Tag Archives: organic

Whisk pictures and videos

Gretchen buys meat, fresh vegetables, ginger, cereal, chicken, sausage, and bacon at Whisk Organic Market in Valdosta. Also Newman ginger cookies.

She says Gracie says people who come in often don’t understand organic fruits and vegetables aren’t always the most beautiful ones. But they’re tasty!

Here’s a playlist of videos of proprietor Gracie Crane Douglas talking about her store.


Gracie Crane Douglas and Whisk Organic Market, Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 15 Feb 2011
Pictures and Videos by Gretchen Quarterman.

More pictures of Whisk Organic Market in a flickr set.

-jsq

Healthy Moe’s?

Moe’s to get new, fresher menu By Jeremiah McWilliams, AJC, 13 Jan 2011:
The Atlanta-based burrito chain will roll out a new nationwide menu on Jan. 24, top executives told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Coming soon to 420-plus restaurants will be grass-fed sirloin steak with no added hormones. The pork will be hormone-free, steroid-free and grain-fed. Moe’s says its chicken will be hormone-free and not raised in cages, and the tofu will be organic.
Sounds good to me. Why are they doing this?
“The Moe’s consumers have told us this is something they want,” said Paul Damico, president of the brand. “We take that information seriously. They tell us they want fresh, they want sustainable.”
Voting at the checkout counter works!

They have three locations in Valdosta:

1525 Baytree Rd.
Valdosta, GA 31602
(229) 293-0663

3145 North Ashley Street
Valdosta, GA 31602
(229) 333-0649

1500 Patterson Street
Valdosta, GA 31698
229-259-2506

-jsq

PS: And I learned that Moe’s is based in Atlanta.

Fewer pesticides for higher yields: if they can do it in west Africa…

According to the U.N. F.A.O.:
West African farmers have succeeded in cutting the use of toxic pesticides, increasing yields and incomes and diversifying farming systems as a result of an international project promoting sustainable farming practices.

Around 100 000 farmers in Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Senegal are participating in a community-driven training programme (West African Regional Integrated Production and Pest Management (IPPM) Programme) executed by FAO.

Here’s the problem they are addressing: Continue reading →

Cultivating Organic Peanuts

Leeann Drabenstott Culbreath found this YouTube version of a Georgia Farm Monitor report on an Organic Peanut Field Day:

Note the cultivator. The host had to explain what it was and show it several times so people would understand it. Yes, that’s how farmers used to control weeds before pesticide vendor propaganda convinced people of things like “don’t throw dirt on peanuts.” The cultivator throws dirt on weeds next to the peanuts, thus suppressing the weeds and releasing the peanuts.

Gretchen remarks:

Organic growing isn’t a specialty market, it’s a matter of safety. Chemicals sprayed on peanuts, soy beans, cotton and corn are TOXIC. Good management and kindness to the earth can grow crops in a sustainable way. Just say no to chemical spraying.
Peanut growers may not like manual labor, but they’re having to resort to that anyway, because their pesticides have produced the mutant pigweed, which pesticides don’t kill. Spraying more and different herbicides doesn’t do it, either. The only way is physical removal of the pigweed. And a cultivator can do that without manual labor (the report mentions that). Oh yeah: and you don’t have to pay for pesticides to apply with a cultivator.

So, it’s time to stop poisoning our air, water, plants, animals, and people and move away from petrochemical pesticides. Organic is the way to go, and we know how to get there.

-jsq

Suicide in India and How to Stop It

Vandana Shiva writes in Huffington Post about India:
200,000 farmers have ended their lives since 1997.
In just one Indian state:
1593 farmers committed suicide in Chattisgarh in 2007. Before 2000 no farmers suicides are reported in the state.
Why?
In 1998, the World Bank’s structural adjustment policies forced India to open up its seed sector to global corporations like Cargill, Monsanto and Syngenta. The global corporations changed the input economy overnight. Farm saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds, which need fertilizers and pesticides and cannot be saved.

Corporations prevent seed savings through patents and by engineering seeds with non-renewable traits. As a result, poor peasants have to buy new seeds for every planting season and what was traditionally a free resource, available by putting aside a small portion of the crop, becomes a commodity. This new expense increases poverty and leads to indebtness.

And that’s not all: Continue reading →

Farmers Tired of Monsanto?

Tom Laskawy wonders in Grist about Peak Monsanto? Quoting The Organic & Non-GMO Report:
Low commodity soybean prices, attractive premiums, and rising prices for genetically modified soybean seed are leading American farmers to plant more acres of non-GMO soybeans this year.

Representatives with soybean associations, universities, and grain buyers all say that demand for non-GMO soybeans is growing, leading to more non-GMO acres.

It seems Monsanto may be pricing itself out of its own market:
Besides the higher non-GMO premiums, there are other reasons for the increasing acreage of non-GMO this year. One is lower cost. “The Roundup Ready system is not as cheap as it used to be,” Shannon says.

The cost for Monsanto’s Roundup Ready GM soybean seeds has increased from $35 to $50 per bag while the cost for Roundup herbicide has increased from $15 to $50 per gallon. “A lot of farmers are upset with Monsanto,” Shannon says.

And organic demand is having an effect:
The organic food industry is also spurring demand for non-GMO soybeans, says Craig Tomera, production agronomist/crop production manager at Northland Organic Foods. “Organic food companies are switching to non-GMO soybeans until prices for organics drop and the economy improves.”
All that and mutant pigweed that Roundup doesn’t kill. So without even considering externalities (such as mutated frogs and human birth defects), it may be becoming less cost-effective for farmers to buy Monsanto. So sad.

Mutant Pigweed vs. Glysophate-Resistant Corn, Soybeans, and Cotton

It’s a funny thing about monocultures. They’re highly vulnerable to anything that affects that particular variety. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho writes:
The scene is set at harvest time in Arkansas October 2009. Grim-faced farmers and scientists speak from fields infested with giant pigweed plants that can withstand as much glyphosate herbicide as you can afford to douse on them. One farmer spent US$0.5 million in three months trying to clear the monster weeds in vain; they stop combine harvesters and break hand tools. Already, an estimated one million acres of soybean and cotton crops in Arkansas have become infested.

The palmer amaranth or palmer pigweed is the most dreaded weed. It can grow 7-8 feet tall, withstand withering heat and prolonged droughts, produce thousands of seeds and has a root system that drains nutrients away from crops. If left unchecked, it would take over a field in a year.

Meanwhile in North Carolina Perquimans County, farmer and extension worker Paul Smith has just found the offending weed in his field [3], and he too, will have to hire a migrant crew to remove the weed by hand.

Here’s the good news: Continue reading →

Abnormal Chicken Feed

Jeremy Hsu writes that “Organic Feed Shown to Affect Genes in Chickens”:
Two generations of chickens were fed either organically cultivated feed or normal feed.
Um, organic feed is normal feed. It’s that other stuff that’s abnormal. And so are chickens raised on it:
Scientists then sampled RNA, the partner molecule for DNA during gene expression, from the small intestines of five organically fed chickens and five conventionally fed chickens. The results showed significant differences in gene expression among 49 genes.

The top ingredient in chicken feed is corn. The abnormal variety of which mostly comes from seed patented by Forbes’ Company of the Year: Monsanto.

Hm, what about humans raised chickens raised on abnormal feed? What do those 49 chicken genes do, anyway?

…the Dutch researchers note that seven of the 49 genes were involved in helping the chickens synthesize cholesterol, when just 30 genes are involved in the overall cholesterol biosynthesis.
Well, that can’t be important, can it?

Organic Farming Yields often Better Than with Agrochemicals

Catherine Brahic writes in New Scientist that Organic farming could feed the world:

Numerous studies have compared the yields of organic and conventional methods for individual crops and animal products (see 20-year study backs organic farming).

Now, a team of researchers has compiled research from 293 different comparisons into a single study to assess the overall efficiency of the two agricultural systems.

Ivette Perfecto of the University of Michigan in the US and her colleagues found that, in developed countries, organic systems on average produce 92% of the yield produced by conventional agriculture. In developing countries, however, organic systems produce 80% more than conventional farms.

So developing countries don’t need Monsanto to feed themselves after all. Quite the opposite: they can do much better with organic methods.

Perfecto points out that the materials needed for organic farming are more accessible to farmers in poor countries.

Those poor farmers may buy the same seeds as conventional farms use in rich countries, but they cannot afford the fertilisers and pesticides needed for intensive agriculture. However, “organic fertiliser doesn’t cost much – they can produce it on their own farms”, says Perfecto.

And if their crops fail, they can replant, because they can save seeds. And if they don’t all use the same seeds, there’s less chance their crops will all fail at once.

Getting certified as organic is another story.

Organic Farming Promotes Biodiversity

Rob Goldstein writes in Conservation Maven:
A new study finds that organic farming promotes biodiversity compared to conventional agricultural practices. While past research has found similar results, this particular study is groundbreaking in that it detected ecological benefits from organic farming at both a local and a landscape level.

Researchers looked at the uncultivated, semi-natural borders between organic and conventional agricultural fields in Sweden. They found that the borders between organic fields had significantly higher plant species richness and abundance. The researchers hypothesize that this is likely due, at least in part, to the unintentional impact that herbicides can have on non-target species.

This is good news and not just for plants. Increases in plant species diversity likely trickle up the food chain benefiting the insects that eat plants (and the birds that eat insects).

It’s always good to see research validate what we see on the ground (pun intended).