Last week, an article appearing on the  "Yahoo! Education" website written by Terence Loose described the pursuit of degrees in agriculture and animal science among the most useless endeavors college students can undertake. Citing Laurence Shatkin, Ph.D., a "career information expert, author and interactive system developer" (whatever that  all means), who claims there is less need for agriculture managers now that farms have become more efficient, Loose said: "If your idea of a good day is getting up with the sun and working till it sets as an agriculture manager, [then] a degree in agriculture might be your calling."

Excuse me, but I think the author and his source must be suffering from myopia and naivete. Forget about the manufacture and import/export of capital and non-durable goods, clothing and everyday items and luxury object. They're still important drivers of global economics. But eating is  the business of the day. And it is getting bigger as the world population tops seven billion people. Growing middle classes from all corners of the planet are demanding a higher quality diet with more protein.

Global sales of processed food reached $4.1 trillion last year, with Americans consuming about $1.5 trillion worth of that total. Those who produce and process food are the new Masters of the Universe. That title no longer belongs to the world's manufacturing titans, financiers and mergers/acquisitions guys anymore.

The expertise farmers and ranchers have in crop science, animal health, satellite mapping and positioning for precision farming, sustainability, climate, the environment and risk management is just as important as the managerial skills and financial savvy international executives pick up at business schools. Even more so. While Wall Street and the commodity exchanges  are primarily interested in bushels per acre and their price, farmers have to deal with what it takes to attain those yields, make it happen and pay for it all, while rolling the dice with Mother Nature.

Food is the biggest business in the world, and farmers and ranchers are the OEMs, (original equipment manufacturers) of the industry. In the next 35 years alone (about the career span of a college graduate), the world's farmers will have to produce more food than mankind did in the last 10,000 years to keep up with demand. Anybody still think an agriculture degree is useless?

In what should be a landmark decision (December 29, 2011) in the ongoing feud between business and the more activist environmentalists, Fresno District Judge Lawrence J. O'Neill ruled against the California Air Resources Board (CARB) in a suit filed by the Renewable Fuels Association and Growth Energy. Both organizations are  proponents of ethanol produced primarily in the Midwest. The ruling will surely cloud the courts for years to come with litigation denser than the carbon layers CARB claims Midwest ethanol would have spread over the Golden State. But the decision also hints that the friskier efforts of dogmatic environmentalists may have reached a zenith, and a return to practicality and reasonableness, not to mention better science, is on the horizon.

The case in a nutshell pitted Midwest corn growers and ethanol producers against the state of California. After several years of research and hearings centered on California's Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 and the subsequent Low Carbon Fuel Stnadard (LCFS), CARB determined the production of Midwest ethanol was more troublesome to the environment than ethanol produced in California. Judge O'Neill had a different take on it. He ruled the state's LCFS was unconstitutional. In his decision he wrote, "This Court finds that the Low Carbon Fuel Standard discriminates against out-of-state corn-derived ethanol while favoring in-state ethanol and impermissibly regulates extraterritorial conduct."

Neither the litigation nor the court ruling had anything to do with the issue of tax incentives the ethanol industry had been receiving (and which are going away). What was at stake was the health of the Midwest agricultural economy. The California LCFS alone was a serious concern for Midwest corn growers. But an even greater threat loomed when 13 other states with activist environmental agendas confirmed they would enact the same restrictions CARB had come up with to cut greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). They even bought into California's program without benefit of their own research.

In their zealotry for clean air, CARB officials either overlooked or disregarded the consequences their policies would have on a significant sector of the nation's economy. CARB also took an egregious misstep in its march to cleanse California skies of GHG pollutants (which catalytic converters had already done a pretty good job of since the 1970s). It may not have been a factor in Judge O'Neill's decision, but the overstep points to the arrogance typical of many (not all) people and agencies involved in environmental policy matters.

Case in point: A research model prepared in 2009 by Purdue University's Department of Agricultural Economics to help CARB justify its introduction of stricter regulations on carbon dioxide emissions in California was drastically modified in 2010. The modification came about after a year's worth of pushback from concerned scientists criticizing Purdue's data and presumptions. It seems the modelers who were tallying the release of CO2 from indirect-land-use- change did not factor in important market data or by-product information and omitted key weather events and actual yield records in calculating amounts of ethanol feedstock as it related to GHG emissions. Those miscalculations resulted in exaggerated estimations of corn ethanol's GHG emissions. By almost 72 percent. Oops.

The Purdue research team explained its new, lower estimations of GHGs would be "roughly a quarter of the only other published estimate of releases attributable to changes in indirect-land-use." By the way, that "only other published estimate" was theirs. With a dramatically lower incidence of GHG emissions finally attributed to corn growers, you'd think California would have initiated a complete review and overhaul of its stiff regulations. It didn't.  But Judge O'Neill's ruling might nudge California to do the right thing.

Yesterday, President Obama paid a call to the Environmental Protection Agency's headquarters . The reason for his visit, NPR reported, was to shore up morale and lift the spirits of staffers whose work and purpose has been questioned lately, especially by GOP presidential hopefuls during the primary debates. Oh, boo hoo. Apparently the potshots fired by GOP contenders have stung the agency. Nevermind that the EPA has taken the exercise of its duties to the limits of its authority. Even beyond in some instances, critics argue. The morale and spirits that need to be raised belong to responsible individuals, industries, companies, as well as consumers, whose livelihoods and pocketbooks are hurt disproportionately to the benefits EPA regulations are supposed to produce.