The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Federal Judge Jeffrey White has ruled that the USDA illegally approved Monsanto’s “Roundup-Ready” GMO sugar beets in 2005. Today’s ruling in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco does not ban sale of the crops currently being harvested in Oregon’s Wilmette Valley, but plaintiffs in the case expect to […]

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One of the bigger challenges I have faced with the new hoophouse is organizing the fall planting. The first decision is what to plant. Then when to plant. And whether to plant seeds directly or start seedlings indoors for transplanting.
And what do you do with the summer plantings that are still producing? That patty pan […]

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The Christian Science Monitor recently ran a short article on a new breakthrough in using the natural pesticide jasmonic acid. Jasmonic acid is a natural pesticide that plants release when attacked, but spraying plants with the substance never caught on with farmers because doing so slowed plant growth. Research in England suggests that dipping the […]

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Download the PDF of the Farmer’s Guide to the Conservation Stewardship Program
Because of the short timetable between announcement of the program in August and the end of the federal fiscal year September 30, farmers who want to sign up for the program face a short turnaround time to apply. Eligible applicants who apply now can […]

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If I offered you a slice of this Health Kick tomato at a farmstand in Michigan today, I would bebreaking the law

At a farm marketing meeting in Michigan two years ago, a participant talked movingly about how his mother supported the family during the Depression by selling homemade pies to area restaurants. “If it […]

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Swedish researchers have found that applying human urine is as effective as chemical fertilizers in producing tomatoes - both methods produced four times as many tomatoes as the plants that were not fertilized at all. The study also looked at applying wood ash as a means of reducing the acidity of the soils and adding […]

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In a recent article called GMO crops: Battlefield in “Nature” magazine, reporter Emily Waltz looks at the reaction - some would say overreaction - to research published by Loyola University crop scientist Emma Rosi-Marshall in 2007 in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.” Rosi-Marshall’s two-year laboratory study showed that caddis flies “fed only […]

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Novella Carpenter’s startling new book Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer is often unsettling but always inspiring. A second-generation serious-back-to-the-lander, Novella did not follow her mother’s footsteps into the country but instead decided to grow her own food on an abandoned lot next door to her apartment in the ghetto called GhostTown in […]

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One of the bigger ongoing scandals in ag circles is the continuing failure of the federal government to force Aurora Dairy to comply with organic requirements. The Cornucopia Institute has now filed suit against Aurora’ High Plains dairy near Kersey, Colorado. Part of the problem is Aurora’s failure to pasture its cattle, as required by […]

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Whenever I find something cool that I do not have the time to pursue, I find myself saying, “When fall comes. The latest item on that to-do list is making my own business cards that are also seed packets.
Blogger Autumn Wiggins offers a downloadable template you can use to print cards on leftover grocery sacks […]

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