Category Archives: Agriculture

Small farms increasing

For the first time in many decades, small farms are increasing.

Christopher Wanjek wrote in LiveScience 10 February 2009, Small Farms Sprout in Economic Drought:

When the economy gets tough, it seems that the tough get farming. Tens of thousands of small farms were created since 2002, according to new data from the Census of Agriculture.

The farming forecast isn’t entirely sunny. But packed with a cornucopia of surprise findings — such as large increases in the number and percentage of Asian, Hispanic, Black and female farmers, and a coup staged by the frigid state of Wisconsin to become the second-leading vegetable producer, behind California — the census brings promising news to those interested in reducing obesity and improving the environment.

What’s the connection? More small farms brings greater diversity of crops, more fresh and local foods, less dependency on chemical fertilizers, less concentration of manure, and less emphasis on cheap corn to make unhealthy, industrially produced beef, pork and chicken.

We know this works elsewhere:
In Japan, were obesity is negligible and the population lives on average about five years longer than Americans do, most cities and their surroundings are filled with small farms. Farmers south of Tokyo, which has a climate similar to Washington, work year round, planting winter crops such as broccoli and hearty greens, which are then picked and delivered to local stores within a day or two. The system is called chisan, chishou, “produce local, consume local.”
Unfortunately, big farms also increased during the same period, and mid-sized farms decreased. Basically, mid-sized farms can’t compete in the pesticide game, and are being absorbed by huge corporate farms while being a grass-roots movement of small farms is coming up from the bottom.

Rather than massive Monsanto farms, I choose chisan, chishou.

-jsq

More profit and higher yields through organic farming in India

Increase your income and your yields with traditional farming methods? That’s what’s happening in India.

Nishika Patel blogged 11 May 2011 in The Guardian, Organic farming – India’s future perfect?

India’s struggling farmers are starting to profit from a budding interest in organic living. Not only are the incomes of organic farmers soaring – by 30% to 200%, according to organic experts – but their yields are rising as the pesticide-poisoned land is repaired through natural farming methods.

How did this happen?
Organic farming only took off in the country about seven years ago. Farmers are turning back to traditional farming methods for a number of reasons.

First, there’s a 10% to 20% premium

Continue reading →

Gretchen digging potatoes

You can’t dig just one. Here’s how Gretchen digs potatoes with a shovel:

Heavy, as in more than 40 pounds of potatoes:

Yes, that’s a bathroom scale; only thing we had for something that heavy.

She learned all this from Terry Davis. He and I planted those potatoes. Pictures and videos by John S. Quarterman, Lowndes County, Georgia, 5 May 2011.

-jsq

Even winter farmers markets

We already know that the long trend in growth in farmers markets continued this year as more farmers markets opened, including even winter farmers markets, such as Indy Farmers Market in Indianapolis:

And it’s not just about food, it’s about the local food chain and economy, and “in that food chain you find relationships.”

Henderson said she wasn’t looking to start a business when she started Indy Winter Farmers’ Market. Her efforts, she joked, were more about making Indianapolis into a place she wanted to live.

But on that first day at 25th and Central, with people lined up outside the door, she realized her goals were similar to those of many others in the community. Her market and others like it, she explained, are about more than food.

“It’s not just about the market,” she said. “We should be proud to be Indiana, the Heartland, a farm state.”

-jsq

Farmers markets: twice as many as ten years ago

According to USDA’s Farmers Market Growth: 1994-2010, there are more than twice as many farmers markets in the U.S. as ten years ago, and the growth rate is 6% a year.

Further:

Farmers markets are an integral part of the urban/farm linkage and have continued to rise in popularity, mostly due to the growing consumer interest in obtaining fresh products directly from the farm. Farmers markets allow consumers to have access to locally grown, farm fresh produce, enables farmers the opportunity to develop a personal relationship with their customers, and cultivate consumer loyalty with the farmers who grows the produce. Direct marketing of farm products through farmers markets continues to be an important sales outlet for agricultural producers nationwide. As of mid-2010, there were 6,132 farmers markets operating throughout the U.S. This is a 16 percent increase from 2009.
USDA is updating their directory now.

-jsq

11 year old is onto Monsanto and how to fix the food system

The “dark side of the industrialized food system.” as related (accurately) by Birke Baehr at TEDxNextGeneration Asheville.
Conventional farmers use chemical fertilizers made from fossil fuels. Then they mess with the dirt to make the plants grow. They do this because they’ve stripped the soil from all nutrients from growing the same crop over and over again. Next more harmful chemicals are sprayed on fruits and vegetables. Like pesticides and herbicides to kill weeds and bugs. When it rains, these chemicals seep into the ground, or rise into our waterways, poisoning our water, too.
His personal goal:
A while back, I wanted to be an NFL footall player.
I decided I’d rather be an organic farmer instead.
[applause]
That way I can have a greater impact on the world.
He’s got a turn of phrase:
We can either pay the farmer, or we can pay the hospital.

-jsq

Press mum on new glysophate evidence

I quoted Jill Richardson back in March about about Professor Col. Don Huber’s letter to USDA Secretary Vilsack about new evidence found of diseases caused by Roundup. She writes 27 April 2011, Why Is Damning New Evidence About Monsanto’s Most Widely Used Herbicide Being Silenced? It turns out that Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide might not be nearly as safe as people have thought, but the media is staying mum on the revelation.
Huber was unavailable to respond to media inquiries in the weeks following the leak, and thus unable to defend himself when several colleagues from Purdue publicly claiming to refute his accusations about Monsanto’s widely used herbicide Roundup (glyphosate) and Roundup Ready crops. When his letter was finally acknowledged by the mainstream media, it was with titles like “Scientists Question Claims in Biotech Letter,” noting that the letter’s popularity on the internet “has raised concern among scientists that the public will believe his unsupported claim is true.”

Now, Huber has finally spoken out, both in a second letter, sent to “a wide number of individuals worldwide” to explain and back up his claims from his first letter, and in interviews. While his first letter described research that was not yet complete or published, his second letter cited much more evidence about glyphosate and genetically engineered crops based on studies that have already been published in peer-reviewed journals.

And that’s plus all sorts of evidence about other ill effects of glysophate, including lower IQ in children, and Roundup-Ready crops themselves causing organ disruptions. All that plus the very real risk of the genetically modified crops having unpredicted effects. There’s much more.

Could this silence of the press be because only five companies own more than half of all the media in the U.S.? Let’s not forget the legal system is also complicit, given the Fox-can-lie case.

So what can you do? vote at the checkout counter. Buy local and organic. And of course bug your elected officials about doing something about it.

-jsq

Hiding the Truth About Factory Farms —NYTimes

In an editorial on 26 April 2011, the New York Times opined:
A supermarket shopper buying hamburger, eggs or milk has every reason, and every right, to wonder how they were produced. The answer, in industrial agriculture, is “behind closed doors,” and that’s how the industry wants to keep it. In at least three states — Iowa, Florida, and Minnesota — legislation is moving ahead that would make undercover investigations in factory farms, especially filming and photography, a crime. The legislation has only one purpose: to hide factory-farming conditions from a public that is beginning to think seriously about animal rights and the way food is produced.
Would people really want to eat CAFO chicken, beef, or pork if they knew it came from animals that are kept in pens so small they can’t move and fed antibiotics constantly to keep them from dying of diseases they give each other from standing in their own feces?

Also, I’m a Farm Bureau members, but this makes me ill:

And they are supported by the big guns of industrial agriculture: Monsanto, the Farm Bureau, the associations that represent pork producers, dairy farmers and cattlemen, as well as poultry, soybean, and corn growers.
Farming used to be something to be proud of, not something to hide.

-jsq

Two Mexican states ban GM corn

Many if not most pesticides are sprayed on crops genetically modified to resist them. Ban GM crops and reduce spraying. Two states in Mexico prove it can be done. Mexico, the country where corn was originally domesticated could lead the way back to healthy agriculture.

Aleira Lara reported in Health Impact News Daily reported 5 March 2011 that Two Mexican states ban GM corn:

The Mexican States of Tlaxcala and Michoacán each passed legislation banning the planting of genetically modified corn to protect natural plants from further contamination of transgenes. Together, both states produce about a third of all of Mexico’s corn. Below this story is a detailed timeline of genetic contamination and legislation in Mexico.
The timeline is a long saga including intimidation of scientists attempting to research the problem. The Mexican federal government caved in to big agro, but two Mexican states are fighting back anyway.

-jsq