Tag Archives: organic

I Stand For What I Stand On: Permaculture for a Better Tomorrow –Benjamin & Jennifer Vieth @ SOGALO16 2016-02-06

Layered gardens as ecosystems that have persistent community and environmental benefits: permaculture.

Jennifer Vieth in the garden Description: We will be discussing how permaculture practices with an emphasis on land stewardship and building communities.

Who should attend: Anyone interested in community gardens, permaculture, and environmental philosophy.

“Benjamin Vieth has a BA in Continue reading

Small organic farms can (already) feed the world

Research, including studies presented at the conference in Istanbul, is showing that organic agriculture can deliver reliably high yields ”and that organic fields thrive in the face of disaster and duress, where chemical-reliant crops falter. Organic fields, for example, fare significantly better than chemically managed ones in the face of extreme weather, such as droughts or floods.

Anna Lappe, for takepart, 4 November 2014, Yes, Organic Farming Can Feed the World, Continue reading

Roundup bred mutant pigweed

With GM crops come herbicides, which breed resistant weeds. This has happened in about a decade for the worse mutants. We can reverse the problem by reversing the spraying, using plowing, cultivation, and crop rotation instead.

Mark Jeschke wrote for Pioneer Dupont, Crop Insights: Weed Management in the Era of Glyphosate Resistance, Continue reading

Grow Your Own Organic Small Fruits –Jerry Larson

Veteran organic instructor Jerald Larson will talk about how to grow organic fruits at South Georgia Growing Local 2014:

Jerry’s presentation will focus on blackberries, blueberries, figs and muscadine grapes. He will explain and demonstrate practical, low cost methods for trellising and pruning; soil and bed preparation; weed suppression, irrigation, and harvesting.

His conference bio: Continue reading

Location, Location, Location –Christine Hagen from the Hagen Homestead

Christine Hagen will speak about her family’s CSA at South Georgia Growing Local 2014:

We started out going to a weekly organic farmer’s market over in Thomasville but transitioned to a CSA after 2 years. We will explain why and show you how our gardens have taken shape over these past few years. We are still a small operation after 4 years choosing to grow our business slowly. However, we have learned a great deal during these growing years. Plus we have gleaned much from other folks which we will be implementing over the next few years. We are grooming the farm as a business venture for our son, who does most of the labor.

Hagen Homestead’s website. Christine Hagen’s conference bio: Continue reading

Proof Is in the Certification –Connie Hayes

Connie Hayes of Healthy Hollow Farms will speak at South Georgia Growing Local 2014,

How do we prove to customers that our products are free of genetically modified ingredients? while many homesteaders choose to be not certified or certified naturally grown, consumers are becoming more concerned with GMOs. We will offer practical tips for insuring consumers, as well as how to on certifications & non-GMO testing.

Here’s her conference bio:

Members of Coastal Organic Growers (COG), Connie & Jimmy Hayes own & operate Healthy Hollow Farms near Stilson, GA, which has been certified organic since 2007. They grow organic peanuts and raise Belted Galloway cattle. They are in the process of setting up an on-farm processing facility for their peanuts. Connie serves on the board of Georgia Organics and has trained under Jeffery Smith with The Institute for Responsible Technology to speak on GMOs.

Come to SOGALO2014 and hear Connie about getting certified organic!

-jsq

Crop rotation for profit

Want better yields and the same or more profit? Stop buying pesticides, rotate more crops over longer periods, and mix in animals. Yet another study confirms this. Oh, and a hundred times less disease-causing pesticides in streams, and presumably also less pesticides in the food going to market.

Mark Bittman wrote for NYTimes today, A Simple Fix for Farming,

The study was done on land owned by Iowa State University called the Marsden Farm. On 22 acres of it, beginning in 2003, researchers set up three plots: one replicated the typical Midwestern cycle of planting corn one year and then soybeans the next, along with its routine mix of chemicals. On another, they planted a three-year cycle that included oats; the third plot added a four-year cycle and alfalfa. The longer rotations also integrated the raising of livestock, whose manure was used as fertilizer.

Figure 3. Multiple indicators of cropping system performance.

The paper’s Figure 3 (above) illustrates that labor increased with crop rotation length, but so did yield, and profit remained the same or better. How can this be? 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