Cheese championships are hardly a spectator sport, but cheese-lovers will have a unique opportunity to observe the 2006 World Championship Cheese Contest right here in Madison. Free and open to the public, the contest is slated to take place at the Monona Terrace Convention Center on March 21-23.
While UW-Madison scientists don’t usually compete, they do influence the contest’s outcome. This year, for instance, Mark Johnson, a scientist at UW-Madison’s Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research will join an international panel of judges that will include cheese connoisseurs from France, Japan, the Netherlands and South Africa. Another judge on the 15-member panel will be a Puerto Rican, Leyda Ponce de Leon, who earned a doctoral degree in food science at UW-Madison in 1999.
Daily Archives: March 18, 2006
A Delightful Few Days Skiing at Wisconsin’s Whitecap Mountains
A March visit to Whitecap Mountain
Spring break 2006 presented an opportunity to check out a ski area that was within a reasonable distance (avoid flights) and promised a decent amount of snow. I surfed the web last week seeking such a destination and found Whitecap, a resort that Ski Magazine has posted favorable words on the years. Those reviews, along with a very attractive package ($199 per person for 3 nights, 3 day lift tickets, 2 dinners, 3 breakfast meals, rentals and a one hour daily group lesson) sealed the deal.
Fight Against Farm Subsidies
Scott Kilman and Roger Thurow:
A movement to uproot crop subsidies, which have been worth nearly $600 billion to U.S. farmers over the decades, is gaining ground in some unlikely places — including down on the farm.
In Iowa, one of the most heavily subsidized states, a Republican running to be state agriculture secretary is telling big farmers they should get smaller checks. Mark W. Leonard, who collects subsidies himself and campaigns in a white cowboy hat, told a room full of farmers recently that federal payments spur overproduction, which depresses prices for poor growers overseas.
“From a Christian standpoint, what it is doing to Africa tugs at your heartstrings,” Mr. Leonard told them. Last year, he helped humanitarian group Oxfam International in its anti-subsidy campaign by escorting a cotton farmer from Mali to church gatherings near his farm in Holstein.