CFAES Connect: August 2019

Together they steered toward the good.

The first-ever Dean’s Charity Steer Show—hosted by CFAES Dean Cathann A. Kress and featuring 13 teams of celebrities, 4-H members, and the 4-H members’ bovine charges—raised $152,000 (and counting) for Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central Ohio.

The charity, among its services, provides housing for families of children being treated at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus.  

Check out full story here.  

To donate, click here. 

To watch the full show, click here. 

The results of the show are as follows:  

Best Steer: Clark Kellogg, former Ohio State basketball and NBA player, lead CBS sports analyst, and Ohio State Trustee - with 4-H member Sydney Sanders of Highland County 

Best Showmanship: Bob Peterson, public servant, small business owner and an 8th generation farmer from Fayette County - with 4-H member Victoria Waits of Fayette County

People's Choice Award: Adam Sharp, Executive Vice President of the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation - with 4-H member Sam Sutherly of Miami County 

Other exhibitors included: 

Cathann Kress, Vice President for agricultural administration and dean of Ohio State's CFAES - with 4-H member Wyatt Osborn of Highland County 

Matt Barnes, news anchor for WCMH-TV Channel 4- with 4-H member Caroline Winter of Pickaway County 

Mark Berven, president and chief operating officer of Nationwide Property & Casualty - with 4-H member Allison Davis of Carroll County 

Joshua Perry,  - with 4-H member Kyle Kardotzke of Erie County 

Jay Edwards, small business owner and real estate investor from Athens County - with 4-H member Austin Pullins of Athens County 

Clay Hall, sports director for WSYX Channel 6/Fox 28 TV, Columbus - with 4-H member Shala Graham of Licking County 

Woody Johnson, co-host of Woody and the Wake-up Call on 92.3 WCOL and iHeart Media/Columbus - with 4-H member Lauren Schulte of Putname County 

Rick Malir, CEO and co-founder of City Barbeque - with 4-H member Jocelyn Belleville of Wood County 

Bob McElligott, sports broadcaster for the Columbus Blue Jackets - with 4-H member McKalynne Helmke of Tuscarawas County 

Shelley Meyer, former first lady of Ohio State football and instructor for Ohio State's College of Nursing - with 4-H member Taylor Poff of Geauga County 

Getting up close—and a little dirty—with farm animals just might help us fend off illness, say researchers who’ve further demonstrated the benefits of early exposure to a wide variety of environmental bacteria.

Scientists from The Ohio State University found that bacteria and other microbes from rural Amish babies were far more diverse—in a beneficial way—than what was found in urban babies’ intestines. And, in a first-of-its-kind experiment, they found evidence of how a healthier gut microbiome might lead to more robust development of the respiratory immune system.

The study was published this month in the journal Frontiers in Immunology.

“Good hygiene is important, but from the perspective of our immune systems, a sanitized environment robs our immune systems of the opportunity to be educated by microbes. Too clean is not necessarily a good thing,” said the study’s co-lead author Zhongtang Yu, a professor of microbiology in Ohio State’s Department of Animal Sciences and a member of the university’s Food Innovation Center. The Department of Animal Sciences falls under Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES).

The research team collected fecal samples from 10 Ohio babies who were around 6 months to a year old. The five Amish babies all lived in rural homes with farm animals. The other five babies lived in or near Wooster, a midsize Ohio city, and had no known contact with livestock.

The samples revealed important differences—particularly a wide variation in microbes and an abundance of beneficial bacteria in the Amish babies’ guts that weren’t found in their city-dwelling counterparts. The researchers expected this, based on the infants’ exposure to the livestock.

“The priming of the early immune system is much different in Amish babies, compared to city dwellers,” said Renukaradhya Gourapura, co-lead author of the study and a professor in CFAES’ Food Animal Health Research Program.

What they really wanted to know was how these differences might affect development of the immune system, setting the groundwork for a body’s ability to identify and attack diseases and its resistance to allergies and other immune-system problems. Previous studies in the U.S. Amish population and to comparable populations throughout the world have drawn a clear connection between rural life and a decrease in allergies and asthma, Gourapura said.

To read more click here.  

A small plot of corn popped up this spring on The Ohio State University campus and, as the adage goes, the stalks were standing knee-high by the Fourth of July.

The crop is growing in soil amended with Com-Til, a compost product made with residual biosolids from the City of Columbus’ wastewater treatment plants.

The corn patch is the public installment of a research collaboration led by Nick Kawa, assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, and Forbes Lipschitz, assistant professor of landscape architecture at the Knowlton School, to look at the human waste stream. Kawa and Lipschitz are faculty hires in the Initiative for Food and AgriCultural Transformation (InFACT).

Funded by a 2018 InFACT Linkage and Leverage grant, the project considers the long history of using human waste as an agricultural resource – and what that looks like today in central Ohio.

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