Wheat Production

In this article from the Associated Press, the author wrote the story about increased wheat yields in North Dakota and South Dakota. The beginning was not really effective for me because a lot of numbers were thrown out very early in the article. At the beginning, the cause for these increased yields was not even mentioned. Toward the end of the article it was finally mentioned that the success was thanks to well-timed rains, but the beginning was quite confusing with statistics that wouldn't mean much to anyone but maybe a reader local to the area. The quotes were useful and supported the story well.

Security in the Dairy Industry

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-wi-mathison-qampa,0,2060475.story

This story is an interview by M.L. Johnson with Matt Mathison, the chairman of the Wisconsin Agro-Security Resource Network and a member of the FBI Agro-Security Team of Wisconsin. The storys starts with a little bit of background information on the interviewee and then goes right into the interview. The story reads as a question and answer session rather than writing out the interview in an article. This format works for the story because Mathison gives strong colorful answers that contain a lot of reliable information as he is an expert source. From the title of the story it sounded like there was a specific disaster that was a threat at this very moment that Mathison was trying to prevent. However the actual interview just covered disasters that the security teams look out for in general. One thing that Johnson could have done differently was ask for specific hazards that are a primary concern at the moment, but the information on the techniques the Agro-Security teams use was thorough and informative.

Chinese corruption in food distribution

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-as-china-elite-foods,0,7999270.story

This article showed impressive knowledge of the way food is distributed in China. The angle examined how the political elite in the country are given the highest quality food; a supply that is kept unavailable to the masses. It had good support of the issue, giving statistics and evidence of recent instances in which the public has been severely affected by the inconsistency of the quality of the food supply. The reporter even compared this situation to similar problems in other countries such as the former Soviet Union and North Korea, both of which have seen famines and starvation while their leaders eat only the finest. However, this article does not sufficiently cover why there seems to be such a low supply of healthy food. In such a densely populated area it is unrealistic to only have organic food like their leaders eat, but crops that are genetically modified to produce higher yields should not be causing so many health problems with the people of China. The reporter should have examined why harmful rather than helpful chemicals are appearing in so much of the general food supply. As the story reads now, one can only assume that this is a strategy to create more profit in such a high-demand market.

First Blog

My blog will be covering agriculture from the Chicago Tribune.