Friday, March 2, 2012
8:00 am – 4:00 pm
L.D. Brown Agricultural Exposition Center
406 Elrod Rd., Bowling Green, KY (map)
Registration deadline is February 17, 2012

featuring special keynote speaker
Jerry Brunetti
Author of Cancer, Nutrition and Healing
and livestock nutrition specialist

Cost: FREE to OAK members who join and register by Feb. 17
$25 non-members, $10 students, kids under 18 free
Registration includes breakfast and lunch.

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Company: Courtney Farms, LLC
Location: 7255 Vigo Road, Bagdad, KY 40003.    Shelby County, KY
Position(s) Available:    Assistant Farm Manager and Intern/Apprenticeship
Area of focus: Diversified Vegetable Production

Courtney Farms, LLC is seeking to hire an individual (or individuals) who is a self-starter and takes ownership in his or her work.    Our farm is searching for one with common sense and whom is detail oriented, and who follows instruction accurately.

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The new USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map is more sophisticated and accurate than any other previously developed. Click the image for link to zone map web site.

By Kim Kaplan, Food and Nutrition Research Briefs, USDA
January 25, 2012

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today released the new version of its Plant Hardiness Zone Map (PHZM), updating a useful tool for gardeners and researchers for the first time since 1990 with greater accuracy and detail. The new map—jointly developed by USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and Oregon State University‘s (OSU) PRISM Climate Group—is available online at www.planthardiness.ars.usda.gov. ARS is the chief intramural scientific research agency of USDA.

For the first time, the new map offers a Geographic Information System (GIS)-based interactive format and is specifically designed to be Internet-friendly. The map website also incorporates a “find your zone by ZIP code” function. Static images of national, regional and state maps also have been included to ensure the map is readily accessible to those who lack broadband Internet access.

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New York, NY – January 10, 2012- Today, FoodCorps, a national organization that addresses childhood obesity and food insecurity in underserved communities, opens applications for its second annual class of service members. The selected emerging leaders will dedicate one year of full-time public service in school food systems – expanding hands-on nutrition education programs, building and tending school gardens, and sourcing fresh, healthy, local food for school cafeterias.

In its first year FoodCorps gained national attention by attracting 1,229 applicants for just 50 positions, and by providing an innovative, grassroots, scalable approachto solving our national obesity epidemic. Since 1980, the percentage of American children who are overweight or obese has doubled. With one in four U.S. children struggling with hunger and one in three obese or overweight, FoodCorps addresses the root cause of both: access to healthy food.

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"Organic agriculture used to be sustainable" according to a misquote in the lead story in the New Year's Eve edition of the New York Times.

The phone rang as I was tying up loose ends for my last day in the office before Christmas. New York Times reporter Elisabeth Rosenthal wanted my thoughts on the sustainability of organic agriculture… a subject that I think about a lot. I gave her my cell phone number and asked her to call back.

She called again Saturday afternoon, as my kids and I returned home from Christmas shopping. I plunked them in front of a video and put her on speaker phone so that I could peel butternut squash for a solstice potluck that evening. We talked for a half hour or so, and she said she’d let me know when her story would run.

I didn’t hear back from her, but a friend in New York City contacted me on New Year’s Eve to tell me I had been quoted in a front page story. It dealt with important questions about the sustainability of growing organic vegetables in the deserts of Mexico’s Baja peninsula. Apparently it had legs. It was the most e-mailed story in the paper for much of the first week of 2012. It contained some of the ideas that I had discussed as I peeled squash, but only one direct quote from me. My heart sank as I read it:

Organic agriculture used to be sustainable agriculture, but now that is not always the case.

That’s not what I had said. It wasn’t even a statement I could agree with. Yet there it was, immortalized in America’s newspaper of record with my name attached to it.

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GEN 300-003, 1 credit, Spring 2012,
Mondays 3 to 3:50 PM, AGN N12,
NO PREREQUISTES
G. Wagner Coordinator (gwagner@uky.edu)

Is “weather weirding” due to climate change?

How might “weather weirding” impact agriculture?

How might “weather weirding” impact you?

What is Climate Change All About?

• What is the evidence?
• What are the causes?
• What is the evidence that it is already happening?
• What can we do about it?

What are the Roles of Agriculture in Climate Change?

• Does Ag contribute?
• How can Ag help to mitigate?
• How may it impact our lives and careers?

Just Label It! So We Know When It’s GMO

Maria Rodale

CEO and Chairman of Rodale, Inc. and book author

I demand organic. It’s that simple. I know, you’re thinking, “Of course you demand organic. You wrote the Organic Manifesto and grew up on an organic farm.” True, but, even if I didn’t, I would demand organic and so should you. In lieu of giving you my big speech about how organics can feed the planet and make us safer, I will focus on one very good reason why I demand organic: GMOs. Genetically Modified Organisms, or, as the FDA says, foods that have undergone genetic modification, meaning they’ve been engineered and altered at the genetic level “using any technique, new or traditional.”

To read more click here.

Brattleboro, VT – Nov. 2, 2011 —Seventy eight percent – more U.S. families than ever before – say they are choosing organic foods, according to a study published today by the Organic Trade Association (OTA). “In a time when the severity of the economy means making tough choices, it is extremely encouraging to see consumers vote with their values by including quality organic products in their shopping carts,” said Christine Bushway, OTA’s Executive Director and CEO. The finding is one of many contained in OTA’s newly released 2011 U.S. Families’ Organic Attitudes and Beliefs Study. “It’s clear that with more than three-quarters of U.S. families choosing organic, this has moved way beyond a niche market,” Bushway added.

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Jerry Kushner of Broad Run Vineyards is one of Kentucky's wine pioneers. Text and photos by Hubrecht Duijker.

“America’s commercial wine industry was born not in California, but in Kentucky. The ‘First Vineyard’ was planted there in 1798 by the winemaker for the Marquis de Lafayette, a French general who fought in the American War of Independence. In the century that followed, Kentucky became America’s third- largest wine-producing state. Although Prohibition in the 1920s put an end to the industry, today winegrowing in Kentucky is again flourishing: the number of producers has increased from 4 to 70 in the last decade.

Due to the disastrous effects of phylloxera and Prohibition, for generations not a drop of wine was produced by the once-flourishing wine industry in this green, central and sparsely populated state (the size of the Netherlands and Belgium combined, Kentucky has a population of only 4.3 million). It was only in the 1980s that some intrepid growers began to replant grapevines.”  Read more

The CAMG is taking applications for a $500 scholarship to be awarded to a student majoring in horticulture, plant pathology, landscape design, botany, forestry, entomology, environmental concerns, urban planning, land management, agronomy, or allied subjects.

To be eligible to apply, your home county must be Anderson, Boyle, Franklin, Mercer, or Woodford; you must be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident with permanent resident ID; enrolled as a full-time student in a KY university with an accredited program; have a minimum, cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher on a 4.0 scale; and must a freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, or graduate student. The application is available at http://sites.google.com/site/capitalareamastergardeners or you may call 502-223-7346 for further information. The deadline to apply is April 1, 2012.

Cantaloupe Listeria Outbreak Tops List in Annual Survey Commissioned by Hunter Public Relations

NEW YORK, NY, Dec 08, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — Food safety tops the list of an annual survey asking Americans to choose the most significant food story of 2011. Even in a year when global food prices hit record highs and both restaurant menus and retail food labels got a new look, the safety of the American food supply dominated the headlines and consumers took notice. The survey was commissioned by Hunter Public Relations, a leading public relations agency specializing in the food and beverage industry.

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