In this shrink-wrapped, vacuum-packed, pre-cooked world, Cornell University is striving to keep a strong agricultural connection active in the minds of 21st century children. The university's Agriculture in the Classroom program has developed the New York "Kids Growing Foods" school-garden program, and this spring grants are being awarded to 34 elementary schools in the state to establish or maintain these gardens.
According to a new study by Cornell University food scientists, led by Rui Hai Liu, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of food science, shallots, Western Yellow, pungent yellow and Northern Red onions are higher in anti-cancer chemicals than other varieties tested. (Oct. 7, 2004)
In the first study to test people who eat foods that have been bred for higher-than-normal concentrations of micronutrients, nutritional sciences professor Jere Haas and colleagues found that the iron status of women who ate iron-rich rice was 20 percent higher than those who ate traditional rice. (November 29, 2005)
Cornell has been awarded a $26.8 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to launch the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat project, a broad-based global partnership to combat stem rust, a deadly wheat disease that poses a serious threat to global food security. (April 2, 2008)
This harvest season, families across the Southern Tier have received 81 tons of fresh fruits and vegetables thanks to faculty and staff at Cornell University's Homer C. Thompson Farm in Freeville. (November 15, 2005)
To examine the forces working against tomorrow's young farmers in today's changing world and the problems of domestic food security, Cornell will be a viewing site for the 16th annual World Food Day teleconference.
Cornell University will host a symposium, "Globalization, Agricultural Development and Rural Livelihoods," April 11-12, examining globalization of markets and the status of world food supplies and of nutrition. The symposium, in 401 Warren Hall, will feature a keynote address, "Globalization, Agriculture and Rural Poverty: Implications for Developing Countries," by Per Pinstrup-Andersen, Cornell's Babcock Professor of Food, Nutrition and Public Policy. The talk will be given in the opening session at 8:30 a.m. on April 11 (April 04, 2003)
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)
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.
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