Registration is open for the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association’s 42nd annual conference, Ohio’s largest such event focused on sustainable agriculture, set for Feb. 10–15 online.
The conference sponsors include three CFAES programs, and among the 60-plus scheduled speakers are 10 from CFAES and Ohio State.
Learn more and register. The deadline to register is Feb. 8.
February’s monthly webinar by the Environmental Professionals Network, a service of CFAES’ School of Environment and Natural Resources, is “A world of sustainable pathways, a focus on Cardinal Health,” set for 10–11:30 a.m. Feb. 9. Organizers say the event will “explore lessons learned from one leading company’s experience in calculating and reducing its global environmental footprint.”
CFAES’ spring Environmental and Sustainable Career Fair takes place online from 1–5 p.m. Feb. 17. It’s open to students from CFAES and from throughout Ohio State.
Ohio State’s Sustainability Institute invites you to join its inaugural energy symposium, Energy Transition and Decarbonization, set to be held virtually from Feb. 10–11.
Youngstown Vindicator, Jan. 10; research involving Stan Gehrt, School of Environment and Natural Resources, cited
Business First, Jan. 8, 2021
Toledo Blade, Jan. 4; Aaron Wilson, OSU Extension, cited
Farmers in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana now have updated guidelines to use when it comes to fertilizing their field crops—and their profits and everyone’s water quality stand to gain.
Continue reading New fertilizer guidelines a win-win: More profit, cleaner water
As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, the bioeconomy is facing challenges.
On Friday, Feb. 12, from 9 a.m. to noon, CFAES’ Advanced BioSystems Workshop will look at those challenges and will brainstorm ways for technology, research, and the government to address them.
Drones. Automation. Artificial intelligence. They’re some of the new, cutting-edge ways to monitor greenhouse plants. They’re also among the subjects to be covered by an upcoming workshop for greenhouse growers.
With a theme of “Improving Production Via Listening to Plants,” CFAES’ 2021 Greenhouse Management Workshop takes place online from Jan. 27–29.
In heavily farmed parts of Central America, South America, and across the Caribbean, “the most degraded soils have not reached the point of no return. They can still be restored.”
So says CFAES’ Rattan Lal, Distinguished University Professor of Soil Science and 2020 World Food Prize laureate, who’s helping lead a new, 34-country initiative to tackle that restoration.
Why it’s important: Some 36 million people in the region don’t have enough good food to eat, and degraded soils play a role in it. Success, Lal says, will mean “we can eliminate hunger and malnutrition in the region, and we can protect the natural resources that are now being degraded.”
Last year, Ohioans working as Master Gardener Volunteers grew nearly 80,000 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables—equal to the weight of a fully loaded 18-wheeler, or about 65,000 meals—which they donated to some 101 food pantries across Ohio to help people in need.
Mike Hogan, an OSU Extension educator who facilitates the Master Gardener Volunteers program in Franklin County, said the need for such donations “significantly increased this year due to the pandemic.”
Master Gardener Volunteers are plant lovers who donate their expertise and time serving the public. CFAES’ outreach arm, OSU Extension, runs the program, which gives training and has volunteers in most of the state’s counties.