of
important problems to address at
the Council meeting in regard to
world hunger,” Block said.
Block will meet with Franz
Andnessen, vice president of the
EC Commission as well as EC
agricultural ministers. .
During his visit, Block will ad
dress a conference of U.S. and
European journalists and the
annual convention of the European
Feed Compounders Association.
Correction
In last week’s issue Kevin
Martin’s name was inadvertantly
missing from the story on the 16
winners of the Farm and Home
Foundation scholarships worth
$l,OOO each.
Kevin, 17, is the son of Mr. and
Mrs. Clyde Martin, East Earl, and
is a graduate of Garden Spot High
School. He will study agricultural
business management at the Berks
Campus of The Pennyslvama State
University. He has been active in
the Future Farmers of America,
and received his Keystone degree.
in Los Angeles, May 26-31.
Zaitlm focused his talk on
molecular basis of plant-pathogen
interactions and modification of
microorganisms for biological
control in the AAAS symposium
devoted to discussion of “New
Directions for Biosciences
Research in Agriculture: High-
Reward Opportunities,” a new
study undertaken recently by the
National Research Council (NRC),
the working arm of the National
Academy of Sciences.
The study was conducted by a
panel of 18 university and industry
scientists headed by Ralph W.F.
Hardy, a visiting professor of life
sciences at Cornell and president
of BioTechnica International, a
Boston-based biotechnology firm.
Cornell’s Zaitlm, who was on the
panel, served as chairman of the
group’s subcommittee on plant
diseases and insect pests.
The NRC study, which stressed
the need to step up research to
develop further molecular genetic
techniques, including recombinant
DNA technology, said that what
scientists can accomplish through
these new tools is awesome, but it
warned, “To be slow in
acknowledging and employing the
power of these tools would be to
delay the progress of American
agriculture.”
Basing his presentation on his
subcommittee’s work on plant
diseases and insects, Zaitlin said
that at present American farmers
obtain dependable crop vields
using disease-resistant varieties,
biological control practices, and
pesticides to control plant disease,
insects, weeds, and other pests.
The cost of pesticides, excluding
weed-killers, in 1983 was $1.3
billion, he pointed out, adding that
the potential crop losses in the
absence of pesticide use greatly
exceeds the cost of the pesticides
used.
The tools of genetics and
molecular biology, he said, now
offer some new methods for
gaining the basic understanding of
the pests and their hosts (plants) in
terms of genetics, biochemistry,
physiology, and interactions
between them, among other fac
tors essential for devising new,
more effective control strategies.
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Among areas of research
requiring major efforts ahead, as
outlined by Cornell’s Zaitlin, are:
• the molecular bases of the
factors that determine resistance
and susceptibility;
• the basic understanding of the
Market-oriented industry
(Continued from Page AlO)
patterns ot resource use and high
cost producers would be kept in
business at the expense of new,
possibly lower cost producers.
Given that the dairy industry
produces almost exclusively for
the domestic market and the
problems encountered with base
plans and allotments of some other
crops, it is legitimate to ask if this
is good public policy.
I might add, the National Milk
Producers Federation com
missioned and received on Oct. 1
an autonomous Study Committee
report which analyzed Federal
dairy support price programs and
advanced recommendations for
adjusting the programs to better
serve their public purposes.
me quote one of their key
recommendations: “The Study
Committee dismissed supply
management-supply control types
of alternatives to dairy price
support. Supply management by
definition is a means of enhancing
price and income to address
economic problems in the
producer sector. To the extent that
producer prices are increased by
such artificial means over a period
of time, the demand problems
facing the milk industry are
exacerbated. The Study Com
mittee positively and unanimously
adopted a market orientation for
price support, thereby excluding
production control approaches.”
Third, the proposal
that all milk marketings will be
assessed at a rate necessary to
cover all the costs of the diversion
program. This is effectively a tax
on all producers. The voluntary
diversion program which recently
ended resulted in a 20 percent
participation that was funded by
all milk producers including the 80
percent of the producers who did
not participate in the program.
interaction between the host plant
and invading pathogen; and
• the transfer of resistance traits
to susceptible plants through the
development of organisms for use
in carrying genes from one species
to another.
That is hardly a mandate for a
supply management program.
Fourth, the proposal calls for a
mandated increase in the Class I
differential by including provisions
in the Agricultural Marketing
Agreement Act that would
reimburse cooperatives for per
forming certain marketwide
services. This would likely cause
serious distortions in regional
price and production patterns. And
while this action would be
beneficial to producers who are
members, of cooperatives in the
Southeast, it would also work to the
detriment of producers in other
parts of the country, especially in
the upper Midwest.
The dairy price support program
is a national program and milk
flows freelv across state and
political boundaries. As such, any
workable solution to the dairy
surplus problem must embody
principles that will meet the needs
of dairy producers and consumers,
irrespective of location.
In conclusion, let me reiterate
that I am unalterably opposed to
this proposal. A mandatory supply
management program will only
result in more serious problems for
the dairy industry. This proposal
may be able to meet some
budgetary spending limit, but it
will ultimately be the taxpayers
and consumers who will pay for
this program, not to mention the
adverse impacts it will have on our
livestock industry, one of the most
important sectors of our
agricultural economy,
I sincerely hope that the
National Milk Producers
Federation and’ the entire dairy
industry will reexamine this
proposal and unite, once and for
all, behind an approach that will
best serve the needs of consumers,
taxpayers, and most important,
the dairy industry itself.