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

Do you dream of an organic garden, but don’t have a yard? A flock of chicks, perhaps, but don’t have a yard? Home-grown food, and lower grocery bills (but, alas, no yard!)? Dream no more, because you can have it, and without quitting your job, trading your bus pass for a pickup, or moving to the rural north.
A new wave of farming is happening in a city near you. While true, Old MacDonald had a farm (ee-i-ee-i-o), his offspring have some urban fish to fry. They’re working off loans, and can’t necessarily afford a parcel of land. They’re young parents who want to save money on cherry tomatoes. They’re newlyweds paying off healthcare debt, and growing taters in their trashcan. They’re students avoiding crappy dining plans. They’re urban farmers. Plain and simple.

Read Goodman’s interview with R. J. Ruppenthal, author of Fresh Food From Small Spaces: The Square-Inch Gardener’s Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting, and Sprouting HERE.

In September I wrote about an unsettling incident in which I’d found high levels of lead in the chard I’d grown in a backyard planter box filled with store-bought soil. According to the head of the lab that did the testing, I shouldn’t have eaten more than one-quarter pound of the leaves a day or I’d risk lead poisoning.

Read the whole story HERE. View the video below. Photo credit: The Los Angeles Times

Photo credit: BBC News

Scott in the New Terra Farm Garden

My wife Suzie and I have been operating New Terra Farm for 10 years. Our ‘centerpiece’ business is an organic market garden organized on the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model. The CSA model has a lot of advantages for a small farmer; early and advance cash flow, the ability to forecast demand and therefore plan and schedule production, and (perhaps most importantly) the ability to find out what your customers want!
Here’s the key: the onus of communication is on the one trying to get the message out. You need to actively plan how and when you will communicate with your customers.
We try to engage with our customers at every opportunity. For example, one of the decisions we made right from the start was to meet with every family that wanted to sign up for our CSA. We get to find out their likes and dislikes, their preferences for delivery, and also if they might want other goodies we sell.
We try to collect an e-mail address at this first meeting, and put folks on the mailing list for our e-newsletter. This lets us easily keep them informed about events on the farm, promote our products, and also to provide them little bonuses like recipes for some of the more unusual veggies we grow.
The final part of our ‘communication strategy’ is our annual survey. We mail a survey to every customer at the end of the season, and include a postage-paid, self-addressed envelope for them to return it to us.
We do a lot more with that survey than just ask ’so, how was it for you’? For example, when I was contemplating adding some new product lines to the farm, I first asked my existing customers if this was a product they used and might consider getting from us, and if so how much did they use. This is great first-hand market research.
I also used the survey to assess my customers’ ’sensitivity’ to the use of chemical pest controls in the garden. The vast majority of my customers responded by saying they much preferred a few ‘lacy’ leaves on their produce rather than ANY type of chemical, organic-approved or otherwise.
As a consequence we only use passive and preventative pest control methods (e.g. row cover) and the occasional spray of dish soap and water. By the way, this has the added benefit of removing my guilt if any of my veggies look less than perfect; the customer has made the choice!
Through all these means I am trying to convey to my customers that I really do care about their needs and wants; that New Terra Farm is THEIR farm, and I am just the custodian; and that the grower and the consumer can have a mutually beneficial relationship, an actual; a ‘win-win’ for all.
Is all this communication stuff work? Without a doubt. Does it pay off? Absolutely! I KNOW my customers have cut me a lot of slack when I have messed something up. They are a lot more tolerant and understanding of the crazy stuff that sometimes happens on small farms – e.g. the occasional mixed-up order, or late delivery. And a significant percentage of them have been with me right from the first season, even through a couple of the worst growing seasons we’ve ever seen.
My advice, take every opportunity to talk to your customers, find out what they want, then deliver it. If you do that you will have a pretty good shot at success on your small farm.

Author bio
Scott Kelland is the owner of award-winning New Terra Farm near Ottawa, Ontario and is the author of several books for small farmers including ‘Bootstrap Market Gardening’ and ‘How to Raise Meat Chickens’. He can be contacted through his website new-terra-natural-food.com.