The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities today received the World Food Prize Foundation’s Borlaug Medallion during a ceremony celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Morrill Land-grant Act of 1862. The act created America’s 70-plus land-grant colleges, including Ohio State, and led to ramped-up agricultural education across the country. APLU counts Ohio State among its 218 members.
Month: June 2012
‘We can do better than what we’ve done’
Brent Sohngen, an agricultural economist with CFAES, speaks next week on reducing farm nutrient runoff into Ohio’s lakes and streams.
Vilsack: ‘Creating jobs by strengthening the bio-based economy’
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack blogged on Friday about USDA’s support for a bio-based economy, one that will “help increase business opportunities for farmers and ranchers, and create jobs across our nation.” He’ll visit our Columbus campus this Thursday (June 28), where in part he’ll talk with food scientists in our college about innovations in food safety and in functional foods. Update: His schedule.
Workshops set for environmental leaders
Shale gas. Urban planning. Renewable energy. Managing complex systems (specifically, Lake Erie and its recent algae blooms). The Ohio Environmental Leaders Institute, which is a learning forum for environmental professionals and policy makers, has announced its next four workshops.
‘All the same ecological principles apply’
Clever rabbits notwithstanding, Joe Kovach’s “parking lot farm” in Wooster is seeing results …
Engineering plants to help replace oil
OARDC, which is the research arm of our college, will play a key role in engineering a new plant-based fuel, backed by a $5.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. The possible sources for that fuel: Guayule, which is the yellow-flowered plant shown here, and sweet sorghum.
‘Hippie chimps,’ a Top 10 grad, and a ‘dream come true’ with a CFAES degree
Speaking of bonobos, an endangered primate and our genetic cousin, check out this nice story about spring CFAES graduate Drew Enigk, who was a Top 10 Senior. He studied bonobos at the Columbus Zoo for an undergraduate research project and will study common chimpanzees, the bonobo’s genetic sibling, in graduate school at the University of New Mexico.
Turn blue, make green (sweet!)
Can farms in Ohio become economically sustainable, or more so, by growing blueberries? Find out tomorrow. (Spoiler alert: Yes, they apparently certainly can.)
Watch: ‘The best way … is to completely take account of all the costs’
Related to our previous post, Michael Farren, one of three authors of the Swank Program’s recent policy brief on shale drilling, talks about how to prevent a post-boom bust (video, 1:53). Farren is an Ohio State doctoral candidate.
Shale drilling: Avoiding the bust from a boom?
Can Ohio benefit from shale drilling in both the short and long terms? And if so, how? Experts with our college’s C. William Swank Program in Rural-Urban Policy last week issued a policy brief.