What in the world was I thinking...

It was a conversation about conservation at the Stroud Water Research Center last week. The occasion was a bus trip to the center by a group of Lancaster County ag and civic leaders who were there to spend a day learning about the world's fresh water supply, and the global efforts being made to protect it. During a Q&A after an informative PowerPoint presentation, one of the bus riders stood up to say that education about environmental issues should start early in grade school. I thought she made a good point.  When I was in grade school, we called these studies "geography." I remember it was about people, the climates they lived in, the topography, the native plants and animals, natural resources, crops, transportation...

Everything you wanted to know, if you were paying attention, about people, the ways in which they react and influence the world about them and the ways in which that world influences those who inhabit it. But geography is a word you don't hear in discussions about elementary and high school curricula. I thought maybe the subject is being ignored in colleges, so I checked Penn State's website. How wrong I was.  PSU has an entire geography department and 55 undergraduate courses with "geography" in the title.  Apparently, geography is far from being a dead issue, and I don't know where I got the idea that it was. Maybe I haven't been paying attention.

Food safety is a hot topic in Washington these days.  Tracy Sutton, Lancaster Farming's zone editor, took a trip to Washington last week to attend a Farm Foundation forum on food safety. She found some agreement, more questions than answers, and very few utterances of the word "farm." Her story is in our current issue.

How to jazz up your cow barn...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2tFeWfzQps