From the outbox of Meyer’s inbox:

Did you know that next week is Food Check-Out Week? Well you should! Actually, if you live in Indianapolis this might have more importance because that’s where most of the activities are taking place as farmers and ranchers reach out to the local communities to build that bridge between what we put on our table and where it comes from. I know how I’ll be spending Food Check-Out Week and it involves lots of cheese. Check out the rest of latest in the ag world from The Voice of Agriculture.

Farmers Reach Out to Consumers During Food Check-Out Week

By Cyndie Sirekis

As they have done for the past decade and a half, farmer and rancher members of many local Farm Bureaus will reach out to consumers in their communities during Food Check-Out Week (Feb. 19-25 this year). Read More...

The U.S. government is not only monitoring the trend of new farmers they are encouraging them by offering loans for land and operating costs.

USDA’s Farm Service Agency Pushes To Create New Farmers

REUTERS
By Carey Gillam
Huffington Post — GREEN

HALLSVILLE, Mo., Feb 6 (Reuters) – Dan Pugh wishes he had a bigger tractor and his wife Laura worries about their chickens in the winter weather. But as new farmers putting down roots in rural Missouri, the Pughs are counting on more rewards than regrets in trading their city lives for the country. Read More...

The last time I was in Indianapolis was the summer of 2003. I remember it pretty well because I was still sulking about The Colts being moved there without my permission and not quite over their inglorious departure from my hometown of Baltimore twenty years earlier. My bitterness melted away however in nearby Plainfield at The National Chimney Sweep Training School, the site of my very first Dirty Job. There, I was instructed in the fine art of “flue maintenance,” and engulfed in flames while attempting to extinguish a raging creosote fire from the top of a rickety demonstration platform. Things went downhill after that and by the time I finally left town I was unrecognizable, concealed under a thick layer of ash and soot, with no plans of ever returning to The Crossroads of America.

Of course, in those days I was unrecognizable on a daily basis. Dirty Jobs would not debut for another six months, and I had no reason to think that anyone would watch when it did. I was wrong about that, and I’ve been wrong about a great many things ever since. A few months ago in fact - proving once again that my plans and my life have little in common – I returned to Indianapolis a lot cleaner, and a lot less anonymous, to deliver the keynote address at The 82nd National Convention of The Future Farmers of America (10/21/09).

For those of you who don’t know, The FFA is an organization of 500,000 teenagers, most of who look like they fell off the front of a Wheaties box. Wholesome, polite, and impossibly well mannered, these are the kids you wish you had, diligently pursuing an adolescence of agricultural acumen. Unfortunately, I arrived at their annual convention with the same level of planning and forethought I brought on my last visit, (i.e., none,) and found myself pacing in the wings twenty minutes before my appearance, trying to arrange my thoughts into an “inspirational and G-Rated message.” Luckily, I happened to glance down at the “FFA Briefing Packet,” recently handed to me by one of the organizers, and found some inspiration on page 4. Read More...