BY FRED ROSE

After spending the last year in rural India building the MyRain business he co-founded with his partner Paula Uniacke, Steele Lorenz (BS '10) was ready for some comfort snack food. So when I asked him if he wanted anything from the U.S. before I left, he gave me a list that included items like Little Debbie cookies and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. On the trip over to India, I learned that Little Debbie cookies caused TSA more problems than anything else I have ever carried onto an airplane. They seem to be impenetrable to X-rays. "I should be ashamed of this list, but I'm not," Steele confided to me. The work Steele has done with MyRain over the past year, however, deserves a whole shipping container of cookies.

BY KATE A. BRAUMAN

We use more water for agriculture than for any other human activity on the planet, so water sustainability and food security are closely linked. And as demand for water increases -- for domestic, industrial, and other uses, as well as for in-stream flows for nature, fishing, and recreation --demand for food expands as well due to our growing populations and changing diets. This dilemma will only create more pressure to optimize the efficiency of water use in crop production. 

BY JENNA RAY

Among the projects funded in part by recent Institute on the Environment Mini Grants is a new course in sustainability being offered this summer at the University of Minnesota, Morris.

Students taking part in this innovative "Sustainability Semester" will make connections between food, renewable energy, history, and culture while networking with peers interested in sustainability and making change. Participants may choose from two complementary courses - Culture, Food and Agriculture and Experiencing Sustainability - or enroll in both.

BY MONIQUE DUBOS
 
In the early years of the new millennium, more than 1,000 worldwide experts compiled a report about the condition of Earth's ecological systems. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment findings "provide a state-of-the-art scientific appraisal of the condition and trends in the world's ecosystems and the services they provide (such as clean water, food, forest products, flood control and natural resources) and the options to restore, conserve or enhance the sustainable use of ecosystems," according to the MA website.

The next step, says Laura Musacchio, is to translate the information for nonscientists, to be applied by designers and planners for the enhancement of urban environments.

Musacchio, an IonE resident fellow and associate professor of landscape architecture in the College of Design, assert that this type of translation is a specialized skill she calls "knowledge brokering." A knowledge broker is a "cross-pollinator of ideas among professionals from different disciplines," she explained at the May 1 Frontiers in the Environment seminar.

BY BRYAN RUNCK

On Friday, May 10, a group of graduate students and a professor from the University of Minnesota set off for the Minnesota-South Dakota border excited and anxious. The plan: go from farm to farm and school to school by bike and on foot, collecting media artifacts on innovative agricultural practices for 7th-12th grade teachers and students following along.

Toward the end of the first day the "Grown to Run" adventure learning team saw plumes of white and gray smoke drifted across the road. Traffic slowed as flames flickered from a prairie reserve being burned by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. Armed with cameras, the G2R team videotaped a segment of the daily adventure update that would illustrate the role fire plays in prairie ecosystems.

The team took more video footage that evening of farmer Carmen Fernholz incorporating a cover crop as a green manure into one of his fields. With camp set up on the front lawn, the team gathered with the Fernholz family for dinner.

Over the next five days en route to Stillwater, Minn., the G2R team traveled with stiff winds, rain, shine and temperatures ranging from 29 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Along the way, team members visited four more farms and a handful of schools.

Moonstone Farms, Betsy's B & B, Burns' Farm and Garden Fresh Farms each illustrated different aspects of innovative farming for those following along. Students saw diverse agricultural systems ranging from perennial pasture to the incorporation of grass buffer strips and catchment ponds to high technology.

At schools, the team members worked through complex questions with students. They visited the classroom of Ben Johnson in Clara City. His seventh graders gasped when they saw maps of the decrease in landscape diversity between 1937 and 2002 in the Expert Video by Iowa State University professor Lisa Schulte-Moore.

By the time of arrival in Stillwater, the team had traveled more 200 miles, visited five farms, delivered four lesson plans online to around 300 students, recorded more than 50 gigabytes of multimedia, tweeted more than 100 tweets, and seen a wide variety of innovative ways Minnesota farmers deliver food, fiber and fuel.

To learn more about the project, visit the project website, where you can find farm videos, lesson plans and other resources on innovative Minnesota agriculture.

This work was funded by the Institute on the Environment and sponsored by the Farm to School Program and Coca-Cola.

Bryan Runck is a graduate assistant at the University of Minnesota working on the dissemination of agroecological information and head of the G2R project. Photo courtesy of Bryan Runck.

Jon Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment, recently delivered the commencement address to the University of Minnesota's College of Continuing Education class of 2013. Below is his speech in its entirety.