Organic farming and eating Archive

Organic Farmers with an Aversion to Waste

Bill and Karla ChambersMany of us today think about what we may be wasting, an awareness that leads us to recycling, composting and other such activities. But from the beginning, Bill and Karla Chambers operated their Stahlbush Island Farms—located in Oregon’s lush Willamette Valley—with the idea that waste was intolerable. This thinking has guided virtually every aspect of their operations since the farms’ founding in 1985.

The doctrine of waste aversion has taken them in a unique direction: that of exclusively marketing their produce either frozen or canned. “Produce comes in and out of ripeness in a very short period of time,” Karla Chambers told Organic Connections. “For example, our Super Sweet Corn comes in and out of prime in three days. If you follow the fresh market, if corn or blueberries are coming out of Chile, it’s probably 15 days by the time the crop is picked. It goes to the packinghouse and gets loaded on a container for a shipment north. Then it goes into distribution, to the grocery store, and then sits in your home. Of course, we don’t eat it on day one; it can be many more days before we consume that fresh produce.

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Going Wild to Counter Bee Colony Collapse

by Enrique Gili, via Grist.org

BeehiveIn 2009, lifelong beekeeper Dan Harvey faced an existential crisis when he lost 
much of his honeybee stock to colony collapse disorder (CCD). So the former Vietnam-era Special Forces veteran did what came naturally: He took to the deep dark woods of the Pacific Northwest, searching for answers to his predicament.

Harvey began by hunting for wild and feral bees living near his home in Port Angeles, Wash. (These bees have escaped from commercial colonies and find refuge in the tall timber and glens enveloping the Olympic Peninsula). For years, he crossbred the feral bees he captured with honeybees in order to produce hybridized hives that would be well-suited to the dank climes of the temperate rainforest region.

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Farmers Markets Are Expanding Online

by Katherine Gustafson, via Yes! Magazine

CSA delivery basketsIt isn’t always easy finding fresh, high-quality food in this country. Supermarkets with their long, complex supply chains usually offer unripe or subpar produce that leaves a lot to be desired. But the usual alternative methods of provision have distinct limitations. Luckily, technology provides one great answer to this dilemma, opening up an important new avenue for small-scale producers to connect to customers.

Only local farms can deliver the very freshest produce. But while the common methods of providing this bounty to consumers—community supported agriculture (CSA) plans and farmers’ markets—are essential components of a revitalizing fresh-food sector, they don’t always provide a sufficiently flexible or robust shopping experience.

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NSF Study Shows Plant Diversity Is Key to Productive Crops

National Science Foundation's (NSF) Cedar Creek Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site in MinnesotaVegetation, such as a patch of prairie or a forest stand, is more productive in the long run when more plant species are present, results of a new study show.

The long-term study of plant biodiversity found that each species plays a role in maintaining a productive ecosystem, especially when a long time horizon is considered.

The research found that every additional species in a plot contributed to a gradual increase in both soil fertility and biomass production over a 14-year period.

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Indie Retailer Causes Kashi to Announce Move to Non-GMO

by Caren Baginski, via NewHope 360

Where's My KashiAfter a whirlwind of a week for Kellogg-owned Kashi Company, the natural cereal and granola giant has announced its intent to ditch GMOs in two existing product lines by 2014. And by 2015, all new Kashi foods will contain 70 percent organic ingredients and also be Non-GMO Project Verified. While the company was already moving toward non-GMO, what prompted this sudden announcement?

Perhaps it was consumer outrage to an anti-GMO viral photo circulated on Facebook created a PR nightmare for Kashi—one that the company tried to curb with a video response that didn't satisfy consumers. On April 30, 2012, the brand offered a more satisfying response to its customers, and one that's surely capturing the attention of natural retailers as they evaluate their role in effecting healthy change in the market.

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Joel Salatin: Life Lessons from a Farmer

Joel Salatin: Life Lessons from a Farmer

by Bruce Boyers

Joel Salatin—farmer, author, featured speaker, and the subject of several documentaries—has spent his life learning from nature how a food system is supposed to function, and putting it into practice at his Polyface Farm. Then, raising his eyes up from his tractor, he has wondered how average citizens, having no connection to the sources of their food and possessing no food security whatsoever, could possibly think they could go on this way.

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Chef Michel Nischan: Serving the Underserved

Chef Michel Nischan: Serving the Underserved

by Anna Soref

It’s not everybody who could turn down a request from the late Paul Newman to open a restaurant, especially if that someone were a passionate chef. But for Michel Nischan, when that offer was made, the time wasn’t right; he was too busy helping nonprofits and socially responsible businesses make the world a better place. Yup, he turned down what most would see as a dream job with a dream partner to continue doing the right thing.

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The Art of Domestic Microfarming

Jenna Spevack and one of her microfarmsJenna Spevack is an artist and designer and an art professor at City University of New York. She is also an environmental advocate, with an art exhibition titled 8 Extraordinary Greens.

The gallery show consists of a series of furniture objects converted into what Spevack calls domestic microfarms. “My art studio landlord collects objects from junkyards,” Spevack explained to Organic Connections. “I’ve taken these salvaged objects and turned them into little microfarms—outfitting them with lights and a sub-irrigated planter that I developed.” The objects include bookcases, tables and other items, neatly fitted with planters sprouting the likes of beets, chard, arugula, cress and kale.

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An Organic Rancher’s Comments on Pink Slime

Guest post by Michele Simon, Appetite for Profit

Grass fed beefInterview with Rod Morrison of Rocky Mountain Organic Meats

Rod Morrison is president of Rocky Mountain Organic Meats, a Wyoming company that produces 100% Certified Organic, pasture raised and finished meats. As a sustainable farmer who understands the realities of meat production, he has an opinion or two about the recent uproar over pink slime. 

MS: What do you make of the whole pink slime debacle?

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Crying Fowl: The Backyard Chicken Underground

by Daniel Klein, via The Perennial Plate

The backyard chicken trend is becoming more and more prevalent these days. But in many North American cities, keeping a flock of hens is still illegal. We met up with some unlikely outlaws while traveling through Tennessee who are breaking the law by producing fresh farm eggs, right in their back yard.

 

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North Carolina Tackles Going Local and Sustainable

Harvesting at CEFSNorth Carolina is a state known for its agricultural production—tobacco, corn and soy. It is also the number two pork-producing state in the nation. Yet since 1994, the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS)—a joint effort between two of the state’s leading universities and its Department of Agriculture—has been heavily researching and promoting organic, sustainable and local agriculture. Today, CEFS’s impact is being felt statewide, creating highest-ever demand for local and sustainable production and setting a remarkable example for many other states in
the nation.

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Farmer Joel Salatin Takes on the New York Times

by Joel Salatin, Polyface Farms

Joe SalatinThe recent editorial by James McWilliams titled "The Myth of Sustainable Meat" contains enough factual errors and skewed assumptions to fill a book and normally I would dismiss this out of hand as too much nonsense to merit a response. But since it specifically mentioned Polyface, a rebuttal is appropriate. For a more comprehensive rebuttal, read the book Folks, This Ain't Normal.

Let's go point by point. First, that grass grazing cows emit more methane than grain-fed. This is factually false. Actually, the amount of methane emitted by fermentation is the same whether it occurs in the cow or outside. Whether the feed is eaten by an herbivore or left to rot on its own, the methane generated is identical.

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Using Technology and Excess Produce to Solve Hunger

Gary Oppenheimer in his gardenLegendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow once said, “The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.” One of those rare people who not only see but act on what was has clearly been invisible to most of us is Gary Oppenheimer. Since he founded AmpleHarvest.org, he has been named CNN Hero, has received major media coverage, has spoken at TEDx Manhattan, has been praised by First Lady Michelle Obama, and was even invited to the White House to meet the President.

What’s it all about? AmpleHarvest.org matches the food pantries used by more than 50 million Americans living in food-insecure homes with the over 40 million people who grow fruits, vegetables, herbs and nuts in home gardens—and who often have an excess. Prior to the site, the problem was that gardeners could not find local food pantries (also called food shelves, food closets, food cupboards or food banks in some areas) to donate to, as many were not online. AmpleHarvest.org provides a central repository for these pantries so that gardeners can easily locate those nearest them.

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Growing Urban Farmers in New Orleans

by Claire Thompson, via Grist.org

Nat Turner (third from left, white shirt) stands on a new compost pile with a group of OSBG interns, Americorps employees, and volunteers.Nat Turner, a former New York City public-school teacher, moved to New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward on Thanksgiving Day, 2008. He didn’t know anything about gardening — “I could barely keep a cactus alive” — but he had a vision to start an urban farm that would be a vehicle for educating and empowering the neighborhood’s youth. He’d been making service trips to the Big Easy with students, but he wanted an opportunity to dig deeper, literally and figuratively, into the city’s revitalization.

His first goal, Turner says, “is to figure out how to make the Lower Ninth food secure.” It seems fitting, then, that in a neighborhood with no supermarket, Turner set up shop in a falling-down building that had once housed a black-owned family business called the B&G Grocery. He filled a pink bathtub in the backyard with soil and planted scallions, which floated away when the bathtub flooded in a rainstorm. That was the beginning of Our School at Blair Grocery (OSBG).

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Chef Clayton Chapman Brings the Food Revolution to Omaha

Clayton ChapmanThe Grey Plume has been dubbed “The Greenest Restaurant in America” by the Green Restaurant Association. Not only are ingredients for their menu sourced locally from sustainable growers—and all dishes based upon seasonal crops—but every detail of the restaurant itself has been fashioned to be eco-friendly. Yet perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this eatery is its location: Omaha, Nebraska, in the very heart of industrial agriculture country.

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Pesticide Isolated as Cause of Bee Colony Collapse

Honey beeThe likely culprit in sharp worldwide declines in honeybee colonies since 2006 is imidacloprid, one of the most widely used pesticides, according to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH).

The authors, led by Chensheng (Alex) Lu, associate professor of environmental exposure biology in the Department of Environmental Health, write that the new research provides “convincing evidence” of the link between imidacloprid and the phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), in which adult bees abandon their hives.

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The Growth of Domestic Fair Trade

by Twilight Greenaway, via Grist.org

The Farm lunch at the Gathering Together FarmAt Gathering Together Farm, in Philomath, Ore., owners Sally Brewer and John Eveland sit down with all their employees three times a week for an all-farm lunch. At the height of the growing season, Gathering Together Farm employs as many as 100 people, so Brewer and Eveland bring in employees on those days especially to cook. It’s no small expense, but it’s a way to ensure that the field crew gets face time with the irrigation crew, the office employees, and the farmers market crew.

“It’s a huge meal, and it’s part of the benefits package,” says Rose Mahoney, who helps manage the farm. “It really has a family feeling.”

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New Yorkers Get a Farmer’s Market on Their Phones

by Jenny An, via Grist.org

Food from FarmsA community-supported agriculture (CSA) share can be a culinary battle royale. Every other week, it’s you versus a mystery box. No tap outs, no substitutions. Just a bitter melon so fresh, you wouldn’t dare toss it out. And while there’s something to be said for experimentation, sometimes you just want something a little more familiar, something easy to pack for lunch, something the kids will touch. Or maybe you’re just having a mad craving for heirloom radishes?

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Northampton’s Organic Community Gardens

by Bruce Boyers

Grow Food Northampton logoAn entire town getting behind and pushing locally grown, sustainable food for the community is a dream that many of us have—but in Northampton, Massachusetts, home of Smith College, that dream is becoming a reality.

As this is being written, 100 gardening plots in the town’s new 17-acre community organic garden are being seriously vied for by citizens, schools and groups, while a recently established organic farm is expanding, and yet another is opening in the upcoming season. In total, 121 acres are being developed simply and only for sustainable organic farming. The entire scenario was brought about under the guidance of nonprofit organization Grow Food Northampton.

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The Non-GMO GMO?

GMO No MoIn a stunning reversal of stance, biotech megacorporation FoodGen Inc. has made a guarded admission that genetically modified crops might actually be harmful to human health, soil, and other non-GMO crops. On the heels of this announcement, however, FoodGen also revealed plans to release their new line of GMO corn, which contains genetically altered traits that work to counter previous GMO traits introduced into the corn, thereby producing a “non-GMO” variety.

“We are very attentive to the needs of our consumers,” John J. Phlegm, FoodGen vice president for public awareness told Organic Connections. “Due to considerable misunderstandings of GMO technology created by various radical food factions, many in the public sector have come to believe that GMOs are harmful. While our scientific research runs completely counter to these beliefs, we nonetheless wish to deliver to our customers products which they think are good for them.”

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A Road Map to Sustainable Agriculture

via University of Wisconsin

Sustainable agricultureAn independent commission of scientific leaders from 13 countries on Wednesday, March 28, 2012 released a detailed set of recommendations to policymakers on how to achieve food security in the face of climate change.

In their report, the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change proposes specific policy responses to the global challenge of feeding a world confronted by climate change, population growth, poverty, food price spikes and degraded ecosystems. The report highlights specific opportunities under the mandates of the Rio+20 Earth Summit, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Group of 20 (G20) nations.

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Over One Million Americans Tell the FDA to Label GMOs

Just Label It infographicMarch 27, 2012 marks the date the FDA is required to respond to a record over over one million petition comments demanding the labeling of foods that contain GMO ingredients. This is more than a milestone, it is a watershed event. Never before have so many Americans spoken with a unified voice on one subject: the right to know what is in our foods.

But that's not all. The number of petition comments did not stop at one million. By 3 p.m. EDT, the actual number had surpassed 1,078,000. This campaign has momentum and depth that literally has never been seen before in the annals of American political movements. It took less than 180 days to accumulate the record number of comments.

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Improve Your Soil and Combat Global Warming with DIY Biochar

via Rice University

Biochar is the next big thing in the fight against global warmingBackyard gardeners who make their own charcoal soil additives, or biochar, should take care to heat their charcoal to at least 450 degrees Celsius to ensure that water and nutrients get to their plants, according to a new study by Rice University scientists.

The study, published this week in the Journal of Biomass and Bioenergy, is timely because biochar is attracting thousands of amateur and professional gardeners, and some companies are also scaling up industrial biochar production.

“When it’s done right, adding biochar to soil can improve hydrology and make more nutrients available to plants,” said Rice biogeochemist Caroline Masiello, the lead researcher on the new study.

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Can the New Farm Bill Reform US Agriculture?

by Jim Robbins, via Yale Environment 360

2012 Farm Bill could change a lot for the good. (Photo:Tony Link/Getty Images) More than ever, U.S. corn is king. Across the Midwest, farmers are expanding their corn acreage to take advantage of record high prices. More corn will be planted this year than any since World War II, with 94 million acres under cultivation, up from 78 million in 2006.

While the boom may be good for the farmer, it takes a steep toll on the environment. The planting is changing the countryside as farmers plow fencerow to fencerow, eliminating trees, land in conservation programs, and riparian areas. Meanwhile, cheap, federally subsidized corn is used to make high-fructose corn syrup, which is added to thousands of products and is implicated in many chronic illnesses that plague Americans. Experts say it’s an important factor in obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and even cancer.

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GMOs—People Pushing Back

2012 March Organic Non-GMO Report CoveJournalist Ken Roseboro has been writing and reporting on the issue of genetically modified foods since their beginnings. In 2000, he saw and filled a vital need for a publication dedicated strictly to informing the public about GMOs, and his highly informative magazine The Organic & Non-GMO Report has been more than fulfilling that need for twelve years.

Having closely monitored the GMO situation for so long, Ken now sees the rising public groundswell on the subject as a major threat to the biotech industry and a considerable win for the public at large.

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