*Avoiding animal suffering by reducing the farming and killing of livestock.
*Dramatically cutting down on food-borne ailments such as mad cow disease and salmonella or germs such as swine flu, by monitoring the growth of meat in labs.
*Livestock currently take up 70 percent of all agricultural land, corresponding to 30 percent of the world’s land surface, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. Labs would presumably require much less space.
*Livestock generate 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, more than all of the vehicles on Earth, the FAO added. Since the animals themselves are mostly responsible for these gases, reducing livestock numbers could help alleviate global warming.

To read the rest of the report, click HERE.

Sure, agriculture provides us with the food we all eat every day. But do you know how those agricultural practices impact global warming? Turns out there’s some pretty big impacts, on both the sustainable and industrial sides of the equation; employing sustainable practices, like organic agriculture, has huge potential to help in the fight against global warming, and maintaining the status quo with widespread industrial agricultural practices will continue to be terribly detrimental for the climate. Dig deeper to learn more about the ways agriculture impacts global warming.

Click HERE to read the rest of the story.
Photo credit: benketaro’s Flickr photostream

Walk into the Seminole County Jail. Wait for clearance, then go to the hallway to your left. Pass through one door out into the open air. Through one more door right in front, and you’ve found the Seminole County Jail’s secret garden.
It’s a lush greenhouse, filled with enough vibrant green hydroponic lettuce to feed salad to upwards of 1,000 prisoners once a month. Then there are the tomatoes, also hydroponically grown, which feed the staff every eight months. And there are fish too, thousands of Tilapia, which feed the staff, although they’re not hydroponic.

Click HERE for the rest of the story.
Photo credit: SeminoleChronicle.com

Growers of organic crops will get some much needed help as plant breeders at North Carolina State University launch an effort to develop corn, peanut, soybean and wheat varieties adapted to being grown organically.
A $1.2 million U.S. Department of Agriculture grant will fund the effort at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State. The conventional breeding will focus on developing varieties with the traits growers need to be successful. Soybean breeding will likely focus on developing varieties better able to compete with weeds. Resistance to seedling diseases, diseases that attack the plant just after seeds germinate, will be important in peanuts. Peanut growers treat their seeds with pesticide before planting, but that option isn’t open to organic growers.
Corn breeding will focus on preventing contamination, or cross pollination, with genetically modified corn. Pollen from fields in which genetically modified corn is grown can drift on the wind for several miles and end up cross pollinating corn in a field where organic corn is grown.
Corn that contains what are known as gametophytic genes cannot be pollinated by non-gametophytic corn types. Breeding efforts will focus on developing organic corn varieties with gametophytic genes.

To read the complete press release, click HERE.
Photo credit: normanack’s Flickr photostream