The force of global economics is changing the agricultural landscape in New York state, the Northeast region and the United States. These changes have created uncertainties for the American agricultural economy, according to a white paper released Sept. 19 by Cornell University agricultural scientists and economists. "We are seeing more and more large farms, and there are billions of dollars in subsidies for large, commercial farms. If there were an economic shake-up in agriculture and if the big farm holdings could not sell their goods, the United States would become protectionist immediately," says Thomas Lyson, Cornell's Liberty Hyde Bailey professor of development sociology and one of the paper's authors. "I think it is very precarious." (September 24, 2003)
Events on campus this week include several major concerts, readings, lectures on poverty, plants, kinship and women in the labor movement, new exhibits at museums and the Dyson School panels. (Sept. 23, 2010)
By looking into the plant world, researchers are expanding human appreciation of ascorbic acid -- vitamin C. There is no doubt that this vitamin is key to human health or that people get it from the foods they eat.
Sloppy Slope Jolt is the winning ice cream flavor in the annual ice cream-making competition in Cornell University's Food Science 101. It references Cornell's Libe slope -- caffeine for studying and the indulgence of Slope Day with brownies, hazelnuts and caramel. (December 06, 2005)
A tiny, voracious fly called the swede midge, which already has eaten its way across eastern Canada's cabbage and broccoli fields, now is threatening to descend on crops in states along the northern U.S. border. On Feb. 11 an educational session on the swede midge will be held for registered growers at the 2003 New York State Vegetable Conference in Liverpool, N.Y
A pre-seed workshop at the newly opened Cornell Agriculture and Food Technology Park in Geneva, N.Y., gave entrepreneur wanabees some tools to bridge the gap between lab research and a start-up company. (November 23, 2005)
Helene R. Dillard, Cornell University professor of plant pathology, has been appointed director of Cornell Cooperative Extension and associate dean of Cornell's New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and New York State College of Human Ecology. She succeeds D. Merrill Ewert, who took the position of president of Fresno Pacific University, Fresno, Calif., this past summer. Dillard's appointment begins Oct. 1. (September 30, 2002)
Researchers in developing countries find it frustrating trying to keep abreast of the latest agricultural research because hard currency shortages prevent the purchase of hugely expensive scientific journals. Now, Cornell's Albert R. Mann Library is offering a solution: an information source it has dubbed "library-in-a-box."
While Chuck Feeney's name is not attached to any building or professorship, the Hotel School graduate is behind only Ezra Cornell and A.D. White in his overall contributions to the university, according to President Emeritus Frank H.T. Rhodes. (Sept. 27, 2007)
Neither increases in government subsidies to corn-based ethanol fuel nor hikes in the price of petroleum can overcome what one Cornell University agricultural scientist calls a fundamental input-yield problem: It takes more energy to make ethanol from grain than the combustion of ethanol produces.