South Georgia Growing Local Conference, 14 January 2012

Last time some okravores (south Georgia locavores) realized nobody else was going to hold a conference about growing local in the characteristic soils and climate and with the characteristic foods and culture of south Georgia, so okravores met in Tifton and learned about everything from controling insect to which breeds of cows produce the best organic milk. Raven demonstrated you can make cheese in south Georgia and Gretchen demonstrated preserving beautyberry and other jams and jellies, along with many other interesting talks and demonstrations, and good food. The South Georgia Growing Local Conference is back, this time near Reidsville, in January.

When:

Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012, 9-5

Where:

UGA’s Vidalia Onion & Vegetable Research Center, between Lyons & Reidsville, Ga. & Red Earth Farm, Reidsville
What: Continue reading →

Organic farming as productive as pesticiding (proven yet again)

Rodale Institute has been running a side-by-side comparison of organic and chemical agriculture since 1981. They report:
After an initial decline in yields during the first few years of transition, the organic system soon rebounded to match or surpass the conventional system. Over time, FST became a comparison between the long term potential of the two systems.
Year after year, Rodale found:
Organic yields match conventional yields.

As Tom Philpott reported for Mother Jones 17 November 2011, Yet Again, Organic Ag Proves Just as Productive as Chemical Ag,

And now comes evidence from the very heart of Big Ag: rural Iowa, where Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture runs the Long-Term Agroecological Research Experiment (LTAR), which began in 1998, which has just released its latest results.

At the LTAR fields in Adair County, the (LTAR) runs four fields: one managed with the Midwest-standard two-year corn-soy rotation featuring the full range of agrochemicals; and the other ones organically managed with three different crop-rotation systems. The chart below records the yield averages of all the systems, comparing them to the average yields achieved by actual conventional growers in Adair County:

Norman Borlaug, instigator of the “green revolution” of no-till and pesticides, when asked in 2000 whether organic agriculture could feed the world, said: Continue reading →

Southern Nevada Health District forced private citizens to pour bleach on home-grown organic food

Quail Hollow Farm was holding a Farm-to-Fork dinner for invited guests, when a health inspector showed up and forced them to destroy the food. In this video of the event you can hear the arrogance of the inspector:
That’s all the information you need.
Well, no, it’s not.

The inspector said it was a public event because the guests had paid for d inner.

The farmer eventually called their lawyer who said ask the inspector to see her warrant. She had none.

But they had already been told their food that they grew with their own hands was not fit for a public dinner, nor a private dinner, not even to feed to their pigs. They were forced to pour bleach on it, making it unfit even for compost.

Given that every food contamination recall in recent years has come from big factory farms, not from small organic farms, does this raid seem right to you? Continue reading →

Pileated vs. Ivory Billed Woodpeckers

There is some confusion of the Lord God Bird, the Ivory Billed Woodpecker that was thought extinct until the 1940s until 2004, with our local Pileated Woodpecker. They are similar colors and similar size:
Pileated WoodPecker
(Dryocopus pileatus)
Flying: Dark trailing wing edge
Perched: Small white patch
Length: 16-19 in.
Wing span: 26-30 in. 		Ivory-billed Woodpecker
(Campephilus principalis)
Flying: White trailing wing edge
Perched: Large white patch
Length: 18-20 in.
Wing span: 30-33 in.
Above illustrations by N. John Schmitt © Cornell Lab of Ornithology

You can clearly see when this bird flew overhead it had a black trailing wing edge: Continue reading →

Massive lawsuit against Monsanto for seed patent abuse

The Organic Seed Growers & Trade Association (OSGATA) are plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Monsanto’s attempts to control seeds.

Wake Up World wrote 19 September 2011, Case Update: 270,000 Organic Farmers Sue Monsanto

The 83 family farmers, small and family owned seed businesses, and agricultural organizations challenging Monsanto’s patents on genetically modified seed filed papers in federal court (13th August 2011) defending their right to seek legal protection from the threat of being sued by Monsanto for patent infringement should they ever become contaminated by Monsanto’s genetically modified seed. The Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) represents the plaintiffs in the suit, titled Organic Seed Growers & Trade Association (OSGATA), et al. v. Monsanto and pending in the Southern District of New York. The August 13 filings respond to a motion filed by Monsanto in mid-July to have the case dismissed. In support of the plantiffs’ right to bring the case, 12 agricultural organizations also filed a friend-of-the-court amici brief.

“Rather than give a straight forward answer on whether they would sue our clients for patent infringement if they are ever contaminated by Monsanto’s transgenic seed, Monsanto has instead chosen to try to deny our clients the right to receive legal protection from the courts,” said Dan Ravicher, PUBPAT’s Executive Director. “Filings include sworn statements by several of the plaintiffs themselves explaining to the court how the risk of contamination by transgenic seed is real and why they cannot trust Monsanto to not use an occurrence of contamination as a basis to accuse them of patent infringement.”

This goes well beyond control of seeds, of course, and beyond the plaintiffs: Continue reading →

Pair of Pileateds in a Pine Tree

What are these, climbing turkeys? They’re almost big enough.

Or maybe a pair of Southern Pileated Woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus) on a longleaf pine (Pinus Palustris).

I got pretty close; they just laughed. Eventually I walked away to do something else, and they flew into another tree directly over my head, where you see them in this video:


Pileated Woodpeckers, Dryocopus pileatus, Lowndes County, Georgia.
Pictures by John S. Quarterman, 7 November 2011.

-jsq