Bi-weekly Update (duplicate post)

The past couple of weeks have once again been an absolute whirlwind. Starting my thesis has turned out to be the single greatest writing endeavour of my life and I think I started it none too soon. Besides trying to write about 1,000 words per day, I’ve also been trying to get amendments in for my protocol and other items around. Combine this with the state fair coming into play and there has been a lot of busy rushing going on.

The vegetables are growing well, with the best cantaloupe plants I’ve ever had. We trained the pumpkins to climb this year and the strength in their trailers is amazing! I’ve included a picture of the trainer a few weeks ago which has not totally filled out with leaves and blooms. I’m not sure how well the vines will hold the pumpkins on, but it’s a fun thing to try anyways. Those little wispies that come out from the vine have been reaching out and pulling the vine along every day, strengthening its position on the cage and providing a lot of entertainment for me.

4-H camp was this past week and over all, I think we’re pretty lucky. With all the heat and enough rain to canoe without damming up the creek, it’s really amazing that we were able to run all of our sessions without being cancelled out by rain except by night. Each day was blazingly hot with stifling humidity (heat indexes well over 100), but we made it through and only lost 1 dehydration patient over the week who had to go home to recover from losing too much fluid. On a funny note, we created a video to instruct campers about the 2 biggest problems we had at camp this year and I will plan on getting that posted as soon as I can get ahold of a copy of it.

I’ve got a bunch of different articles open on my browser, so hang tight and I’ll get them all out this week, but with the state fair and my position as a judge, a volunteer, an employee, a researcher, a sibling and a husband – it’s going to be a fast-paced next couple of weeks. Hang in there with me and stay cool and shady from all the hot weather.

Trent Loos Talk @ OSU

I mentioned previously that I went to see Trent Loos talk a few weeks ago, hosted by the Food Animals Club at the Ohio 4-H Center (which is a great facility for events like this on campus, if you’ve never been). This is not by far the first time I’ve heard Trent Loos talk, but it was definitely the first time I’ve seen him talk under the heading “Stop Defending Agriculture”. Trent Loos has traditionally been a huge proponent of speaking up and voicing your personal story, defending the American agricultural experience and the importance, pride and adventure of the endeavor. He even helped in the distribution of shirts, one of which I own, with the headline “In Defense of Agriculture. Embracing Technology. Feeding the World”. So naturally I was surprised to see this headline and wanted to know what had changed with Trent Loos.

Not as much had changed as I expected. He still talked about the disconnect from Americans and their food, about his garb (intentionally attracting attention wherever he goes), about his ranch and the lifestyle he pursues, about his definition of a cowboy (embracing the attitude, not a specific activity), about farmers and agriculturalists needing to get out and tell the story. One thing that he elaborated on more than usual was the hormones debate. I’ve obviously discussed this in detail more than once in my blog, but I think he made key connections which I can’t emphasize often enough.

Two big factors influence puberty: nutrition and genetics. Those of us who work with livestock know that we can select over time for an early puberty trait, and that the proper nutrition of an animal leads to more timely puberty onset and that puberty onset is very highly correlated to nutrition and body fat. Well, Loos takes this one step further in his talks by highlighting the plight of female athletes and their lucky avoidance of Mother Nature far into their late adolescence. He further highlights the over-nutrition crisis in this nation (something he and Michael Pollan agree on) and the impact that this should obviously be connected to the puberty claims about hormones contents in beef. These are all things I’ve addressed before, but he also added that the level of estrogen in a serving of lettuce is many hundred times that of a serving of beef – key thing to consider the next time someone tells you they don’t eat beef because of added hormones (something someone told me this past week at our grad student food booth).

These points aside, there was one key new ingredient to Loos’s talk to the group: we should not be “defending” agriculture anymore. Imagine for a second a defensive person, do you like talking to them? Do you gain anything from a conversation or debate with someone who does nothing but get defensive about their idea or their job, or their life? Then how is this any different that farmers who have been taught to be defensive of agriculture. Vehemently defending agriculture with the best-proven facts still won’t make nearly the difference as just sharing what you do with those people closest to, and I’m as guilty of this as the next person. I often get worked up about accusations towards farmers, but the truth of the matter is that no matter how good I feel about winning the argument, this attitude can often do more harm than good. This is why Trent Loos instead focused his talk on encouraging those involved or interested in agriculture to change the attitudes and misconceptions one consumer at a time. Engage people in the facts, the truth, and the story, but engage them in a conversation, not a defensive approach to agriculture.

Conference on USDA Blog

This is just a brief note to send you to the USDA blog in order to read more about the secretaries' visit to the National 4-H Conference. My apologies for being tardy to share this but there's a lot I'm still catching up on.

Two comments: 1) If you look at the picture, you can see Lindsey, Lauren and myself right in the center. Since I was triggering the questions during the Q & A, I'm right on the aisle. 2) If you look at the first comment on the blog below, you probably question the motive of the commenter just as much as I did. 4-H encompasses all ethnicities and there was a very diverse group there as alwayshttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif. But this is because it reflects the population of youth involved in 4-H and the welcoming community that is 4-H. If the commenter wanted to increase the number of Latinos in 4-H, he would need to actively encourage youth to join 4-H. However, what he really seemed to be saying to me was that he wished they could have been there to promote their organization to the USDA.

Back from National 4-H Conference

One of the first things that I did when I got back from conference was to summarize in a word document all of the thoughts swarming my head. It's funny that until I sat back and read this document afterwards, I never had realized the amount of emotional investment I've made not just into 4-H but even into just one facet of the organization like the National 4-H Conference. I've now been there 5 times in the last 6 years in a progression of roles. Every conference has its high points and its deepest frustrations, but truth be told, I wouldn't trade one minute of any of it for something else (even as much as I missed being home with Amanda, who had a really rough week without me).

I know I've posted before how proud I am of the young people (at least younger than me) that I work with in 4-H, but once again I just want to applaud these exceptional youth who volunteered a week off of work, a week without classes, knowing the sacrifice, the lack of rest, the hard work they would put in, and the harder work they would put in trying to catch back up on their lives after conference. But knowing all of this, they dove into the conference with zeal and exceeded all of my expectations. I'm proud of you guys, just like I was proud in the past to be one of you. You are all going to go great places and if I can ever help you get there, just call.

This was also a learning experience and a new challenge for me. I've never been responsible for that much education and training for someone else. In less than a week, I learned much more about material delivery (what worked AND what didn't) and advising without answering questions. I also got to see how our pre-conference planning could have been improved to allow for more sleep among the facilitators. It had never occurred to me that lack of sleep could be a problem, but not everyone's into that, I suppose, so I learned to broaden my viewpoint once again. National 4-H was very kind in providing Lauren and I this opportunity and for engaging us in discussions afterwards as well. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that working with Lauren was great as well. Throughout this whole process we were often seemingly telepathically connected and we provided a good balance of leadership styles. It was a pleasure.

The only other thing I wanted to comment on was the increased professionalism that surrounded the conference this year. This started with the Sec. of Ag and the Sec. of Ed both giving a short talk and doing a short Q & A session with the delegates. Unlike many of these opportunities, the secretaries didn't shy away from the tough questions or use the answer time to elaborate on other issues not addressed in the question. Instead they spoke directly and openly with the delegates. I was really impressed by both secretaries and they helped set the tone for the conference of getting down to business. This carried over into the stakeholder presentations which were new this year. All of the delegates put a lot of hard work into these presentations of possible solutions to critical youth issues, which were then presented by the delegates to different government entities. It put a professional face on the youth within 4-H and I know that it really blew away the office that I was at during the presentations. Great things came out of the conference this year and I can only hope that this progress continues to future conferences.

ConCall Professionalism (duplicate post)

Well, Friday afternoon we made it through our first conference call training meeting for the collegiate facilitators. With our registration numbers becoming more final and the core group that will end up in DC slowly sorting itself out, it was time for us to get on the phone, get to know each other a little bit and then for me and my 2 colleagues to lay out expectations, programming plans and schedules for the next month and a half.

This leads me to some simple comments about conference call etiquette, based on observations that I made during the call and which can beneficial to anyone just learning how to function in this now old-school form of distance meeting.

1) When the system you're using for a meeting doesn't work or you have connection issues, be prepared to find an alternative way to run or join the meeting. We had some pretty severe communication issues at the beginning with voice connections not working and luckily everyone was well enough prepared that the meeting ran without much of a hitch. That includes props to some of the facilitators who were dealing with the inclement weather, bad connections and power outages.

2) Many call in systems result in feedback between the audio output and your mic input. Without IT knowledge to fix this being common this is just one of the reasons why people need to mute their mic input when not talking, and prevent double audio output with computer and phone systems to limit this.

3) Another reason to mute your mic is because it picks up and magnifies even the largest background sounds. It's bad when we have to ask the person eating chips to mute their mic and we've never even met these people before.

4) Muting your mic isn't an excuse for not paying attention to the meeting. Many people think they can just get away with being on a call and multi-tasking or even Facebooking. But people always know, and it's easy to tell later who the people were that paid attention during the call.

5) Interrupting is probably my biggest reason for hating conference calls. It seems that even if you don't mean to, you're always butting in on someone else and that by the time they're done talking they've already said what you wanted to say anyhow or changed the topic enough that your discussion is now irrelevant. This system aimed to prevent this by putting a click control over who could talk and when but since nobody was properly educated on this prior to the call, we were never able to use the technology properly.

Regardless, conference calls can be really good for getting people together, especially for trainings and I think ours was a definite success. As the time rolls on I'm getting more excited for the conference in DC.

Glimpse into the Future (duplicate post)

Yesterday marked the final selection of applicants for the National 4-H Conference Collegiate Facilitators. It's so far been a very educational process for myself and a great opportunity to be involved and responsible for selecting a team of people who Lauren and I will have to train and manage for the next 2 months before letting them loose to see how they perform in a demanding environment.

Well, based on the on-paper applications and excellent recommendations that I saw from nearly 30 applicants, I'm not only excited to work with those we've selected, but I have to say that the future is bright for 4-H and the other organizations and institutes who will have the pleasure of working with any of the bright, enthusiastic and skilled individuals who applied for the position. Our future is in good hands.

There are many times that I doubt the value of 4-H in today's society and wonder whether there is a way to change the program to encompass more youth or if there is a way to increase the perceived value of extension. This has been especially heavier on my mind as 4-H programs in Ohio have begun to go extinct in this difficult economy. But as long as a program is developing youth like those I saw in applications this week, as long as it still inspires the dreamers to achieve higher education and application of new technology then there is hope. And thus, in my opinion, there is still a future for 4-H.

Sustainability

There's not a day that goes by where I don't either hear about doomsday predictions for the world or about how we're trying to increase our sustainability in the current world. I would agree that the environment and the state we maintain this world in are very important. This is why I have been such a big proponent of recycling, conservation and research for more sustainable future ever since my days in 4-H (which is where I was first introduced to the importance of the subject). Heck, I even took environmental science classes during my undergraduate career even though they were out of my major because they were subjects that interested me. However, when I was looking at the OSU Sustainability website and taking their survey today, I think there are still some items to consider which they aren't fully considering.

One of these is the organic and buying local initiative at OSU for their food supply. These two are so often lumped into the group, something that authors like Michael Pollan haven't done enough to distinguish, when in fact they are starkly different and can have quite a varying impact on the environment.

Sure, buying local is good, but it's not just good because of the transportation costs. Ideally, every area would be able to produce what people need, but this isn't possible or practical right now. It's important to consider that sometimes the larger, more distant farm is more economical and also more environmentally friendly in the long-run because they are better able to afford and enact environmental conservation business practices, as well as condense production to the extent that the impact on the environment is still reduced compared to strictly local production after adding in transport impacts. This is why for the time being, buying local is a good thing, but don't expect to be able to buy everything local because it all can't be grown local, and it's really ok to buy some stuff that is shipped distances as well. Different parts of the world have different specialties when it comes to food production and this production sharing allows us to have the opportunity to live healthier and to benefit from regions that can raise some food products more economically. It all just comes down to considering how we can best use the land we're given.

And then there's organic production. Organic farming seems like the utopic heaven of farming where we don't impact the land with "bad" chemicals and we only grow what we can do more naturally. Well, half of these myths are created by the ignorant public and media, and most of the rest are propagated by those who stand to profit. I'm not against organic farming as a consumer choice, but it's important to realize that this also can impact disease control and always results in less production on the same amount of space with the same amount of labor and resources. Is less efficient production really good for the environment?

As agricultural research leads to more environmentally beneficial stewardship techniques, I am sure we will see a combination of the concepts in GMOs, organics, local-growns, grass-feds, free-ranges and conventional farming techniques. But in the world we live in now, none of these are a perfect solution to the challenges we face, so I caution against doing what OSU seems to have done by jumping on the local and organic bandwagon and claiming that they are thus helping conserve our environment.

Symposium Reflections

Since I just got home not too long ago from the 2nd Annual Animal Welfare Symposium at the wonderful State 4-H Center on Ohio State's campus, I thought I'd take a few minutes to share my reflections on the afternoon in a semi-sequential format.

1) The people and the atmosphere were much less hostile than last year, given the passage of Issue 2 and the HSUS deal struck over the summer to allow for the Livestock Care Standards Board to operate as it was intended. I felt like the questions were much less heated and much more focused on actual learning. It was a nice change, even from the meeting this summer. It was also really nice to work a short standards board update into the afterlunch. Interesting to note is the discussion about how Ohio will probably not make it by the December deadline for a referendum on some current housing systems. However, we were also told that HSUS has been doing a lot of meeting with other involved organizations relative to the summer deal and that there was a good understanding of how much work had been put forth to get where we are currently.

2) The people running the symposium are great. It was well organized, in a great facility, and attended by over 300 people this year. As anticipated, the food was almost the best part of the day and Mike did a great job keeping the technology up and running so the day went off without an obvious hitch. Awesome.

3) The first speaker had some good information about opinions of Ohioans related to Animal Welfare. She just struggled severely with expressing anything clearly or in any consideration of time. She mentioned early that as an Easterner she spoke very fast. Frankly, I thought she might've spoken a bit fast, sure, but she didn't say a whole lot more than if she'd spoken more slowly and deliberately. The Q and A also helped clarify a lot more of her work, but some questions which I thought were fairly important to the research and the presentation were not answered at all and the audience was left questioning the value of the first presentation, of which I am sure there was some but it was difficult to sort through some poor representation of her hard work. It's always tough to elaborate thoughts to the satisfaction of your audience in such a short time period.

4) All the rest of the speakers did a fine job and spoke about relevant information, doing a good job of holding the audience's attention. If my chair hadn't been so uncomfortable, I could've sat there all day. There was little that wasn't worth hearing, even the information that I've already heard a few times. Hearing discussions does a good job of keeping issues current in my mind.

As the week rolls on, I'll be taking study breaks to give short synopsi of different speakers, the topics they discussed and my related opinions. However, in the near future the presentations will be posted. I encourage you to follow the link and watch the powerpoints yourself. It's always better to do your own thinking.

Impact of 4-H in Michigan

I wish that Governor Granholm (not the worst governor of Michigan ever, Google 'Mason') was reader of my blog because what I'm posting here today (courtesy of Marcus) should truly be of interest to her after she played around with cutting MSU extension last year. This is the 2009 publication about the impact of 4-H on the state of Michigan. This is absolutely worth the read.

For my welfare bit of the day, this article discusses the lack of a good way to evaluate the improvements in animal welfare on farms in the EU and emphasizes the need to develop better methods of evaluating farm animal welfare on large production facilities. You need to know why people are having trouble assessing welfare improvement among animals? It's because we've passed legislature so fast without the scientific background that needs to follow it in order to ensure that legislators and activists really know what they're talking about. Auditors of animal welfare are not able to distinguish what they're looking to see because the laws have been thrust upon us (both here in the US and in the rest of the world) before we've even been able to determine what the best protocol or the 'happier' animal really looks like. Again, science in this area is found to be lacking, and without scientific research to back up claims of improved animal welfare, the efforts of groups like HSUS and PETA truly don't accomplish what they're advertising to the public. But then again, with a final goal of eliminating animal products from the market, they sure are making great progress towards that, aren't they?

Also please read the Ohio Country Journal write-up on the HSUS deal back in June. Now all we have to do is hope that the care standards board doesn't turn out to be the same problem. :)

Return from camp

Nothing refreshes the mind quite like a full week of 5 hours nights and 200 kids running (well more literally walking) rampage on the camp in a hurry to do all things that they can't do at home. That aside, I truly love 4-H camp and look forward to the opportunity to return as a dean once again next year. In the meantime, I will give you more food for thought today as I sort through my inbox for articles and ideas to post.

Progressive Dairymen is a new group I joined online. Under the name "Proud to Dairy", it's a ning.com group which serves as a great site to find dairy blogs and to network with other people throughout the U.S. who are proud to dairy. Somewhere on the website is an article in which our MSU team was interviewed about our National Dairy Challenge experience in California. However, for now, I include this great interview article with Gary Conklin about the farm video incident earlier this year.

The European Union has voted to ban the sale of cloned animals for food in Europe. Interestingly, we still don't see the true value or cost of using cloned animals to produce food.

My alma mater had a 4 legged, 6 footed piglet born this week. Hopefully I will get some pictures to let you see this strange critter.

About 100 dogs were rescued in Delaware County, OH, and are in desperate need of adoption. It always troubles me to think about so many dogs in need of good homes and the poor alternatives that await them. However, we are still not ready to be getting a dog, and so we'll have to wait for now.

This interview at the JAM definitely happened just in front of me as I was talking to some of my friends. Dr. Croney was greatly supportive of my presentation in Denver and for that I am grateful. Please listen to the interview with an open mind and try to see the points which she tries to make in her interview with Trent Loos.

Col. Sanders was inducted in the Meat Industry Hall of Fame this year. Posthumous recognition always seems pointless to me, but still, it's a nice gesture towards a great man who created a store which now sells notoriously unhealthy food.

Also, the video about the truth of pork production is available on youtube.com. Please share with those around you who may have a skewed view of pork farming.

Finally, another weigh-in on the HSUS/OFBF agreement, this time from the pork producers.

New Blog

I have added a new blog to my suggested reading on the side-bar. For those of you who are less into the agriculture/farming side of things, and yet still read my blog, this is a good blog to find discussion of simple agricultural terms and ideas which you may not have heard of or understand. Drew is a guy I knew from both my time at Farm Bureau and through 4-H. I'm confident his blog will continue to be worth a good read now and then.