Imagine you're a business owner, and one day a third of your employees can't show up for work because they are sick or caring for ill family members. How are you going to stay in operation and ensure the continuity of your business? To help small- and medium-sized businesses survive a pandemic, Penn State Cooperative Extension has developed a course that offers resources and decision-making tools. (more)
When plum pox was discovered in Adams County peach trees in October 1999 -- the first time the disease had been found in North America -- the nation's stone-fruit growers watched anxiously to see how Pennsylvania would respond. As the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture officially lifted the quarantine of the area's stone fruit Oct. 29 -- certifying the state as plum-pox free -- James Travis reflected on the 10-year, collaborative eradication effort and the agricultural catastrophe it averted. The virus threatened to wipe out the state's $25 million annual production of peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines and cherries. (more)
Recent news reports about the novel H1N1 virus being discovered in Minnesota pigs left a lot of people scratching their heads, wondering why -- with a frightening flu pandemic spreading in humans around the world -- it is important that the virus that causes it has been found in Land of Lakes swine. (more)
Sometimes, when harvest conditions are less than ideal, silage with lower-than-optimum moisture levels is put into a silo, potentially leading to excessive heating and a spontaneous-combustion fire. When a silo burns, a farm operator can lose a tremendous investment of time and money and can face a huge cost to replace ruined feed, but many silo fires can be managed and the damage and loss minimized, according to an agricultural-emergencies expert in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences. (more)
Amy Stauffer jumped at the chance to travel to South Africa last spring with her Agroforestry class. Turns out it was the best thing she has ever done. (more)
Two faculty members in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences are combining knowledge of local customs with meat science and food-safety principles to help establish small food businesses in rural Kenya. The ultimate goal is to improve health and nutrition for Kenyan women and children. (more)
Across the northeast, home gardeners expecting the usual bumper crop of tomatoes this season were dismayed to find their plants affected by late blight, the same fungus that caused Ireland's potato famine in the 19th century. According to Beth Gugino, assistant professor of plant pathology at Penn State, late blight is a fungus that primarily affects tomatoes, potatoes and certain solanaceous weeds such as bittersweet nightshade. (more)
When Marcellus shale gas drillers probe for natural gas using the hydrofracture technique, they inject about 3 million gallons of water underground. Typically, about 30 to 40 percent of the injected water -- or about 1 million gallons -- returns quickly to the surface at the wellhead. What to do with this wastewater will be the subject of an online seminar from Penn State Cooperative Extension, at 1 p.m. on Oct. 28. (more)
The temptation, of course, is to simply dismiss Chris Raines as an odd-duck college professor. After all, who else would have a blog titled "Meat is Neat" and the Twitter handle, "I tweet meat"? (more)
Acclaimed stem-cell scientist John D. Gearhart, a 1964 graduate of Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences, will present a special seminar titled "Instructing Ourselves to Rebuild Our Bodies" at 3 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 22, in 324 Agricultural Sciences and Industries Building on the University Park campus. The seminar is in conjunction with Gearhart's recognition as a university Alumni Fellow, the most prestigious honor bestowed on a graduate by the Penn State Alumni Association. (more)
