Week Nine with Extension by Alison Layton

 Me in front of the internship poster at the Commodity Classic.

This week we talked about soil health and climate change. This goes hand in hand with our talk from
the other week about feeding a growing population. These talks have inspired me to think about how I
can contribute. I am studying food science, so I have been thinking about how I can work to feed more
people with what we already have. As I move forward with my education and career, I can work on
learning more about food preservation and ways to use food that is good but wouldn't typically be sold.

The flooded squash field

This week on Wednesday, we had a long day in the field. There had been a lot of rain recently, and the 

field flooded, so we had not been in the field since the previous Monday. We harvested a lot of squash; some were very oversized, and some were rotten, but there was still a large amount of good squash. 

After that, we sprayed the treatments. This was a great example of how agriculture research is just as 

unpredictable as farming.

One of the oversized squash we found in the field.

On Thursday, I attended the Commodity Classic at the Centreville 4-H park. When I got there, I met up with some of the other interns and listened to parts of the talks that were given. We then walked around to see all the tables and talk to people. It was an opportunity to speak to people in the industry and learn what different programs are doing. There were also research posters. We got to see what grain research is being done and learn about the progress being made. The internship program had a poster for us. We took turns standing in front of our poster and talking to people as they came up and asked questions. After that, we listened to the business meeting. Here we saw scholarships and awards get given out. Then people from different programs and organizations gave talks and updates about what they are doing. The meeting ended with the keynote speech from Scott Shellady, The Cow Guy.

Friday, we went back out to the squash field to do insect counts and harvest. This is another example of research being impacted by what's around it. The irrigation was moving through the fields, and we were trying to outrun it while doing our bug counts. We did not make it but restarted our counts when the plants were dry. Then we harvested the squash.