FARMS, FARMERS AND FOOD...

Fort Lauderdale (update July 20-August 14):

"Something," said Bob Hochmuth of the University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agriculture Science, "is happening". It's so far under the radar.

Trends do not surface on their own. They have to be sensed and analyzed. Hochmuth had just nicely summed up to me the story.

Good that I attended on August 1 and 2 the first ever small farms and enterprises conference at Kissimmee, near Orlando, in Floria, and to everyone's surprise, the attendance at the two-day event that was marked by the food extravaganza underlined that the story I am working on, is bang on target. On time.

Small farms are indeed bouncing back across the United States: watch out for my next story, and you'd know what all I'd been doing this past three weeks.

For the records though - lest I shall lose some 33 bucks a day - I had been doing the field visits, as any good journalist must, for my story, South Florida's humid summer notwithstanding. I've been shooting videos, recording sound and writing.

I'm after all a living creature of the multi-media age.

But writing this story has been fun. I've re-written and edited it for at least five times. The editor takes a look at it, now.

It was, however, satisfying to attend the conference and to our surprise, we were the only journalists at the event.

My story on small farms fulfils three of my goals - study U.S. agriculture, tight and narrative writing and multi-media.

Last Sunday, I also wrote my first editorial column in the op-ed section of the Sun Sentinel. My friend from China may perhaps not like it, but it was on the Indo-China tensions building in the continent, even as the two countries held talks last week.

Editorial columns are not easy, I realized that. Speaking is one thing. Putting it down quite another. But my mentor, Antonio Fins, gave it a read and said: "actually you've hidden your lead in the last para." I agreed and turned it on its head.

The piece came out well and met my fourth goal - writing opinion pieces.

Doreen Hemlock, one of my mentors, and I have finished writing a story for business section, and two more are work in progress.

In between, I finally caught up with some sound sleep last weekend.

On the social front, this past couple of weeks, I connected with the Indians living here. And found, some of them are more Americanized than the Americans!