A person dressed up as a chicken showed up at a Durango, Colorado city council meeting where the council was discussing the language of a recently-passed backyard hen ordinance relating to predators and allowing chickens within city limits. The chicken sat in the mostly empty audience area and when the council was about to adjourn to a closed session, arose and walked up before the council, left an egg on the floor and walked out of the building. Click HERE for the story.
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Consumers, when given truth in labeling about GMO foods, don’t want to buy or consume GMO food. Now, bioengineers are growing nerve, heart and other tissues in labs. This could lead to raising GMO meat in laboratories without animals ever seeing the inside of an industrial factory farm. The pr spin has started… GMO “test tube” meats are being touted as a “sustainable” solution to what is ailing the planet…As Charles Q. Choi reports for LiveScience.com,
*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.
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Collin Dunn writes on Treehugger.com,
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
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The old Growing Edge printed magazine ran an article on the Seminole County (Florida) Jail hydroponic garden way back in 1996.
The jail’s hydro garden is still going strong providing the inmates with educational skills on growing plants and supplying fresh food for the jail’s cafeteria.
Abraham Aboraya writes in the SeminoleChronicle.com,
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
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This grower explains why he hasn’t certified his organic farm under government sanctioned standards even though he has been growing using organic methods since the farm was started. He calls his farm’s produce solarganic. Read about Healthy Home Harvest farm in New Hampshire.
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From a North Carolina State University press release,
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
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With the Thanksgiving holiday approaching, the media traditionally looks at hunger in America for their heart tugging stories even though it is a year round problem…
Forty-nine million people, one in six, or almost 16 percent of the American population went hungry in 2008. Now contrast that with the obesity epidemic sweeping across America at the same time… WTF is wrong with those two pictures? Add to that, we (in the U.S.) waste and throw out enough food to feed all those hungry people…so it is not a problem of growing enough food, but supplying and distributing the food to the people who need it… Just as long as the fat cats and corporations get their bloated share, everything is a-ok.
The report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, titled Household Food Security in the United States 2008 says,
Eighty-five percent of American households were food secure throughout the entire year in 2008, meaning that they had access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members. The remaining households (14.6 percent) were food insecure at least some time during the year, including 5.7 percent with very low food security—meaning that the food intake of one or more household members was reduced and their eating patterns were disrupted at times during the year because the household lacked money and other resources for food. Prevalence rates of food insecurity and very low food security were up from 11.1 percent and 4.1 percent, respectively, in 2007, and were the highest recorded since 1995, when the first national food security survey was conducted. The typical food-secure household spent 31 percent more on food than the typical food-insecure household of the same size and household composition. Fifty-five percent of all food-insecure households participated in one or more of the three largest Federal food and nutrition assistance programs during the month prior to the 2008 survey.
To read the complete report, click HERE.
Many of these people live in the inner cities and don’t have space to grow a garden…another reason to Plant a Row for the Hungry.
Photo credit: zenobia_joy’s Flickr photostream
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From The Fair Food Project,
“Fair Food: Field to Table” is a multimedia presentation promoting a more socially just food system in the U.S. It was created by California Institute for Rural Studies and Rick Nahmias Photography.
Through the stories and voices of farmworkers, growers, businesses and fair food advocates, viewers of the documentary learn about the harsh realities of farmworker conditions and, more importantly, the promise of improved farm labor practices in American agriculture. The growing movement for “fair food” is tapping into rising consumer demand for food produced in accordance with their values. Click HERE for more information on The Fair Food Project.
Part 1
To view videos Part 2 and 3 [click to continue…]
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To order the new Hydroponic Tomato Crop Production book by Dr. Lynette Morgan click below:
Hydroponics Dictionary
