Today in Organic: October 22, 2009

• Agronomists and development experts gathered in Rome last week to tackle the problem of feeding the world's populations over the next fifty years, which will require "an increase food production by 50 percent over the next two decades," according to the New York Times. At issue is whether we'll make Norman Borlaug's mistakes again, by launching a second Green Revolution with GMO crops and synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, or whether we'll try to spread sustainable farming techniques to the rest of the world.

• Speaking of GMO crops, Bill Gates just came out in defense of them at the World Food Prize gathering last week, reports Grist's Tom Philpott.

• The Worldwatch Institute says that 51 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from the meat and dairy industries, according to TreeHugger. 

• One of the biggest barriers to raising and selling sustainable meat is the lack of slaughter facilities. Now, according to The Green Fork blog, USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service is planning to allow smaller, state-inspected processing facilities to operate, which would free ranchers from having to transport livestock hundreds of miles to a mega-processing facility.