A year after Obama's election, advocates hoping for deep improvements in our food system can point to only a few successes, while other policies that could lead to food insecurity are brewing in back rooms.

"I was born in 1992, the year you started negotiating. My home island is now in danger of disappearing. You have been negotiating my entire life. We need action now," said a delegate from the Solomon Islands.

After Tom Vilsack's speech, I've reached out to some key thinkers on agriculture to find out what they would like the USDA's new research body, NIFA, to be focusing on. Here are their answers.

Most don't realize how dramatically food quality has declined under the industrial food system. They, too, often hide behind the false and misleading marketing provided by their food service company.

Vilsack acknowledged for the first time that climate change and fragmentation are a serious threat to the health of our forests.

Africans can look to India to see what a future of relying on biotech seeds looks like. There, a depleted water table, poisoned waterways and farmer suicides have been the result of the first Green Revolution.

This week, the Obama administration approved the sale of timber in a roadless national forest in Alaska. The Tongass National Forest is a 17 million a...

We've spent $2 billion since 2000 without reducing the number of forest acres burned, homes destroyed, or firefighters killed. President Obama's new forest chief is badly needed.

It clear that the Obama administration doesn't intend to let business as usual at the Forest Service threaten our remaining pristine public forests.

Until we start celebrating earth with a small "e" everyday, all the compact fluorescent light bulbs and reusable shopping bags and hybrid cars and stainless steel water bottles in the world won't cut it.

What a difference a few months make. Advocates of sustainable agriculture are now ecstatic about President Obama's decision to appoint Kathleen Merrig...

No, Gillibrand and Aubertine aren't lobbying for the Corn Refiners Association -- they are pushing for local food.

I hate to put a damper on your inaugural enthusiasm, but the time to act is now if we hope to at least have someone with an interest in building a better food system at the table.

In the case of corn, it takes 2,500 gallons of water to grow enough corn to produce 1 gallon of ethanol. That's right, 2,500 gallons.