FEATURES

12 Seeds of change: Two perspectives
by Bill Lambrecht & Dan Guillory
Bioengineering and precision farming,

12 Art: Seeing life on the farm
From the collection of the Tarble Arts Center

20 Speaking for the prairie by Robert Kuhn McGregor
Aldo Leopold's subversive, science,

24 Is welfare-to-work working? by Jennifer Davis
More people are leaving public assistance. But are they getting and keeping decent-paying jobs?

24 Photos: Women working
From the collection of the Illinois State Historical Library

29 From rail yards to ivy halls by Burney simpson
The past could give rise to new strategies for labor.

34 Snapshots: Cultural continuum, by Jefferson Robbins & John Carpenter & Jennifer Halperinm

DEPARTMENTS
3 Conversation with the Publisher
by Ed Wojcicki

4 Editor's Notebook
by Peggy Boyer Long

6 State of the State
by Burney Simpson
Dollar signs trump theory

8 Briefly
by Rodd Whelpley

40 People
by Rodd Whelpley

43 Letters

45 A View from Metro East
by Patrick E. Gauen
Judge makes colleagues bristle

46 Politics
by Charles N. Wheeler III
Do we appreciate democracy?