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This exclusive interview with Vern Hawkins, President of Syngenta Crop Protection, is part of a series of exclusive interviews conducted by “AgDay” host Clinton Griffiths at the World Food Prize. Listen as Hawkins shares his thoughts about meeting global food needs.

This exclusive interview with Marco Ferroni, Executive Director of the Syngenta Foundation, is part of a series of exclusive interviews conducted by “AgDay” host Clinton Griffiths at the World Food Prize. Listen as Ferroni shares his thoughts about meeting global food needs.

The square table is set with spotless silverware and white cloth napkins. Ginger gusts rise from the oven and sweep through the one-room restaurant promising culinary delights. The room echoes with murmurs of gastronomical mirth. No, this isn’t a five-star restaurant in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. This is the Traveler’s Table, deep in the Ozarks, near Davisville, Mo.

The storage units of Produce Row, just north of downtown St. Louis, are a labyrinth of shifting temperatures and changing scents. The room with tomatoes is a comfortable 55 degrees, while the room with lettuce and carrots is a frigid 34.

Old North St. Louis looks a lot like the other areas in St. Louis City. Battered red brick buildings line the streets that stretch as far as the eye can see, and faded signs cling to old churches and corner stores. For this reason, the building at the corner of 13th Street and St. Louis Avenue seems unremarkable, but the brightly colored banner hung across the top signals something new.

From afar, it looks like a caravan. Dozens of white tents shelter last night’s pickings of green beans, apples and squash from the whipping wind of mid-October. Children chase each other in an adjacent field. Fiddle music fills the air. Old friends meet in the walkway, chatting about the day’s finds. All in the name of local food.

Matching irrigation and fertilizer to the ecosystem creates sustainable profits.

Ricky Preiss and his family operate a peach orchard in the Texas Hill Country near Stonewall. With low rainfall, the harvest is smaller but sweeter this year.

M&M Feedlot near Parma, Idaho, takes manure from dairy replacement heifer corrals and composts it on-site to benefit area farmers, consumers and the environment.

Julie Barrett of Maple Lane Farm in Lyndeborough, N.H., talks about her apple orchard operations.