Tag Archives: Agriculture

South Georgia Growing Local for Christmas

How about a registration for South Georgia Growing Local 2014 as a Christmas gift?

Have fun and support the local economy on the Farm Tour (citrus, sheep, olives, and row crops) Friday 24 January 2014, plus also dinner and a movie.

Learn a lot, eat well with the local community at the talks Saturday 25 January 2014, about animals, orchards, gardens, health, farmer experiences, and policy.

You can register using this form.

And you can join events on facebook so everybody can see you’re going.

Here’s the conference flyer for more information: Continue reading →

South Georgia Growing Local 2014

What has about 300 heads and eats really well? A local agriculture conference coming to Lowndes County 24 January 2014.

South Georgia Growing Local 2014 is a local food conference for growers, consumers, homesteaders in South Georgia. Farm Tours 1/24 — Conference 1/25

You can like the facebook page and join events there for the conference itself on January 25th and for the farm tours on January 24th. Agritourism has come to Lowndes County! This is one reason a wide variety of organizations, including two Chambers of Commerce, are supporting this conference: it will fill hotel rooms. Even more, it’s about longterm local economy through growing and buying food right here in south Georgia and north Florida. All that and it tastes good, too!

26 January 2013 in Reidsville Continue reading →

Janisse Ray wins Sustainable Literature Award

The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food, won the prize for Agriculture in the Sustainable Literature Awards, according to the Santa Monica Mirror, 11 September 2013.

From the book:

“If you haven’t heard what’s happening with seeds, let me tell you. They’re disappearing, about like every damn thing else. . . . But I’m not going to talk about anything that’s going to make us feel hopeless, or despairing, because there’s no despair in a seed.”

Other awards for The Seed Underground:

Gold Award of Achievement for Best Book Writing from the Garden Writers Association
Nautilus Book Awards Gold Winner: Green Living
Booklist’s Top Ten Crafts and Gardening Books of 2012
American Society of Journalists and Authors Arlene Eisenberg Award for Writing that Makes a Difference
American Horticultural Society Book Award
Silver Award of Achievement from the Garden Writers Association

From the publisher: Continue reading →

Mutant corn rootworm in Illinois defying Monsanto GMO corn

Mutant pigweed here, mutant rootworm there, pretty soon no Monsanto pest protection anywhere.

Carey Gillam wrote for Reuters 28 August 2013, GMO corn failing to protect fields from pest damage: report

(Reuters)—Researchers in the key corn-growing state of Illinois are finding significant damage from rootworms in farm fields planted in a rotation with a genetically modified corn that is supposed to protect the crop from the pests, according to a new report.

Evidence gathered from fields in two Illinois counties suggests that pest problems are mounting as the rootworms grow ever more resistant to efforts to fight them, including crop rotation combined with use of the biotech corn, according to the report issued by Michael Gray, a professor of crop sciences at the University of Illinois.

Here’s the report, by Michael Gray in U. Illinois Bulletin, 27 August 2012, Severe Corn Rootworm Injury to Bt Hybrids in First-Year Corn Confirmed, Continue reading →

Okra seized by SWAT team

An anonymous tip was the basis for a warrant for a SWAT team to hold small farmers at gunpoint in handcuffs while the cops took their okra and tomatoes and code compliance officers mowed the grass. Is your grass mowed to code? If sometimes not, maybe you’ll agree police militarization has gone too far.

As Monika Diaz put it for WFAA on 12 August 2013, Owner irked after raid on Arlington’s ‘Garden of Eden’.

Shellie Smith, the owner of Arlington’s “Garden of Eden” says police and code enforcement agents “destroyed everything” in a raid on August 2, 2013.

You might be irked, too.

Radley Balko wrote for Huffpo Thursday, Texas Police Hit Organic Farm With Massive SWAT Raid,

Members of the local police raiding party had a search warrant for marijuana plants, which they failed to find at the Garden of Eden farm. But farm owners and residents who live on the property told a Dallas-Ft. Worth NBC station that the real reason for the law enforcement exercise appears to have been code enforcement. The police seized “17 blackberry bushes, 15 okra plants, Continue reading →

Monsanto crops: same as and different from natural crops?

If Monsanto’s crops are indistinguishable from non-GMO, aren’t natural crops prior art invalidating MON’s patents?

Ethan A. Huff wrote for NaturalNews.com 26 June 2013, Monsanto hypocrisy: GMOs supposedly identical to natural crops on safety, but unique for patent enforcement,

The biotechnology industry has pulled a fast one with regards to the legitimacy of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). Straddling both sides of the fence, multinational corporations like Monsanto continually claim that their GM monstrosities are “substantially equivalent” to natural crops when it comes to their safety. And yet at the very same time, this ilk also insists that its products are uniquely different from natural crops when it comes to enforcing its patents, a clearly hypocritical and duplicitous stance that proves the illegitimacy of the entire GMO business model.

On its corporate website, Monsanto clearly expresses its opinion that Continue reading →

USDA approves Non-GMO meat label

Now easier to vote at the checkout counter (or the farmers market), at least for non-GMO meat.

Stephanie Strom wrote for NYTimes 20 June 2013, U.S. Approves a Label for Meat From Animals Fed a Diet Free of Gene-Modified Products,

The Agriculture Department has approved a label for meat and liquid egg products that includes a claim about the absence of genetically engineered products.

It is the first time that the department, which regulates meat and poultry processing, has approved a non-G.M.O. label claim, which attests that meat certified by the Non-GMO Project came from animals that never ate feed containing genetically engineered ingredients like corn, soy and alfalfa.

Seen here.

-jsq