Agriculture

There have been plenty of distractions over the last year on and off the farm. The farm bill that never was stirred speculation late into November; drought reaked havoc on much of the southwest; and the price of an acre of farmland has shot up 32 percent in Iowa over the last year. On this week's Field Notes, a look back at some of the big stories in agriculture in 2011.

I recently went to this local Columbia, Mo., event called 20/20. It’s a bimonthly gathering that highlights culture-makers in town who are often hidden from the public as they create, research and organize innovative ideas. And here’s the twist: These passionate people quickly present their ideas while a screen behind them displays 20 images over 400 seconds.

For the U.S. military around the world, the enemy can be hard to pinpoint and even harder to defeat. Back at home, the Army has a tiny and vexing foe in its sights: the bacteria that cause food to rot.

In this bacterial battle, though, it's clearer who's winning, and the evidence is a humble pocket sandwich, which looks from the outside no different than your average hot pocket in the frozen foods aisle.

During the fall harvest, food pantries across the state received more than 50 tons of produce from an unlikely source.