The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

RAY SUAREZ: Good evening. I`m Ray Suarez.

On the NewsHour tonight: the news of this Thanksgiving Day; then, an update from Margaret Warner in Pakistan on the military and political activities of the Islamic radicals; a look at an effort to bring low-cost laptops to children in the developing world; and a Thanksgiving Day conversation about buying locally grown food.

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RAY SUAREZ: The Supreme Court of Pakistan today removed the last legal hurdle for President Pervez Musharraf to rule as a civilian. Musharraf has promised to step down as army chief and then hold elections in January.

Today`s court decision was made by justices appointed entirely by Musharraf. That was one reason opposition leader Imran Khan said he was recommending his party not take part in elections.

IMRAN KHAN, Pakistan Movement for Justice: It is a complete fraud. The election, first of all, it is being without a credible judicial system. And with emergency, with the media gagged and the media muzzled, and the constitution suspended, how can you have any credible election in this situation?

RAY SUAREZ: Musharraf has not yet set a date to end emergency rule, now in place for nearly three weeks. Ending emergency rule is one of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto`s conditions. She went ahead and filed election papers today anyway, instead of boycotting.

BENAZIR BHUTTO, Former Pakistani Prime Minister: We believe that if you leave the field open that there`s no need for rigging, there`s no need for a contest. But if you give the best of your ability, then the other side is forced to expose that it does not command the legitimacy of support and that it is rigging the elections, so we have entered our nominations under protest.

RAY SUAREZ: Another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, organized his return to Pakistan today. He`s in exile in Saudi Arabia. It was not clear if Musharraf would let Sharif return since he was swiftly deported last time he tried to come home in September. We`ll have more from Margaret Warner from Pakistan right after this news summary.

Al-Qaida fighters clashed with Iraqi troops south of Baghdad today. Iraqi police reported at least three Iraqi soldiers died. The militants later ambushed the nearby headquarters of Sunni rivals, killing at least 15 people.

In Baghdad, as many as 10 mortar attacks rocked the heavily protected Green Zone. A U.S. military spokesman said no one was killed, but there were injuries.

Iran made calls today for the U.N. Security Council to stop involvement in its nuclear programs; that word came from the chief Iranian delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency. It began a two-day meeting in Vienna, Austria, focusing on a report on Iran`s nuclear activities. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said there`s less information about Iran`s atomic prowess today than there was a year ago.

MOHAMED ELBARADEI, Director General, IAEA: The agency needs to have maximum clarity, not only about Iran`s past program, but equally or more important about the present. I should note, however, that the agency has no concrete information about possible undeclared nuclear material or weaponization activities in Iran.

RAY SUAREZ: And separately, Iran`s top nuclear negotiator warned any threat against his country would have ripple effects in the Middle East. Saeed Jalili spoke to reporters at a conference in Tehran.

SAEED JALILI, Chief Nuclear Negotiator, Iran (through translator): The Islamic Republic of Iran is a country which insists on its rights. Iran`s security is very important for the security of the region. We are fully prepared to defend ourselves and preserve the security in our country, region and the world.

Playing with the security of Iran is like dominos. We believe the international community and the world powers are aware of Iran`s effective role in the global security.

RAY SUAREZ: Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, but the U.S. and other Security Council members want more transparency on uranium enrichment and could press for more sanctions.

In Egypt today, leaders from around the region held a mini-summit ahead of a Mideast peace conference next week. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak hosted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan`s King Abdullah. They sought to convince Saudi Arabia and Syria to attend the meeting in Annapolis, Maryland.

The two Arab nations have not responded to invitations. Egypt insisted the meeting could open a door to a Palestinian state in the next year.

Americans observed the traditional Thanksgiving holiday today. In New York, the annual Macy`s Parade was held in unseasonably balmy temperatures.

Meanwhile in Iraq, U.S. troops celebrated the day with turkey dinners on base. President Bush made phone calls to U.S. troops all over the world from Camp David, Maryland, where he`s spending the holiday.

That`s it for the news summary tonight. Now: dealing with Islamic militants in Pakistan; giving away laptops; and eating local foods.

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RAY SUAREZ: Now to Margaret Warner. She`s been filing stories from Pakistan all week. Here`s her report on Islamic militants.

MARGARET WARNER: It is the new front line in Pakistan`s battle against terrorism. The bucolic Swat Valley, just 90 miles from the capital Islamabad, was until eight months ago a popular tourist haven, but now it`s a war zone, where President Pervez Musharraf has launched a stepped-up military campaign to confront a major threat from Islamic radicals.

The militants have made major inroads, taking over villages that mount little or no resistance, kidnapping and beheading Pakistani soldiers, and promoting an extreme form of Islamic rule right on the Pakistani president`s doorstep.

Retired General Talat Masood, a leading analyst, says they`ve made inroads of a political nature, too.

LT. GEN. TALAT MASOOD (Ret.), Pakistan Army: The Muslims there have been radicalized by certain clerics who have been allowed a free hand for several years to propagate their myopic and obscurantist propaganda through the mosques.

MARGARET WARNER: Masood says local extremists, augmented by Islamic fighters from Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, exploit the public`s dissatisfaction with the local authorities, appointed by Islamabad.

Musharraf and the United States were already concerned about militancy on the march in Pakistan`s western tribal areas, places like North and South Waziristan on the Afghan border, where U.S. intelligence says al- Qaida and Taliban leaders have found safe haven.

But the Swat Valley is considered a settled area, much closer to Pakistan`s heavily populated heartland and the capital, Islamabad. Musharraf and his military commanders know the radicals` gains in Swat represent a serious escalation of the extremist threat to Pakistan itself.

After months of ineffectual fighting and losses by auxiliary troops, including some taken hostage after surrendering without a fight, Musharraf last week announced the army would take charge, bolstered by 15,000 new troops. On Tuesday, the military commander of the operation said it would take them just four weeks to liberate the valley from the grip of the militants.

MAJ. GEN. ARSHAD WAHEED, Pakistan Armed Forces: The militants know that the army means business, the government means business, so I think everybody realizes and understands that the operations are going to take the situation to its logical conclusion. So there`s no going back now.

MARGARET WARNER: Analysts like Talat Masood say that may be wishful thinking.

LT. GEN. TALAT MASOOD: Well, it is like saying that, you know, the Iraqi maneuver was very successful in 21 days. These are not normal wars. You have to go much beyond that in order to truly eliminate that. And for that, you need, again, the process to win them back and to integrate them with the rest of the society and make them normal citizens.

MARGARET WARNER: Local authority in the Swat Valley, where many police simply flee their stations as militants approach, seems a long way from a successful campaign to win hearts and minds. Some local residents fleeing the fighting express no optimism about the valley`s future.

LOCAL RESIDENT (through translator): There`s no solution to this problem. Earlier there used to be police and security, but now they are not here, so there is no solution.

MARGARET WARNER: And Amina Janjua, a middle-class woman in Rawalpindi, a frequent visitor to the Swat Valley in years past, says people she knows there believe the militants are on their side.

AMINA JANJUA, Local Resident: What they want is maybe to save the people from the government`s mistreatment, injustice, and the crimes they have been illegally doing against the people of Pakistan. They are like saviors for the people of Pakistan, and there are people who are welcoming them.

MARGARET WARNER: The fight against terrorism is a struggle, too, because the Pakistani army, trained to fight neighbor and rival India, seems ill-equipped to wage war against militants on Pakistani soil.

LT. GEN. TALAT MASOOD: It`s very difficult for them to use force against their own people; that is a major factor. The other factor is that the Pakistan army has never been trained, truly speaking, for fighting insurgencies and asymmetrical warfare. It`s very difficult to fight and different from fighting a conventional or an industrial war, to which they are very well- trained.

MARGARET WARNER: Further undermining the military`s morale is that the population is itself ambivalent about waging war against fellow Pakistanis. Polls show that terrorist suicide bombings in major cities has turned Pakistanis firmly against such tactics, and the public wholeheartedly supported Musharraf`s taking on militants last summer at the Red Mosque.

But there is a backlash, too, particularly when it comes to military action inside Pakistani territory, says Najam Sethi, editor of the Daily Times newspaper in Lahore.

NAJAM SETHI, Editor, The Daily Times: You have actually people in the media who are saying, "There`s no excuse in this country. Why are we killing our own people? Why are Muslims fighting Muslims?" And there`s a conspiracy theory that says that everything is being done at the behest of the Americans.

Now, of course, we got into the war on terror at the behest of President Bush. But at the end of the day, it`s now become our own war, because our own people are being killed, and radical Islam is now a direct threat to civil society here. But the people of this country are not yet ready to buy this argument.

MARGARET WARNER: Amina Janjua of Rawalpindi, near Islamabad, is one of those people, and for a very personal reason. She hasn`t seen her husband, Masood, a travel agency owner, since mid-2005 when he disappeared on a trip to nearby Peshawar. She believes he was picked up by military intelligence in a crackdown on extremist sympathizers, but says to this day no charges have ever been filed.

Has he ever been involved in supporting Islamic terrorists?

AMINA JANJUA: No, he`s never been supporting any illegal activities or any of the extremist groups.

MARGARET WARNER: Was there anything he was doing that could have given the authorities suspicions that he was involved with terrorists?

AMINA JANJUA: That`s still a mystery for us.

MARGARET WARNER: Janjua, who started a group to assist families of men swept up in the government`s campaign against extremists, had high hopes the Supreme Court would order her husband`s release, as it did for other terror suspects held in detention without trial. But Musharraf ended that hope when he suspended the sitting Supreme Court and constitution.

In declaring the emergency, Musharraf said that`s exactly what he meant to do, clip the wings of a supreme court that was coddling extremists who want to take over Pakistan.

PERVEZ MUSHARRAF, President of Pakistan (through translator): Extremists have taken the writ of government into their own hands. They`re trying to set up a state within a state.

MARGARET WARNER: Still, Amina Janjua doesn`t buy Musharraf`s argument that he imposed the state of emergency to give him a stronger hand in the fight against extremism.

AMINA JANJUA: I think what Pervez Musharraf has been practicing is extremism himself. This is harsh and very, very brutal use of power, as I say, which one does not expect from the government, you know?

MARGARET WARNER: So far the police, not the army, has been called upon to enforce the state of emergency against relatively modest crowds of protestors, of lawyers, media, and human rights activists. Security forces also have blocked off potential flash points, like the capital`s Constitution Avenue, to protect the president`s house and parliament from demonstrators.

Still, critics contend that the state of emergency, by sparking political protests that require security forces to control, has only complicated the authorities` mission of combating terrorism.

LT. GEN. TALAT MASOOD: What is happening is that the attention is diverted, and then President Musharraf, of course, is also wearing two hats, so his attention is again divided in trying to suppress the moderate and political forces, at the same time fighting the extremists.

MARGARET WARNER: The debate continues over whether Musharraf`s state of emergency will help or hinder the battle against Islamic extremist fighters. But there`s another debate taking shape here, as well: whether radical Islam as a political force will be able to take advantage of Pakistan`s current disarray.

Until now, political Islam has been largely rejected by the people of Pakistan. The country`s religious parties have never won more than 12 percent of the vote. But some political analysts fear that could change if General Musharraf and his civilian rivals fail to find a way out of the country`s current political impasse.

NAJAM SETHI: There is only one major movement waiting in the wings, and that is political Islam. People are going to end up saying, "We`ve tried socialism, we`ve tried democracy, we`ve tried the mainstream parties, we`ve tried everybody. We haven`t tried the religious parties. It`s time we gave them an opportunity. Maybe they`ll restore law and order; maybe they`ll get some things done."

I have said that we are five years away from a political religious revival that leads to a majority in parliament, if we don`t get our house in order.

MARGARET WARNER: That vision of Pakistan`s future, buttressed by the image of the country`s religious schools, the madrassas, where more than 1.5 million young Pakistanis learn the Koran by rote, fuels an image of Pakistan today becoming Iran tomorrow. But that`s not a vision all analysts share.

LT. GEN. TALAT MASOOD: Iran has got a very monolithic theology, and Pakistan does not have that. And Pakistan, as you know, is by and large very moderate. Pakistan has several sects, and I doubt very much that it would ever be like Iran.

MARGARET WARNER: Imran Aslam, president of the recently blacked-out Geo Television network, says Musharraf is making a big mistake using emergency rule to jail the likes of lawyers, judges, journalists, and moderate political and human rights activists.

IMRAN ASLAM, President, Geo Television: The media, the civil society, the judiciary, all these people were essentially allies in a constituency that is against any forms of extremism. This was the middle ground. This was where tolerance was being bred, really, and was being nourished, in a sense.

I cannot understand how a person could go to this length in destroying the very constituency that he needs in this very, very difficult battle that we are facing.

MARGARET WARNER: Whatever Musharraf`s motives, the country`s Islamic parties are already on the march. They`ve taken to the streets in recent days to demonstrate against the state of emergency. They`re demanding President Musharraf`s resignation, all part of their continuing quest to give voice to and capitalize on popular discontent with Pakistan`s seemingly endless cycle of military and civilian politics as usual.

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RAY SUAREZ: Now, a campaign to bring laptops to children in the developing world. Jeffrey Brown has that story.

JEFFREY BROWN: It has neon green ear-like antennas and a white plastic frame. It may look like a toy, but it`s intended to change the world.

Called the XO, it was developed by the One Laptop Per Child project, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to bring low-cost computers to children in the developing world. Pilot programs like this one in Brazil are underway.

Water-resistant and drop-proof, the laptop can run in places where power is scarce, with a long-life battery and a crank or pull cord. It offers both wireless Internet and the so-called Mesh Network, meaning it can connect with other XO laptops nearby.

It offers word processing and Web browsing, along with a video camera and microphone. And while hopes were sky high at the beginning, getting governments to sign on has turned out to be a slow process.

Nicholas Negroponte is the founder and chairman of One Laptop Per Child. He`s on leave from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was the director of its media lab, and he joins me now.

Welcome to you.

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE, One Laptop Per Child: Hello.

JEFFREY BROWN: What is the problem that this is intended to solve, and how does it do it?

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE: The problem is poverty, and the idea is to eliminate poverty through education, because 50 percent of the children in this world don`t get education. So we`re talking about vast numbers -- 1.2 billion children in total in the age category that we call primary school - - half of them are not getting education.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, in the introduction I listed some of the things that your computer could do. What was the key thing, in terms of technology, that you had to get right to make this workable?

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE: Jeff, keep in mind that the kids that we are targeting are, first of all, in very remote parts of very poor countries. They have no electricity. In many cases, they don`t even have a school. It`s under a tree.

So we have to build a laptop that, first of all, doesn`t plug into the wall, doesn`t have an AC adapter, so it has to work with human power. You can crank it; you can do other things, or very inexpensive solar panels. So power was a very important element.

Needed to work in the sunlight. You had to use it as an electronic book and be able to read it outdoors, as well as indoors. It had to create a network, because all the kids in the village -- there is no phone system or hot spot. They have to make the network automatically with the laptops. Just those three things forced us to do something from the bottom up.

JEFFREY BROWN: And how long did that take you to work the technology?

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE: It took about two years and roughly 500 people doing things in different parts of the world, and we`re in mass production today.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, you have been quoted recently as saying that you`re disappointed, in part, by the response. You run into some obstacles. It looks as though some governments are wondering whether this is the best way to spend their money.

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE: My disappointment isn`t in the response. My disappointment has been, perhaps, in me misjudging the difference between a head of state saying that he`ll do it, shaking hands, photo opportunities, all sorts of publications and announcements, and then actually getting a $200 million check in the mail. So there`s a bigger goal.

JEFFREY BROWN: You`ve actually had to be sort of an international salesman for this project.

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE: I`ve traveled literally every day of the past two years.

JEFFREY BROWN: But I read a quote from an Indian minister. He said, "We need classrooms and teachers more urgently than fancy tools." Now, how much do you run into that kind of sentiment?

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE: We run into that sentiment particularly from ministers, ministers of education, whose job it is to basically run schools. Now, that minister of education didn`t take into consideration that half his children aren`t in school.

Now, you can solve that by building more schools and training more teachers. But what you can also do in parallel -- not to exclude building schools and training teachers -- is to leverage the children themselves.

JEFFREY BROWN: These are the kinds of conversations you have around the world with government figures?

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE: Absolutely. It`s exactly this kind of conversation.

JEFFREY BROWN: Where to put the resources.

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE: Where to put the resource. And what you do is you take this resource and you spread it over five years, and so you look at it as something like $40 per year. What`s the best way to spend $40 per year?

JEFFREY BROWN: But where does a laptop go in the hierarchy of needs in countries like this? I mean, I was also reading about some aid organizations, and they wonder, if you`re in a country where the basic need of fresh water, for example, clean water, what`s the argument then?

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE: The argument is very simple. Just substitute the word "education" for the word "laptop," and you`ll never have the argument again.

JEFFREY BROWN: Don`t think of this as a machine.

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE: If you use the word "laptop," then people think maybe it`s like an iPod, and do kids really need an iPod? Think of it as education.

Now, this is a school in the box, as well as something that the child can use seamlessly at home. Because it`s one laptop per child, the child has it 24 by 7. Now, if you think of school, under the best conditions, excellent teacher, really good school, the developing world, it`s two shifts.

So the child spends 14.5 hours a week in the perfect classroom. That`s rarely the case. And here what we do is you have the child that takes it home, uses it for music, uses it for games, uses it for browsing, introduces it to the family, leaks into the culture, and the children are the agents of change.

JEFFREY BROWN: And what about the content? What is the content that goes on this that educates the child?

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE: Gutenberg did not write the books, OK, so we want to encourage content, and we`re encouraging wiki textbooks.

JEFFREY BROWN: Explain what you mine by wiki.

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE: Well, wiki is just that it`s contributed by the community, that what is written is written by everybody, not just experts. And the concept of the students and the teachers creating content is a very important one.

JEFFREY BROWN: This project program that you have, the Give One, Get One program, allows Americans to buy two, give one to a child in the developing world. Now that by itself, I suppose, isn`t going to solve the larger problem. What is that to do, a jump start of the whole process?

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE: What Give One, Get One does, it`s like starting an avalanche. You don`t need much snow to create a big avalanche. So it`s our belief -- and this is why we`ve turned to the American people and said, "Join us. For $399, you can get one and give one."

And at the end of this, we`ll see how many we have, and we can go into the poorest countries -- we`ve already made commitments to Rwanda, Haiti, Afghanistan, Mongolia, and we`ve gone into places that are landlocked or very, very poor. And it`s not a $100 laptop or a $188 laptop. It`s a zero-dollar laptop in the Give One, Get One program.

JEFFREY BROWN: I`ll give you a chance to let people know how to do it. How do they find it?

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE: Well, you can go to what`s called LaptopGiving.org. Or, if you forget that, you can just go to laptop.org, which is our home site, learn more about us, and it will tell you how to get to the giving.

JEFFREY BROWN: Speaking of the price, this was touted as the $100 laptop at the beginning. Now it`s closer to $200. Are you fairly confident that that`s where it will settle? Are the finances there to -- I mean, is that how it`s going to work?

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE: It will settle at $100 or less. We launch at a slightly higher level, just because the economies of scale aren`t there and other things that have pushed the price up. Then when what we have pledged to do is to not add features. In other words, there isn`t going to be a model with this extra feature and that extra feature.

What`s going to happen is it`s going to stay constant. The price is going to go down. We think it will take about two years to hit $100 and then continue on below it. And when we get down to about $50, we might think of adding some features.

JEFFREY BROWN: Finally, you`ve set such lofty goals, I asked you at the beginning what this is about, and you said poverty. We`re talking about education of millions of children. How will you judge success?

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE: We will judge success by the number of children who are getting primary education. In some of our test sites around the world, we have found that the second year we run the pilot project, 100 percent more children come to school.

And what that`s telling us is very important. The 6-year-olds are telling the other 6-year-olds in town that school is cool. And we think that very often kids in the developing world drop out of school because they have to help their parents in the field. Rubbish. That`s rarely the case. What`s usually happening is they drop out of school because it`s boring or it`s irrelevant, and we want to change that.

JEFFREY BROWN: And the laptop is helping make that case?

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE: Oh, it`s completely changed it. In the schools where this has been going on, and in some cases in Cambodia it`s been going on for four or five years, all the children continue, continue on. I mean, the passion for learning, the joy of learning, and just the window of opportunity that this provides is boundless.

JEFFREY BROWN: And your job now is to continue going around the world to just try to make that case?

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE: Well, now the laptop has to speak for itself, and I have to stop traveling.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, Nicholas Negroponte, thanks very much.

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE: Thank you.

RAY SUAREZ: A follow-up to Jeff`s conversation. The One Laptop Per Child Foundation announced today it plans to extend the Give One, Get One program throughout the holiday season until December 31st.

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RAY SUAREZ: Now, a Thanksgiving Day look at the food on your plate and the move toward food grown closer to home. NewsHour correspondent Tom Bearden begins with some background.

TOM BEARDEN, NewsHour Correspondent: At the Mount Vernon farmers market in Alexandria, Virginia, earlier this week, shoppers were busy stocking up for the holiday.

FARMERS MARKET SELLER: I would go with a few empire and then anything down beyond, the real tart ones.

TOM BEARDEN: This market has been in operation for more than two decades. Others like it have been sprouting up at a rapid rate nationwide. In the most recent count from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there are nearly 4,400 farmers markets in operation, more than double the number in 1994.

FARMERS MARKET SELLER: It`s got a little spice in it.

TOM BEARDEN: It`s an idea that renown chef Alice Waters has been advocating since 1971 at her restaurant, Chez Panisse.

ALICE WATERS, Owner, Chez Panisse: It`s a way people have been eating since the beginning of time. I mean, just eating what is locally available, sharing it with their families, cooking it simply, eating in season.

TOM BEARDEN: As the movement to eat local and sustainable food grows, so does the list of books prodding consumers to be aware of what it takes to get their food to the table. Aubrey King is the co-owner of Twin Springs Fruit Farm in Orrtanna, Pennsylvania, and a vendor at the Mount Vernon market.

AUBREY KING, Owner, Springs Fruit Farm: Our business has gone up dramatically this year, I think because the press is really playing up the buy local, buy fresh local, the low carbon footprint that buying local creates. Your stuff isn`t shipped from New Zealand or the West Coast.

TOM BEARDEN: But for a national grocery chain like Whole Foods, providing more locally grown foods is a delicate issue. Even though the natural foods giant has expanded the amount of local produce it carries, Whole Foods relies on shipments from larger farms all over the U.S. and abroad, especially for its federally certified organic produce.

By contrast, all the products for sale at the Mount Vernon farmers market are grown and produced within a 125-mile radius.

JOAN SHANNON, Shopper: I like to support the local farmers. I grew up in Kansas, so I`m all for the farmer.

TOM BEARDEN: But for many shoppers, buying locally means fresher, tastier food.

BONNIE DAVEY, Shopper: It`s better to come closer to the source of the food, so you have fewer middlemen and fewer people getting their hands on the food and doing things to it. And so it`s just fresher and better.

TOM BEARDEN: But the agribusiness and trade experts say buying locally raises other concerns. Produce and meats are sometimes more expensive at farmers markets than at the local supermarket, raising questions about affordability. And some are concerned that if the buy local movement expands even further, it might threaten the livelihood of poor farmers in other countries that depend on exports to the U.S. market.

RAY SUAREZ: Gwen Ifill picks up the story from there.

GWEN IFILL: So how does the food you put on your Thanksgiving Day table affect the environment, the economy, and the lives of the farmers and corporations who grow and raise it?

For that, we`re joined by Dan Barber, a chef and owner of the Blue Hill Restaurant in New York City, which serves food grown in a small farm in Westchester County.

And Dennis Avery, a former agricultural analyst for the State Department, he now studies international food and farming developments for the Hudson Institute, a policy research center based in Washington.

Welcome to you both.

DENNIS AVERY, Hudson Institute: Thank you.

DAN BARBER, Chef, Blue Hill Restaurant: Thank you.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Barber, explain to us, why does it matter where the food on our tables comes from?

DAN BARBER: It matters, I think, because we`re hardwired for it. Food generally tastes better when we know where it`s coming from and how it`s grown, and even better when we know the people who are growing it. That might be a little idealistic, but certainly in the last 30 years, it`s hard to argue that profound changes have occurred on our agricultural landscape and the kind of stuff that I am, in some cases, forced to buy and use in my restaurant.

And those are changes that have not been benign. They`ve affected our health, our environment, our communities, and those are things that, it seems to me, people are becoming more and more aware of. So I think they`re asking, in general, "We don`t want that kind of food anymore. We want to know more about where our food is coming from, because it`s better for us, it`s better for our environment, and generally it tastes better."

GWEN IFILL: So in a perfect world, Dan Barber, we would all shop at farmers markets?

DAN BARBER: In a perfect world, we would know more about where our food is coming from. We would have a better transparency about it. You know, for some of us in the city, I would say, yes, a perfect world is a farmers market, because it attaches you to an agricultural landscape that`s just outside the city. And it`s a perfect way to enjoy food and enjoy the benefits that good food provides.

So for those of us in the city, that`s as close as we`re going to get, and that`s why I`m there three times a week.

GWEN IFILL: Dennis Avery, I know that through your work with the Hudson Institute you work with a lot of agribusiness interests. Why, in your opinion, would what Mr. Barber suggest not be practical?

DENNIS AVERY: Well, I like farmers markets, too, and I shopped in the farmers market here in Stanton, but we buy specialties, cinnamon rolls, local sausage, peaches in season.

But this country needs hundreds of millions of tons of food everyday, and New York draws food from all over the country. If New York tried to supply itself from farmers` pickup trucks, the traffic jam to end all traffic jams would lock up the city.

And we`ve got to realize that, if we`re going to live in cities, then we`re going to need a major supply chain. And I would say to Chef Barber that the food we`re getting today is the safest it`s ever been. It`s as fresh as it can be, if we`re going to live in cities. And the nutrition is as good as it`s ever been.

GWEN IFILL: And so there`s a connection -- to the question I asked Dan Barber -- is there a connection between where the food is grown and where it comes from and what ends up on the table?

DENNIS AVERY: Well, let`s remember that there are regional specialties like Idaho potatoes as good as there are in the world, New York apples as good as there are, and I`ve got a particular season of the summer when I get some peaches from Pennsylvania, and I won`t even say where, because I don`t want everybody else buying them.

And our farmers market in Stanton pulls food from South Carolina, Florida, extending the season, trying to make their market more useful, and it all takes fuel. And if the fuel is used in constructive ways, if the trucks are well loaded, if the rail car takes a little bit of fuel to come a long way, that`s not a bad investment.

GWEN IFILL: Dan Barber, Dennis Avery says not only is the food every bit as tasty and nutritious from larger suppliers as it is from specialty - - as he puts it, farmers markets -- but that this is as good a way to get the economies of scale and make it more affordable. Why not?

DAN BARBER: Well, affordable in one sense, sure. I mean, you know, the checkout aisle, I`m not exactly sure that the price of the food is reflecting the real cost of growing the food.

So to the extent that our food is cheaper because of the kind of farming practices that Mr. Avery both represents and promotes, I would agree that there`s a "cost reduction," in quotes, for that. But we`re going to pay for it on the other end, and we`re just seeing that in how we are dealing with some of the environmental effects of our food policy, of big agriculture, just the kind of things Mr. Avery is talking about.

We`re seeing the effects on the health of this country; obesity and diabetes would be two of the hotter subjects. So all of a sudden food and how we grow food becomes more than just fuel. It becomes about ecology; it becomes about health; it becomes about community. And those are the things that we`ve lost over the last, I`d say, 30 years.

And more has changed in agriculture in the last 30 years than the last 30,000. And that`s not hyperbolic. That`s a reality that we`re beginning to understand more and more of. And I think people, my diners and my role as a chef, I think, is to produce good-tasting food.

And part of producing good-tasting food is making sure that the food that I`m putting into my oven and onto my saute pan is grown in the right way. And grown in the right way means that it has good ecology behind it, and it means that it`s loaded with a nutrient density to produce that flavor. It just so happens that great flavor -- luckily for me, luckily for me -- great flavor also has behind it great ecology and great nutrient density, great health.

GWEN IFILL: Let me ask Dennis Avery about that. Dan Barber says that the food that he puts in his saute pan benefits from being grown locally, from having good ecology, and that it kind of reverses what he seems to think is kind of a negative direction that our food sourcing has gone through in the last 30 years. What do you say to that?

DENNIS AVERY: Well, Chef Barber`s shortening the food chain. He`s shortening the supply chain, and that`s all to the good, and I applaud him for doing it. It does cost more.

But I would say that the community where he`s serving that food has changed even more in the last 35 years than the farms have. And we have to recognize that the environmental benefits of modern farming are principally in raising the yield.

When we triple the yield per acre, we reduce the amount of land that we have to take away from nature by two-thirds. And with modern farming -- particularly I`m thinking here of no-till farming -- the farmers do it with less erosion. They do it with less negative impact on the environment than any farmers ever have.

That`s not widely recognized, and I know a lot of people protest that, but it`s the basic truth.

GWEN IFILL: Dan Barber, go ahead. You want to respond?

DAN BARBER: Well, yes, just nipping at this. It`s one paradigm to look at is, you know, economies of scale, you know, that to feed the world, the ever-growing world, we need ever and ever larger farms and monocultures to produce that food.

But the truth is we produce way too much food right now. And for the future, what we need is an agriculture system that`s not so reliant on cheap energy, because we`re seeing the effects of what happens when our food system has to compete in the last couple of years, anyway, with ethanol, but increasingly with peak oil.

And what`s going to happen in the next 50 years when our agricultural food system, from seed to farmer to trucker to processing center to distributor to marketplace, all of it is based on cheap energy. And that`s the kind of paradigm that I don`t think Mr. Avery can respond positively to for the future.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Avery, you get the final word.

DENNIS AVERY: Well, I agree with Chef Barber that ethanol is one of our really bad ideas. It produces the equivalent of 50 gallons worth of gasoline per acre per year against a demand of 134 billion gallons a year, and it can`t possibly make a significant dent. I would end the ethanol program immediately and give Chef Barber back the farmland.

GWEN IFILL: But to his larger point, beyond ethanol?

DENNIS AVERY: Well, the whole of society is going to have to retarget its energy system. I`d personally go nuclear; he may not agree with that. But we have to have some sort of energy or society disappears. And I strongly suspect society is going to persist.

GWEN IFILL: Dennis Avery and Dan Barber, thank you both very much.

DAN BARBER: Thank you.

(BREAK)

RAY SUAREZ: Finally tonight, an encore report about the disappearance of honeybees. NewsHour correspondent Spencer Michels has the story.

SPENCER MICHELS, NewsHour Correspondent: In California`s lush Central Valley, the fruit and nut trees are in bloom, but the honeybees that pollinate those trees so they will bear fruit are in short supply.

One of California`s top crops, almonds, is completely dependent on bees for pollination. There aren`t nearly enough wild or native bees to do the job, and California commercial beekeepers can supply only half of the hives needed.

So bees raised by migratory beekeepers from around the country are trucked in, but this year there`s a big problem.

So this is what, is it like a cemetery for beehives?

LANCE SUNDBERG, Beekeeper: Yes, in a way, it is.

SPENCER MICHELS: Late last year, beekeeper Lance Sundberg brought 2,100 colonies of bees to California from Montana and other states. A month later, he discovered that two-thirds of the bees had disappeared.

LANCE SUNDBERG: It was like as if they took off and went to work, and they just failed to come back. And no sign of dead bees, and that`s the unusual phenomenon.

SPENCER MICHELS: Many of the bees died or vanished before he could rent them out to growers, apparently victims of a nationwide problem now being called colony collapse disorder.

He stacked completely dead hives under tarps. Here, so-called robber bees are stealing abandoned honey, and he`s put ailing hives beside a lake hoping they might recover.

LANCE SUNDBERG: So a normal colony at this time would have bees wall- to-wall.

SPENCER MICHELS: That would be 30,000 bees probably.

LANCE SUNDBERG: Thirty thousand to sixty thousand bees. And right now, this one`s down to probably 3,500 bees or less.

SPENCER MICHELS: Colony collapse disorder, a malady of unknown origin, has shown up in 24 states over the last year and could, if not stopped, jeopardize up to $18 billion in crops that bees pollinate.

The motels around Oakdale, 90 miles east of San Francisco, are full this time of year with worried beekeepers from around the country. At Cathy and Carol`s Coffee Shop, a beekeepers` hangout in the tiny town of Waterford, we sat down with a bee broker, two beekeepers, and a scientist.

Like many people in the industry, bee broker Charleen Carroll says die-offs have been happening frequently in recent years.

CHARLEEN CARROLL, Bee Broker: It`s something that we`ve seen for probably 15 years at least, and it depends on the beekeeper.

SPENCER MICHELS: But beekeepers Louise Rossberg and Bob Olmo think there is something different going on this year.

LOUISE ROSSBERG, Beekeeper: Every lid we pop open, there`s no bees in the box. We lost about 90 percent of our business.

BOB OLMO, Beekeeper: I lost 50 percent of my operation. There`s no bees in the box.

SPENCER MICHELS: Do you have any clue as to what`s going on?

BOB OLMO: No, I don`t. I`ve never seen it before. And it`s pretty hard to lose 50 percent or 60 percent of your business and stay in business.

JERRY BROMENSHENK, University of Montana: There`s a whole variety of folks looking at whether it`s something new or something cyclic that we`ve seen before and it`s just particularly widespread this time around and unusually severe.

SPENCER MICHELS: Jerry Bromenshenk, an entomologist at the University of Montana and a private consultant to the bee industry, has visited sites of bee die-off around the country.

JERRY BROMENSHENK: It could be some type of disease pathogen, an unknown virus, for example, but there doesn`t seem to be anyway to slow it down, stop it once it starts.

TEACHER: Would you like to go inside to take a look?

SPENCER MICHELS: As children learn early in places like San Francisco`s Randall Museum, European honeybees imported to America by early colonists are complex creatures with a highly developed social structure.

NANCY ELLIS, Randall Museum: The society of the honeybee is made up of one queen, several thousand workers, which are all female bees, and then several hundred that are males, called drones.

SPENCER MICHELS: But for all their organizations, says the museum`s Nancy Ellis, bees -- even those in this carefully controlled display -- seem defenseless against the current die-off.

NANCY ELLIS: About three or four weeks ago, this was jammed with bees. And right now, you can only see just a few stragglers still inside. I don`t really know what caused this hive to go.

SPENCER MICHELS: Solving that mystery and the larger one are important, because bees and other pollinators like hummingbirds perform a crucial function in agriculture. Various attempts to spread pollen without them have never worked well.

As bees gather nectar and pollen, they flit between blossoms, doing what the birds and the bees do. Laurie Adams heads the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign.

LAURIE ADAMS, North American Pollinator Protection Campaign: The male part of the plant is moved toward the female part of the plant or toward the female part of another plant.

SPENCER MICHELS: And a bee or another pollinator does this?

LAURIE ADAMS: Absolutely. The result is the complete fertilization within the plant, so the plant is able to set seeds and set fruit, which it normally might not be able to do without that.

SPENCER MICHELS: Because pollinators are essential in growing up to one-third of the typical American`s diet, she contends the food supply is threatened. The problem for many pollinators, she says, is the loss of habitat where homes are replacing fields.

But scientists searching for the cause of colony collapse disorder are focusing on a long list of other suspects.

ERIC MUSSEN, University of California, Davis: What they live in is a hive, whether it`s a box that we made or whether it`s a hollowed-out tree.

SPENCER MICHELS: At the University of California at Davis, Eric Mussen gives advice to beekeepers, and they`ve been calling non-stop. He suspects the bee die-off may be related to the weather, which stresses the bees.

ERIC MUSSEN: I think that one of the biggest stresses was the fact that the United States has been in a drought in many places, and the plants are just not providing the food that the bees need to be really successful.

SPENCER MICHELS: Bees can also be stressed by traveling long distances to get to orchards that need them. And scientists are looking at pesticides that might kill bees by contaminating the nectar and the pollen they gather.

Another suspected culprit is mites that suck the blood from both adult and unborn bees and can transmit viruses into the colony. That`s what Orin Johnson suspects. Johnson is president of the California Beekeepers Association and a second-generation beekeeper.

ORIN JOHNSON, California State Beekeepers Association: The Varroa mite is the worst malady we have. It spins off viruses; it weakens the colony; it makes it susceptible for a lot of other maladies. If you don`t keep the mites under control, you`re going to lose a lot of colonies for sure.

SPENCER MICHELS: Johnson uses medicines to control the mites, and he`s not lost very many bees this year, though he has lost some.

ORIN JOHNSON: This is a classic symptom of the colony collapse or disappearing bee. Your hive, your box, or your combs will have plenty of honey. The hive has plenty of food. They`re not dying from starving; they have everything they need. So why are they disappearing or dying?

SPENCER MICHELS: Other hives are in great shape, and he can`t explain why.

ORIN JOHNSON: If every hive looked like this, I`d just be ecstatic. But even now, after the build-up in the almonds, I`ll still have a certain percentage that just don`t get healthier. They get worse. And that`s some of the dilemma.

SPENCER MICHELS: While the beekeeping community complains that there isn`t enough research going on into what is causing colony collapse disorder, there is some, and the aim of much of it is to find out what goes on in the hive when the beekeeper isn`t there.

Jerry Bromenshenk is working on a listening device whose signals can be sent via satellite to a beekeeper miles away.

JERRY BROMENSHENK: We found that sound can be used as a diagnostic that tells whether a colony is having any health problems.

SPENCER MICHELS: But only a few institutions are doing intense scientific work on colony collapse disorder. The U.S. Department of Agriculture Bee Research Lab in Maryland has collected bee samples from around the country. Jeff Pettis is research leader.

JEFF PETTIS, USDA Bee Research Lab: At this point, we`ve ruled very little out. In the lab, we`re looking at those for tracheal mites, Varroa mites.

SPENCER MICHELS: Pettis acknowledges the investigation is at an early stage.

JEFF PETTIS: I still wouldn`t rule out unknown pathogen, because the symptoms that we`re seeing don`t match up with the things that we know, that we currently know.

SPENCER MICHELS: Jim Jasper would like some answers. He heads one of the biggest almond-growing and processing firms in California, a state that produces 80 percent of the world`s almonds, about a billion pounds a year.

Business has been booming of late, as worldwide demand has expanded. More trees have been planted, and that has upped the demand for bees and the price Jasper has to pay to rent them for about a month.

JIM JASPER, Stewart and Jasper Orchards: Four or five years ago, we were paying maybe $40, $50 a hive. And now hives are up to $150 a hive. Without bees, we would really be lost, as far as producing almonds here in California.

SPENCER MICHELS: Meanwhile, as the almond blossoms fade, beekeepers like Tom Hamilton of Idaho are pulling their bees out of these orchards at night when the bees are calm and preparing to move onto the next crop, cherries in California or apples in Washington State.

The crisis hasn`t hit Hamilton`s bees, nor has it crippled the almond industry, at least not yet.

TOM HAMILTON, Beekeeper: I think we`re going to be able to solve this problem, but right now it`s a little stressful.

SPENCER MICHELS: Growers and beekeepers alike fear that, without more academic and government research, the bee die-off will turn into a very costly, unsolved mystery.

RAY SUAREZ: No one cause of colony collapse disorder has yet been found, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture says that a recently discovered virus, the Israeli Acute Paralysis virus, could be playing a role. That virus was found in nearly all commercial bee colonies hit with the collapse. But officials are not discounting other possible causes, including malnutrition, mites, pesticides, and the lost of native habitat.

(BREAK)

RAY SUAREZ: Again, the major developments of this day.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan removed the last legal hurdle for President Pervez Musharraf to rule as a civilian.

And al-Qaida fighters clashed with Iraqi troops south of Baghdad and killed at least three Iraqi soldiers.

(BREAK)

RAY SUAREZ: And, again, to our honor roll of American service personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. We add them as their deaths are made official and as photographs become available. Here, in silence, are 18 more.

We`ll see you online and again here tomorrow evening, with Mark Shields and David Brooks, among others. I`m Ray Suarez. Happy Thanksgiving. Thanks for joining us. Good night.