Newswise — Bayer CropScience is the newest sponsor of Dig It! The Secrets of Soil with a $100,000 donation to support the exhibition.
Scheduled to open July 19 at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Washington, D.C., Dig It! will occupy an approximately 5,000 square foot exhibition space in the most visited natural history museum in the world and will be on display until January 2010.
"It gives us great pleasure to partner with the Soil Science Society of America and the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in supporting this soils project. This exhibition is designed to give museum visitors a better understanding and appreciation of the many ways in which soils are essential to our lives, including their impact on agriculture, food security and human health," says Bill Buckner, President/CEO of Bayer CropScience.
The exhibition will bring soils to life and invite visitors to look at soils in a new and exciting way through interactive displays, multimedia, hands-on components, and cultural displays that underscore the sustenance and inspiration that humans have drawn from soils. The exhibition will also include 54 soil monoliths (vertical columns of soil) from each state, U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia that highlight the incredible diversity of soil types and colors found throughout the United States.
Dig It! is a major exhibition being funded by public and private resources with the Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) as the founding sponsor and The Fertilizer Institute's Nutrients for Life Foundation as the lead sponsor.
Bayer CropScience joins the more than 1,200 individuals and corporate, industry, foundation, USDA, and hundreds of Conservation District sponsors in supporting the exhibition. Depending on funding, following its 18-month display in Washington DC, Dig It! will begin a national tour that brings the soils education message to venues across the country.
The National Academies has endorsed the exhibition as, "Unquestionably, the most important opportunity that the field of soil science has ever had to educate the general public about soils and their role in food and fiber production, environmental quality at local and global scales, and in human health."
To learn more about the exhibition, visit the Smithsonian's Forces of Change website, http://forces.si.edu/soils or the Soil Science Society of America's site, http://www.soils.org/smithsonian.
Bayer is a global enterprise with core competencies in the fields of health care, nutrition and high-tech materials. Bayer CropScience AG, a subsidiary of Bayer AG with annual sales of about EUR 5.8 billion (2007), is one of the world's leading innovative crop science companies in the areas of crop protection, non-agricultural pest control, seeds and plant biotechnology. The company offers an outstanding range of products and extensive service backup for modern, sustainable agriculture and for non-agricultural applications. Bayer CropScience has a global workforce of about 17,800 and is represented in more than 120 countries.
The Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) is a progressive, international scientific society that fosters the transfer of knowledge and practices to sustain global soils. Based in Madison, WI, and founded in 1936, SSSA is the professional home for 6,000+ members dedicated to advancing the field of soil science. It provides information about soils in relation to crop production, environmental quality, ecosystem sustainability, bioremediation, waste management, recycling, and wise land use.
SSSA supports its members by providing quality research-based publications, educational programs, certifications, and science policy initiatives via a Washington, DC, office. For more information, visit http://www.soils.org.
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