Since its origin in the early 20th century, 4-H has offered important lessons in leadership, responsibility and service through hands-on activities designed to help young people reach their personal potential.
The youth development program started as a way to connect new agricultural technologies and higher education with country life by engaging children. Teaching children ages 5 to 19 skills from raising livestock to photography to building robots, the program has evolved and grown with the changing times and continues to provide valuable opportunities for youth from all backgrounds.
In Arizona, 4-H has been going strong for 100 years, and has reached millions of children since it began in 1913 under the direction of the University of Arizona.
Millions of people have moved to Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and surrounding states- and many more are expected to follow, adding to the demand for potable water.
Sharon Megdal, director of the Water Resources Research Center at the University of Arizona, said water harvesting efforts by Tucson residents and other communities are conserving water, but the demand has outstripped the supply.
Much of Arizona's water comes from the Colorado River via the Central Arizona Project, but the river is having trouble, she told AZ Illustrated Nature.
San Carlos teens are learning to plant traditional Apache gardens through a grant-funded project of the University of Arizona's Gila County Cooperative Extension.
A $5,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's People's Garden – one of only nine in the country for the year – resulted in the development of five gardens that are impacting teens throughout the community northeast of Tucson.
Noah Titla, 14, won first place for his watermelon and took grand champion at the Gila County Fair for squash he grew as part of the program offered by the San Carlos Apache Tribe office of UA Cooperative Extension, a program of the UA College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
University of Arizona entomology professor Molly Hunter has received a $520,000 National Science Foundation grant to explore bacterial manipulation of insect reproduction.
In the three-year study, Hunter and her team will research the genomic and cytological mechanisms used by the bacterium Cardinium to manipulate reproduction of parasitic wasps that attack whiteflies, a growing agricultural pest concern.
The bacteria are inherited in the wasps. Unlike a pathogen or a disease, the only way the bacteria can spread is by manipulating the reproductive systems of their hosts.
“I competed because I wanted to step out of my comfort zone and embrace my passion for agriculture,” Lynwood Miller beams. After facing contestants from all across Arizona, the CALS undergraduate was named 2013 senior runner-up in the Arizona State Beef Ambassador competition.
The contest preparation highlights industry issues of current consumer interest. Prior to the competition Miller was required to give a presentation about beef to an elementary age group. She decided to present at her church kids center about how beef is a “superfood.”
Tax matters for American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) farmers and ranchers have long been an issue. In recent years, however, they have surfaced as a bigger problem. The tax environment in Indian Country is underpinned by virtue of Indian lands belonging in the federal estate. The increased use of tax returns in the USDA program eligibility determination, the USDA’s targeting of a larger number of AI/AN participants, and the Internal Revenue Service’s increased use of Form 1099 have increased the complexities that can arise for an individual AI/AN producer.
Can algae farming really supplant oil and gas drilling over time? That's the big question the University of Arizona's Kimberly Ogden, chemical and environmental engineering professor, has been asking of simple algae, the green stuff with the right stuff to potentially fuel the future.
Ogden is not alone in the quest to mass-produce a bio-oil to reduce dependence on petroleum and its many environmentally unfriendly byproducts. The challenge is to find a substance capable of becoming fuel for transportation, feed for animals, fertilizer and high-value products such as bioplastics or pharmaceuticals. Ogden is focused on determining the efficacy of one source in particular: algae.
A panel of distinguished University of Arizona climate experts spoke before a crowd of about 100 in the Kiva auditorium in the Student Union Memorial Center, commenting on the latest United Nations report on climate change, published just a few hours prior. The panel interpreted the report's findings and shared implications for the Southwest.
While the latest report largely reads as a continuation of the previous one issued in 2007, according to the UA panelists, the group pointed out that significant advances in science and modeling capabilities have resulted in data of a much better quality and fraught with less uncertainties.