United Nations

Agricultural advancements have provided the ability to meet the food demands of an ever-growing population, but challenges lie ahead.

Bringing a couple old newspaper articles with him to the podium to prove his point, Gov. Eric Holcomb told the Indiana Farm Bureau State Convention that Indiana’s story is the chronicle of agriculture in the state.

Journalism, like baseball, aging and bridesmaids, is often about the numbers. Sometimes big numbers are good, other times small numbers are better. Either way, numbers usually define our work, our families and our lives in more ways than we care to count.

A scientist friend recently noted that at today’s rate of consumption, the world is environmentally and economically sustainable for roughly 1 billion people. “That means with the world’s population of 8 billion,” he half-joked, “you’re a goner.”

Over the past month, well-respected brokerage firms, legendary money managers and market forecasters with excellent track records have been predicting the U.S. and global economies are poised to slip into a recession.

World School Milk Day was observed Sept. 28 to celebrate the importance of dairy in students’ diets. According to the National Dairy Council School Milk Report, milk has been a part of school meals for close to a century.

It amazes me how many people believe that sustainability is a new concept in agriculture. Those of you involved in production agriculture know sustainability is necessary to keep doing what you are doing.

An unexploded rocket sticks out of a field, and another is embedded in the ground of the farm compound. Workers found a cluster bomb while clearing weeds, and there’s a gaping hole in the roof of the shrapnel-scarred livestock barn.

Bill Gates says the global hunger crisis is so immense that food aid cannot fully address the problem. What’s also needed, Gates argues, are the kinds of innovations in farming technology that he has long funded to try to reverse the crisis documented in a new report.

Global hunger numbers rose to around 828 million people in 2021, according to the latest edition of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World from the United Nations. That’s 46 million more people from a year earlier and 150 million more from 2019.

Kip Tom, former ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture, visited Purdue University during Ag Week. He discussed his career with Purdue President Mitch Daniels.

Plant-based burgers often promise protein comparable to their animal-based counterparts, but the way protein is expressed on current nutrition labels — a single generic value expressed in grams — can be misleading.

Checkoff foodservice partners continued to grow sales of U.S. dairy foods and more domestic dairy headed into the international marketplace. There also were increased efforts to connect with the valued Gen Z consumer and dairy’s sustainability journey reached new levels.

Barbara O’Brien, president and CEO of Dairy Management Inc. and the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy, said agriculture has an “open door of opportunity” amid growing pressures and expectations to feed a growing population sustainably and responsibly during her opening comments at the Sustainable Agriculture Summit.

Indigo Ag, a company leveraging nature and technology to unlock economic and environmental progress in agriculture, announced a deepened commitment to advancing discovery in soil carbon science, enabled by the acquisition of Soil Metrics, an industry-leading technology for comprehensive soil carbon and greenhouse gas assessment in agricultural soils.