Category Archives: Agriculture

Native plants in your yard for native wildlife

Nature is not something out there, apart from people. It never was, and nowadays people have built and farmed and clearcut so much that wildlife species from insects to birds are in trouble. In south Georgia people may think that our trees make a lot of wildlife habitat. Actually, most of those trees are planted pine plantations with very limited undergrowth, and in town many yards are deserts of grass plus exotic species that don’t support native birds. Douglas Tallamy offers one solution: turn yards into wildlife habitat by growing native species. Since we are as always remodeling nature, we might as well do it so as to feed the rest of nature and ourselves, and by the way get flood prevention and possibly cleaner water as well, oh, and fewer pesticides to poison ourselves.

Douglas Tallamy makes a clear and compelling case in Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants

…it is not yet too late to save most of the plants and animals that sustain the ecosystems on which we ourselves depend. Second, restoring native plants to most human-dominated landscapes is relatively easy to do.

Some of you may wonder why native species are so important? Don’t we have more deer than we can shoot? Maybe so, but we have far fewer birds of almost every species than we did decades and only a few years ago.

Some may wonder: aren’t exotic species just as good as native ones, if deer and birds can eat them? Actually, no, because many exotic species are poisonous Japanese climbing fern on native Smilax to native wildlife, and because invasive exotics crowd out natives and reduce species diversity. From kudzu to Japanese climbing fern, exotic invasives are bad for wildlife and may also promote erosion and flooding by strangling native vegetation.

All plants are not created equal, particularly in their ability to support wildlife. Most of our native plant-eaters are not able to eat alien plants, and we are replacing native plants with alien species at an alarming rate, especially in the suburban gardens on which our wildlife increasingly depends. My central message is that unless we restore native plants to our suburban ecosystems, the future of biodiversity in the United States is dim.

Tallamy had an epiphany when he and his wife moved to 10 acres in Pennsylvania in 2000:

Continue reading →

Okravore supper

Pork chop, squash, brocolli, all from within 100 miles, and corn and sweet potatoes from our field:

Pork chop, corn, squash, brocolli Sweet potato pie

Pictures by Gretchen Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 2012-11-15.

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Dogs helping pick corn

Brown Dog and Yellow Dog:

Brown Dog and Yellow Dog

Brown Dog and Yellow Dog
John S. Quarterman, Gretchen Quarterman, Brown Dog, Yellow Dog,
Pictures by Gretchen Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 2012-09-28.

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Walking sticks

Two walking sticks:

Two walking sticks

Two walking sticks
John S. Quarterman, Gretchen Quarterman, Brown Dog, Yellow Dog,
Pictures by Gretchen Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 2012-10-05.

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Grasshopper on okra

Green on green:

Green on green

Green on green
John S. Quarterman, Gretchen Quarterman, Brown Dog, Yellow Dog,
Pictures by Gretchen Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 2012-08-05.

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Cane grinding

Terry Davis cut the cane because of frost. He ground the cane, then Mr. Tucker lit the fire under the bowl; Gretchen took pictures. Here's a video playlist:

Cane grinding with Terry Davis and Mr. Tucker in Berrien County, Georgia, 16 November 2012.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms.

And here's a slideshow of still pictures:

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Gretchen with okra

Gretchen the farmer and Gretchen the Rotarian with okra and peppers and Brown Dog and Yellow Dog:

20121031 111820 Gretchen the farmer with okra and peppers and Brown Dog and Yellow Dog Gretchen the Rotarian with okra

Gretchen the farmer with okra and Brown Dog and Yellow Dog

Gretchen the farmer and Rotarian with okra and peppers and Brown Dog and Yellow Dog.
Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 31 October 2012.

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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 →

Pesticide studies hitting a nerve

There’s quite the controversy about that recent study that shows that “inert” ingredients in Roundup are actually toxic. Apparently Dr. Séralini hit a nerve.

Some critics are making up stuff:

EFSA logo “The EFSA requested access to the raw data” —Jon Entine

That turns out not to be true:

No. EFSA has not requested raw data for the study as this information is not required at this stage of the review process.” —EFSA.

Monsanto logo Who previously actually did refuse to release raw data?

Monsanto only released the raw data after a legal challenge from Greenpeace, the Swedish Board of Agriculture and French anti-GM campaigners.

Here’s the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)’s rather vague statement about the recent study and EFSA’s FAQ clarifying that statement.

Here’s a much more substantive response from scientists supporting the Séralini cell toxicity study. The last item of that response:

GMWatch logo CRITICISM: GM has been in the food chain for years in the US. Why isn’t there evidence of people and animals suffering more tumours or dying earlier? Why aren’t Americans “dropping like flies?”

RESPONSE: Most GM crops are fed to farm animals, which have relatively short lives either for meat or dairy production and so there is probably not enough time for tumours to develop.

Americans have been eating GM food (soya, maize) for only a relatively short time in significant quantities in processed foods. So it may be too short a period for long-term effects such as tumour formation to be noticeable. However, we should also note that there is no labelling of GM foods in the USA and no monitoring of the population for ill-effects, so if GM food were causing ill health this would be going undetected.

Ill effects of Roundup went mostly unstudied until scientists in places like Austria (the first study above) and France (the second study) and Canada and Continue reading →