A new study from Cornell University floated through my social media field yesterday. Basically, a group of researchers from Cornell's Food and Brand Lab wanted to know if the "health halo" effect of organic food could lead to real bias. Previous studies have shown that the organic label can lead consumers to think a product is healthier, but this group wanted to know if it went further than that. Turns out, it does. In short, they offered up a pair of cookies…

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I have written much in the past about what the Illinois Farm Families program is doing to share agricultural truth with the consumers of Chicago, and in my mind, one of the greater programs they've come up with is the Field Moms program. In its first year, they selected 10 Chicago moms to be "Field Moms." They chose women with an interest in the food supply and with a sphere of influence. They took them inside hog confinements, to cattle feedlots, inside tractors and…

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Among the most awe-inspiring things in agriculture is to look back at how our grandparents farmed. Then look at where we are today. In our grandparents' lifetimes, they went from farming with horses hitched to a moldboard plow to farming with tractors. Soybeans were commercialized in their lifetime. Corn was hybridized - which is to say, farmer/plant breeders discovered they could cross-breed corn varieties and the hybrid vigor made for far greater yielding plants. They saw a…

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Last month, I was in Chicago to cover the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance's research summit. I sat down at a table, and thought to myself that the woman across from me looked familiar. Then I checked her name tag and I'll be darned if wasn't Emily Zweber. We're Facebook friends! We'd just never met in real life. She looked and me and apparently thought the same thing, because we commenced to introducing ourselves in real life (or IRL, as the kids say, which is kind…

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When I have had the privilege to sit and talk with consumers who don't know horsepower from horses, there is one topic that consistently comes up: chemicals. "Do we use them?" "Why do we use them?" "Why do we use so much of them?" "Is it causing some unknown - cancer, obesity, disease, etc?" And really, the overarching assumption seems to be that we farmers are out here simply dumping on the chemicals. Wasting excess amounts of…

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From the outside looking in, the U.S. beef industry can be a titch confusing. Actually, sometimes from the inside, it can be a titch confusing. To start with, you have two basic types of herds, particularly here in Illinois. Either you're a purebred seedstock cattle operation, or a commercial crossbred cattle operation. The first means you are raising animals for genetic superiority, so you're looking for calves that have a particular trait or set of traits that will make them…

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So if you've been following this blog, you may have noticed a flurry of posts last Thursday. That's because I was attending The Food Dialogues in New York, and live-blogged about each of three panels. Good times. And a wrist cramp. You can catch up on each of those panels here on my blog: 1, 2 and 3. And also here, in our web coverage of each of them: marketing, antibiotics and biotechnology. So much reading. Yet, of the 5 ½ hours of dialogue that day, I came away…

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And now, Panel 3: biotechnology and food, moderated by CNN's Ali Velshi. Panelists include: Bob Goldberg, plant molecular biologist at UCLA; Julie Howard, chief scientist, USAID; Gregory Jaffe, biotechnology director, Center for the Science in the PUblic Interest; Fred Kirschenmann, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State; Cheryl Rogowski, New York organic farmer; Jerry Slocum, Mississippi soybean farmer. 2:20 p.m. ET Fred: "Questions have been raised for…

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US Farmers & Ranchers have conducted a contest to select a spokesperson for agriculture, and the nine finalists were announced today in New York City. Among 100 applications, these nine finalists were selected: Chris Chinn, Missouri Will Glimer, Alabame Daphne Holterman, Wisconsin Brenday Kirsch, Oregon Tim Nilsen, California Eric McClam, South Carolina Katie Pratt, Illinois Bo Stone, North Carolina Janice Wolfinger, Ohio Starting at 1:30 p.m…

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We're back with Panel 2, again moderated by CNN's Ali Velshi, live from Times Center in midtown Manhattan. This topic: antibiotics and food. I expect this one to be more heated than the last. Panelists include: Keith Ayoob, pediatric nutritionist, Albert Einstein School of Medicine; Barb Determan, Iowa pork producer; Jean Halloran, Consumers Union; Christine Hoang, veterinarian and assistant director of the Division of Scientific Activities of the American Veterinary Medical…

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