I'm An Agronomist

So I'm not really an agronomist but that is the name of a website created by Iowa State University that is dedicated to agronomy education. I found the site while visiting a few friends in Ames, IA this past weekend who had an "I'm An Agronomist" magnet on their fridge. Good advertising, I think.

Anyway, here on Food For Thought, we strive to provide a window into all aspects of agriculture so today I thought an inside look at agronomy would be a change-up.

The motto of I'm An Agronomist is "applying science to fuel and feed our global society" - very catchy and very true. The website addresses issues like bio-energy development, how to confront world hunger and protecting human health. I'm pretty interested in feeding 9 billion people in 50 years so I clicked on the World Hunger link and was pleasantly surprised at the tactics agronomists are using to help solve our world hunger problems:

There are now 854 million undernourished people in our world 820 million in developing countries, 25 million in countries formerly controlled by the Soviet Union, and 9 million in industrialized countries. These numbers reflect the intersection of complex historical, economic and political problems that together have created chronic poverty. The companion to poverty is hunger fed by a lack of access to fertile land and resources to grow food, and /or a lack of sufficient opportunity to generate income to buy food.

The solution to hunger must start from the ground up especially since many of the worlds hungry also live in rural areas. Agronomists use skills and knowledge across the areas of soils, agroecology, climate, crop diversity, and plant breeding to help identify and analyze systemic problems facing the agriculture of an area. Contributing this training to the knowledge and practices of local farmers, in the context of their culture, could generate creative ideas that have the potential to take aim at one of the most unjust and unacceptable problems of our time. In this way, agronomists are, "confronters of world hunger"

I was also interested in the human health portion and after checking out that particular page I learned some nifty info on healthier soybean oils. I'm a supporter of fried chicken, chicken fried steak, fried potatoes, etc - so healthier oils to use while preparing those tasty dishes is relatively important to me.
Neat, huh? I also found a cool podcast link, YouTube videos from ISU's Agronomy Channel and if you're ready to bleed agronomy, red and gold --- several desktop wallpaper themes.

I enjoyed reading more about agronomy and the different technologies utilized in crop production, and I hope you'll give the I'm An Agronomist website a look.

Until next time,
~ Buzzard ~