Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
We take a look at recent questions regarding Organic Foods and Organic Regulations. Our guests include organic advocates, industry officials, and former members of federal regulations in organic food & agriculture.
-Pesticides in your peaches
-The obvious advantage of organic food over conventional
-A debate about soil, organics, and nutrition
-Empty car parks to sprout vegetable plots
-The Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-intellectuals
-An ‘agri-intellectual’ talks back
The first reports of drought-related suicides have begun filtering in from the district press. Farmers in the eastern coastal state of Andhra Pradesh are taking their own lives – the toll is said to be 20 farmers over the last 40 days. The state is one amongst many which has so far been forsaken by the South-West monsoon in 2009…An official with the state agriculture department has called the conditions the worst in 50 years. But the state government has still not declared Andhra Pradesh as hit by drought. Such declarations have in India become politically charged positions that the state ruling is forced to take, instead of being policy conclusions that can quickly bring relief and rehabilitation.
-Barrister to barista: The rise of part-time Britain
-Ellie and Gordon set a good example: voluntary service trumps compulsion
-Organic producers suffer as green fingered customers go it alone
-Farmer saves $200,000 with poo power
-Vancouver firm makes fertilizer out of human sewage
-Wastewater Produces Electricity And Desalinates Water
-Debunking the meat / climate change myth
-Grow your own sausages
-Metro Detroit Goes Slow And Tastes The Difference
Of all my old, junk machinery, I like my pickup truck the best. I could not function without it. I use it to haul hay, straw, manure, mulch, lambs, rams, calves, pigs, chickens, corn, wheat, grandkids, apples, firewood, logs, cans of gas, rototillers, dirt, lawnmowers, water tanks, fencing, gates, posts, lumber, chainsaws, shovels, forks, concrete blocks, trash for the recycler, gravel, rocks, railroad ties. To name a few.
-Offsets and Big Ag: Does the climate bill give away too much to the farm sector?
-US Still Paying Blackwater Millions
-Steinbeck’s Descendants
-Things Fall Apart: Complexity, Supply Chains, Infrastructure & Collapse
-the land speaks
-Why Corporations, Emerging Powers and Petro-States Are Snapping Up Huge Chunks of Farmland in the Developing World
For those concerned about a sustainable future, changing the reigning industrially-conditioned aesthetic–which is now deeply ingrained in the public mind–will be as much of a challenge as changing the underlying system that created it.
I never knew why August was a good time to apply barn manure to farm and garden and Fall even better. We just did it then because there is usually a lull in other pressing farm work. Now I find out from the consensus of opinion among the experts on barn manure a century ago that we’ve been doing the right thing.
