This week’s episode of the Agroinnovations Podcast features Danielle Nierenberg of Food Tank to talk about the upcoming 1st Annual Food Tank Summit. The Summit will take place in Washington DC on January 21st and 22nd. Although the summit is … Continue reading
Recently the journal Nature published an article of some significance. The article is a meta-analysis entitled “Comparing the yields of organic and conventional agriculture”, and was written by Verena Seufert, Navin Ramankutty, and Jonathan Foley. Meta-analysis is a useful and … Continue reading
According to research conducted at the Biocenter of the University of Würzburg, “…the preventative application of insecticides against aphids does not produce any advantages even though it consumes a lot of time and money.”
Continue readingAs a follow-up to Episode #77 of the Agroinnovations Podcast, an interview with Mark Feedman of CREAR, I have put together this image gallery from my visit to CREAR in 2004.
Continue readingThe clock is still ticking, and collapse continues unabated. Most are oblivious to the true nature of the progression, what it means, why it’s happening, and most importantly, what we should do about it. But the answer is simple, and … Continue reading
Last year an article in the Economist pointed out some of the complexities and contradictions within the organic, Fair Trade, local food movement. The article is well written and provocative, but is it accurate? My attention was particularly drawn to … Continue reading
The Regional Center for the Study of Rural Alternatives (CREAR), lies tucked away in the mountainous community of Rio Limpio, along the Dominican border with Haiti. CREAR is a small technical school created to teach young people and farmers about … Continue reading
Recently, the Cornucopia Institute has issued a white paper on Wal-Mart’s entry into the organic marketplace. The paper accuses the retail behemoth of undercutting the true meaning of the organic label. The charges focus on Wal-Mart’s penchant for industrial producers, … Continue reading
For the past two years I’ve been having this problem with my squash. I’m not a plant pathologist, though I have had some success identifying diseases and insects based on past experience and lots of google searches. However, I have … Continue reading
The world is waking up to the promise of organic. Yes, the statistics are quoted quite often: an annual growth rate of 20%, and anticipated market of $30.7 billion by 2007 in the United States alone. Organic is the fastest … Continue reading
As Rudolf Steiner argued so many decades ago, the 20th century shift towards input intensive agriculture was, and is, troubling in so many ways. According to Steiner, heavy investments in external inputs, like fertilizers and pesticides, are the symptoms of … Continue reading
For the farmer, the transition to organic is one of the most risk-prone and unpredictable times in an already turbulent industry. Candace Page of the Free Press has written an excellent article about organic milk farmer Earl Fournier’s transition from … Continue reading
Gran Cafe is produced by a cooperative of organic coffee farmers in the Dominican Republic. For the past 10 years the cooperative has dedicated itself to developing the techniques and practices necessary for sustainable coffee production. Managing several hundred small … Continue reading