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• "In year five, what we will do is we'll really focus our efforts on making sure the work is sustained in those communities, because we want to create a model that can be implemented," she said.
• Merrigan said the USDA has come a long way in understanding the importance of healthy food access and locally grown regional food systems.
• And it's more than just nutrition, as regional food systems can make rural communities more vibrant and attracting young people back to working lands, she said.
• "There's not a challenge before American agriculture more daunting than repopulating our farms and ranches," Merrigan said.
• Department officials say the National Institute of Food and Agriculture's 2012 Agriculture and Food Research Initiative's Food Security program supports research that will keep American agriculture competitive while helping to end world hunger. The program's aim is to increase the availability and accessibility of domestic and international food.
• Other grant recipients include Purdue University, which is developing new strategies to defend against ear rot diseases in corn, the University of Tennessee, which is looking to identify ways to improve milk quality in the Southeast and enhance the sustainability of the Southeast dairy industry and the University of California in Berkeley, which will work with tribal groups in the Klamath Basin in Oregon and California to build sustainable regional food systems.
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Panel kills SD plan to ban texting while driving
AMBER HUNT,Associated Press
CHET BROKAW,Associated Press
• PIERRE, S.D. (AP) -- A South Dakota legislative committee has killed a bill that would have banned texting while driving statewide, despite sometimes-tearful testimony from people whose loved ones have been killed in texting-related wrecks.
• The bill was rejected Wednesday by the House Judiciary Committee. Police chiefs, insurance lobbyists, a grief-stricken widow and the man who killed her husband all testified in support of the ban. No one testified against the bill, which previously had passed the Senate.
• Though similar bills have failed in past legislative sessions, backers had hoped this year would be different. Four South Dakota cities -- including Sioux Falls, its largest -- have instituted texting bans in recent months.
• But committee members cited a study by the Governors Highway Safety Association that said it isn't clear whether texting bans have lowered crash rates in the 39 states that have them. The uncertainty of the ban's effectiveness sealed its fate.
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