Chuck is with corn growers in Atlanta, John and Joanna are covering the Pork Expo in Des Moines, while I am toughing it out with my dear friends from BASF and some of the nation’s finest agricultural journalists in the sumptuous Trump International Hotel and Tower Chicago. I am seriously thinking I got the best job this week!

Pictured are Eric Sfiligoj with CropLife, Pat Morrow with BASF, and Willie Vogt with Farm Progress at the opening reception for the 2010 BASF Agricultural Solutions Media Summit. The theme of the summit is “A Grounded Approach to Agricultural Sustainability” and our day on Wednesday will be spent hearing from representatives of BASF and various agricultural experts about the topic.

To kick off the event, we got to learn a little bit about the more colorful history of the Windy City from Chicago historian and author Rich Lindberg, who autographed copies of his book “Return to the Scene of the Crime – a Guide to Infamous Places in Chicago” which features notorious figures like John Dillinger and Al Capone.

Dale Minyo with Ohio Ag Net did a short interview about the more “grounded” history of Chicago’s agricultural background, which started with the stockyards at the end of the Civil War. Even that ties in with the criminal history of Chicago, according to Rich, who explained how scam artists ripped off Midwest farmers coming off the trains. Interestingly, he says the great-grand nephew of Mike McDonald, the crime boss who led that scam in the 1870s, now works at the Chicago Board of Trade. Listen to that interview in the player below.

Check out photos from the event in the 2010 BASF Ag Media Summit photo album.