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On-line organic agriculture course Leopold Center Director Jerry DeWitt will teach a new online course on the theory and practice of organic agriculture during the Spring 2008 semester at Iowa State University. Instruction will cover risk management tools for transitioning to organic and current concepts and research on soil quality, organic crops, livestock, markets and public policy. It is offered as a three-credit pilot course in ISU Agronomy and is available through ISU Extension offices on a noncredit basis. DeWitt is team teaching the weekly class with Kathleen Delate, associate professor of agronomy and horticulture, and ISU Extension field specialist Craig Chase. Delate also oversees organic field plots that are part of the Long-Term Agro-Ecological Research Initiative (LTAR) supported by the Leopold Center. The Leopold Center web site had a record number of visitors in October: nearly 30,000 visits that constituted 231,637 hits. One-third of those visits – 10,707 – occurred on October 17, when Reuters News Service posted a news report on its web site with a link going directly to the Center’s 2001 “Food, Fuel and Freeways” study.
The Reuters news reporter relied on Leopold Center
Associate Director Rich Pirog, who wrote the food miles
study, as a primary source in her report, “Do food miles
make a difference to global warming?” Also during that
one-month period, web visitors downloaded or viewed more
than 57,000 research reports and documents, an increase
of nearly 25 percent from previous months.
Angie Tagtow, a registered dietitian from Elkhart who
has worked with the Leopold Center on food systems
projects, has been named a Food and Society Policy
Fellow by the Thomas Jefferson Agricultural Institute.
Tagtow is consultant and managing editor of the Journal
of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition, a publication she
launched to bring together experts on local, national
and international hunger and environmental issues. The
fellows program includes food and agriculture
professionals who help to inform the public about
sustainable food systems.
The 2001 “Food, Fuel
and Freeways” report is cited in a recent position
statement of the American Dietetic Association. The
position statement encourages food and nutrition
professionals to consider ecological sustainability in
the food system by supporting sustainable agriculture
and community food systems. Suggestions include
minimizing food waste, purchasing recycled materials and
water-saving appliances, purchasing foods produced with
fewer agricultural inputs, and supporting local growers
and farmers’ markets. The position statement is
published in the June 2007 issue of the
Journal of the American Dietetic Association.
Iowa State University Extension is offering niche pork
producers a variety of training and online discussion
groups from December to March. Online discussions are
planned on niche sow farrowing, niche sow breeding and
increasing niche pork profits as part of a larger
research project coordinated by the Iowa Pork Industry
Center. More information is available from Dave Stender,
(712) 225-6196 or at
dstender@iastate.edu. Results from Leopold Center-supported research on alternatives to sow gestation stalls have been encouraging in terms of both sow performance and economics. Group pens for pigs inside deep-bedded, naturally ventilated hoop barns have been studied for the past two-and-a-half years at an ISU-managed research farm. The system has been compared to individual gestation stalls in a mechanically ventilated confinement building with a partially slatted floor and manure flush system. Researchers found that reproductive performance could be maintained or enhanced in well-managed group housing systems for gestating sows without increasing labor, and with similar operating costs. Results of the project were reported in the May 2007 issue of Journal of Animal Science, “Performance of gestating sows in bedded hoop barns and confinement stalls.” Funds also come from the Iowa Agriculture and Home Economics Experiment Station and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. King Corn star at ISU premiere “It’s unbelievable how little people in our generation know about where their food comes from. I think we need to do whatever we can do to narrow that huge gap that separates people from farmers who produce food. This film was an attempt to do that.” – Curt Ellis, one of the makers of the documentary, “King Corn,” at its Iowa State University premiere on November 10 |
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Back to Winter 2007 Leopold Letter
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