Harvest Public Media

Rural America is fighting for its survival.

Join Harvest Public Media for a live talk show and discussion on food production Friday at 4 p.m. CST.

We all eat.

That means we all have a stake in how food is produced. And many of us also have strong opinions.

Even if you don’t spend much time thinking about what you eat, it’s pretty hard to ignore the constant, polarizing food fights — which are often the subject of television commercials, books and movies.

On this Tuesday's Central Standard, learn about an area organization that gleans sweet corn fields, apple orchards, and more, transporting fresh fruits and vegetables to the hungry in our area.

Pick up your favorite packaged food and read the ingredient list. If you stumbled over any of the words or a color jumped out at you, you might be looking at what’s known as a food additive.

Recruiting doctors to small towns is a chronic problem. Most places try to lure a physician by rolling out the red carpet with a big salary, a home on a golf course or other cushy perks.

The U.S. Labor Department on Wednesday backed off a controversial change to child labor laws after an outcry from farm country, softening its stance on barring kids from working certain jobs on family farms.

Throwing food scraps to hogs and other farm animals is an age-old practice. As food production has become more industrialized, food factories have found ways to continue to recycle massive amounts of would-be food waste.

Dudley Butler is quitting his job tomorrow. Never heard of him? He's President Obama's appointee to run the division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that governs antitrust issues in the meat industry. He was part of a cadre of high-level bureaucrats charged to expose and fight agribusiness monopolies. In fact, he was the last of that group.

A new report says NBAF -- the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility -- could create 1300 jobs during the construction phase alone.