Andy Vance

In this week’s column at Feedstuffs, I discussed the issue of childhood obesity becoming – at least in one case in Cuyahoga County, Ohio – grounds for removing a child from his parents on the ground of medical neglect.

I don’t want to rehash my thoughts from the column, but suffice it to say the issue has me concerned on a few different fronts. On one hand, the number of children of a very young age considered severely overweight or obese is staggering.

As part of my new relationship with Feedstuffs and Feedstuffs Foodlink, I produce a weekly podcast. Each week The Angle, at Feedstuffs.com, will tackle some of the key issues facing agriculture from my perspective. This week marks the first edition of the program, and I chose a doozy of a topic: The Pigford Case. Listen to [...]

I spent the better part of the day yesterday writing my final paper for Communications 607 at The Ohio State University, a required class for my major dealing with communications law, theory, and policy. For my final project I researched, evaluated, and analyzed five scholarly articles regarding the Fairness Doctrine. This document traces the relevant [...]

Congress will look – and theoretically behave – much differently in January. With a Freshman class loaded with new Republican Representatives, many from rural districts, Speaker-elect John Boehner (R-Ohio) is expected to wield a very firm, and much more fiscally conservative, gavel than outgoing Speaker Nancy Peolosi (D-Calif). Until then, however, Congress can, and likely [...]

Because of the racially sensitive nature of this issue and the fact that it’s an ongoing story on which we’ll be reporting, I’ll refrain from commenting much about the Pigford Case. By way of background, this is the case in which USDA was accused of multiple instances of discriminating against minority farmers in its lending [...]