Skype Discussion with the Assistant Director of Government Relations and Communications for the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council

Vinnytsia Information Center “Window on America” was hosting Skype discussion on March 29th, 2012 on the topic “Agriculture in Ukraine. Foreign Investments. Biotechnology. GMO” and other branches relating to it.

The speaker of the meeting was Andriy Tsintsiruk, the Assistant Director of Government Relations and Communications for the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council (USUBC) based in Washington, DC. In this role, Tsintsiruk is responsible for developing, promoting, and executing USUBC programs and policy relating to U.S. trade and investment in Ukraine. Prior to joining USUBC, Andriy Tsintsiruk worked at the Heritage Foundation and United Nations in New York concentrating on international trade and post-Soviet economic transitions.

The key words of this discussion are the following ones: Agriculture in Ukraine, Foreign Investments into it, potential possibilities of Agriculture in Ukraine, Genetically Modified Food, GMO, Genetic Engineering, Land Privatization, a Policy Strategy for Crop Engineering, Biofuel, Agricultural Biotechnology, Demographic Situation and GMO, results of its usage in next generations (obesity and other diseases), influence on ants, land privatization and ownership in Ukraine, organic food, prices on it, import of GMO products, GMO and consumers, international law regulations including Ukrainian ones, etc.

It was also discussed a question of the last week’s World Food Summit in Rome, at which the United States championed the use of genetically modified (GM) foods to help feed the world’s poor. In the focus of this discussion it was also a pragmatic, long-term strategy by which GM foods could help improve the quality of life in developing countries. For somebody, this important innovation is at risk ‘cause of a bunch of diseases.

31 users of WOA Center have participated in the discussion expressing their own opinion on the development of agriculture in general and usage of organic and genetically modified food. 

If you are interested in this topic, you are welcome to read the articles about Agriculture in Ukraine, Biotechnology, GMO proposed by Andriy Th. at the Center ((0432) 351-059).

You Are Invited!

We cordially invite you to attend the student competition for the best amateur drama piece based on the book “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury. This competition is supported by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine as a part of the Great Read Project. 

April 5, 2012 at 3pm
Vinnytsia Regional Philharmonic Theater
7, Khmelnytske Shose

Entrance is free

Useful info about GMO seeds and agricultural products from Monsanto, the world’s largest GMO seeds producer

Useful info about GMO seeds and agricultural products from Monsanto, the world’s largest GMO seeds producer: http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/Issues-and-Answers.aspx

Council on Foreign Relations’ Report on the topic by top experts from the government and private sector:

http://www.cfr.org/world/sustaining-revolution-policy-strategy-crop-engineering-cfr-paper/p8286

Genetically Modified Foods can Feed the World’s Hungry

David G. Victor, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Science and Technology Council on Foreign Relations

U.S.-EU Trade Disputes Threaten the Development of Foods That Could Feed the World’s Hungry and Protect the Environment

At last week’s World Food Summit in Rome, the United States championed the use of genetically modified (GM) foods to help feed the world’s poor. In a paper published by the Council on Foreign Relations, Sustaining a Revolution: A Policy Strategy for Crop Engineering, David G. Victor and C. Ford Runge offer a pragmatic, long-term strategy by which GM foods could help improve the quality of life in developing countries. The authors warn, however, that this important innovation is at risk of being derailed by current U.S.-EU trade disputes. The authors will discuss their findings at an on-the-record meeting on June 25.

The first generation of engineered food crops that farmers are planting today barely reveal the technology’s ultimate potential; the next generation, already in laboratories and field trials, will make it possible to grow foods that are more nutritious and have a smaller impact on the environment than traditional crops.

European governments and some activists have branded GM foods unsafe and environmentally threatening. Yet scientific evidence, though still incomplete, strongly suggests that these fears are overblown. “We are concerned that today’s debate over GM crops has drifted away from reality, driven by short-sighted tactics rather than strategic thinking,” say Victor and Runge. Their report outlines a long-term strategy for managing the gene revolution, based on active policy reforms rather than the current laissez-faire approach.

First, the benefits of crop engineering must be directed to those who have most to gain: the two billion farmers and rural poor in developing countries who could meet food demands while reducing adverse environmental impacts. A chief reason that new crop technologies are not getting into the hands of poor farmers as rapidly as they should is that the U.S. government, and many others, have cut their support for international agricultural research over the last fifteen years. Victor and Runge demonstrate that it is possible to reverse this trend over the next decade with U.S. leadership at extremely low cost: only 1% of the current U.S. foreign assistance budget.

The topic of today's Skype discussion on Genetic Engineering

Biotechnology in Agriculture

1. What is Agricultural Biotechnology?

Agricultural biotechnology is a range of tools, including traditional breeding techniques, that alter living organisms, or parts of organisms, to make or modify products; improve plants or animals; or develop microorganisms for specific agricultural uses. Modern biotechnology today includes the tools of genetic engineering.

2. How is Agricultural Biotechnology being used?

Biotechnology provides farmers with tools that can make production cheaper and more manageable. For example, some biotechnology crops can be engineered to tolerate specific herbicides, which makes weed control simpler and more efficient. Other crops have been engineered to be resistant to specific plant diseases and insect pests, which can make pest control more reliable and effective, and/or can decrease the use of synthetic pesticides. These crop production options can help countries keep pace with demands for food while reducing production costs. A number of biotechnology-derived crops that have been deregulated by the USDA and reviewed for food safety by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and/or the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have been adopted by growers.

Skype discussion with Andriy Tsintsiruk's presentation on agriculture (March 29, 2012)

Skype discussion with Andriy Tsintsiruk's presentation on agriculture and products with GMO.

Bio: Andriy Tsintsiruk is the Assistant Director of Government Relations and Communications for the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council (USUBC) based in Washington DC. In this role, Tsintsiruk is responsible for developing, promoting, and executing USUBC programs and policy relating to U.S. trade and investment in Ukraine. Prior to joining USUBC, Tsintsiruk worked at the Heritage Foundation and United Nations in New York concentrating on iinternational trade and post-Soviet economic transitions.

Skype discussion with Andriy Tsintsiruk's presentation on agriculture and products with GMO

Hi everyone!

This is a reminder that our next Skype Discussion is Thursday at 5:30. The topic is GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) also known as GEO (Genetically Engineered Organism). It should be a really interesting discussion. 

We will start this discussion on time! Please remember to come prepared with extra questions.

Thanks and see you Thursday,

Mila
English Club on FB: http://www.facebook.com/groups/107061309346532/

The pioneering masters of Modern architecture and his works in the US

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (March 27, 1886 – August 17, 1969) was a German architect. He is commonly referred to and addressed as Mies, his surname.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, along with Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, are widely regarded as the pioneering masters of Modern architecture. Mies, like many of his post-World War I contemporaries, sought to establish a new architectural style that could represent modern times just as Classical and Gothicdid for their own eras. He created an influential twentieth century architectural style, stated with extreme clarity and simplicity.

His mature buildings made use of modern materials such as industrial steel and plate glass to define interior spaces. He strived towards an architecture with a minimal framework of structural order balanced against the implied freedom of free-flowing open space. He called his buildings "skin and bones" architecture. He sought a rational approach that would guide the creative process of architectural design. 

Emigration to the United States

Commission opportunities dwindled with the worldwide depression after 1929. In the early 1930s, Mies served briefly as the last Director of the faltering Bauhaus, at the request of his colleague and competitor Walter Gropius. After 1933, Nazi political pressure soon forced Mies to close the government-financed school. He built very little in these years (one built commission was Philip Johnson's New York apartment); the Nazis rejected his style as not "German" in character.

Frustrated and unhappy, he left his homeland reluctantly in 1937 as he saw his opportunity for any future building commissions vanish, accepting a residential commission in Wyoming and then an offer to head the department of architecture of the newly established Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Here he introduced a new kind of education and attitude later known as Second Chicago School, which became very influential in the following decades in North America and Europe.

Career in the United States

Mies settled in Chicago, Illinois where he was appointed head of the architecture school at Chicago's Armour Institute of Technology (later renamed Illinois Institute of Technology – IIT). One of the benefits of taking this position was that he would be commissioned to design the new buildings and master plan for the campus. All his buildings still stand there, including Alumni Hall, the Chapel, and his masterpiece the S.R. Crown Hall, built as the home of IIT's School of Architecture. Crown Hall is widely regarded as Mies' finest work, the definition of Miesian architecture.