An agricultural expert from central Iowa leaves today for Washington D-C where he’ll be addressing several international ag issues. Dennis Keeney recently retired as director of Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. Keeney says he’ll be talking about how the soil and the environment of the Asia-Pacific region are holding up.Keeney is a professor emeritus at I-S-U in agronomy and agricultural and biosystems engineering. He’s going to be addressing the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science about free trade as it relates to the environment and agriculture.Some fear if developing nations are given too much of our technology, they’ll no longer need agricultural products from the U-S. Keeney says that is a narrow-minded view.Keeney says it goes back to the old adage about “Give a man a fish, he can eat for a day. Teach a man how to fish, he can eat for a lifetime.” Keeney has traveled extensively through Japan, China and Korea. He says there’s concern the region won’t be able to meet future food needs if the soil is allowed to continue to degrade.
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