Forums: Organic Lawn Management

Washington - -- Obama administration officials Wednesday outlined a broad array of efforts to elevate organic and local farming to a prominence never seen before at the sprawling U.S. Department of Agriculture. The shift is raising eyebrows among conventional growers and promising federal support to a food movement that began in Northern California and was considered heretical only a few years ago. "Guys, this is your window - use it," USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan told organic farmers, processors and retailers at a conference Wednesday in Washington that was sponsored by Santa Cruz's Organic Farming Research Foundation and the Organic...

GUATEMALA CITY — Some 450,000 pounds of organic coffee sit in a warehouse here, stacked neatly in 132-pound bags. It's some of the world's best coffee, but Gerardo De Leon can't sell it. "This is very high quality and it's organic. But ... the roasters don't want to pay extra these days," says the manager of FEDECOCAGUA, Guatemala's largest growers' cooperative, which represents 20,000 farmers. De Leon is asking $2 per pound for the unroasted coffee, about 50 cents more than the going price. But he says he'll soon have to sell it as conventionally grown coffee, which sells for...

A meteorite that hit the town of Murchison, Australia, hasn't quit giving up its secrets. The Murchison meteorite is one of the most studied space rocks because many pieces were recovered after it was seen breaking up as it fell through the atmosphere in 1969. Approximately 100 kg of the carbonaceous chondrite was recovered. Carbonaceous chondrites are extremely important to scientists as they were formed from material that existed in the solar system's planet-forming disk of gas and dust. They are, quite literally, time capsules holding onto a 4 billion year old record of the birth of our solar system....

According to Gunny G Online: “This astounding control will include the elimination of organic farming by eliminating manure, mandating GMO animal feed, imposing animal drugs, and ordering applications of petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides. Farmers, thus, will be locked not only into the industrialization of once normal and organic farms but into the forced purchase of industry’s products.” HR 2749 creates severe criminal and civil penalties, including prison terms of up to 10 years and/or fines of up to $100,000 for each violation. Does it include judicial review, Congressional oversight, a defined and limited set of penalties and punishments for a...

When I first started writing my upcoming book Organic Manifesto a year ago, I fully expected to have lots of information about how organic foods are healthier for you because they are more nutritious. The more research I did, the more I realized that nutrition is the least of our worries. Aside from the fact that the nutritional content of just about ALL of our food has declined over the past 50 years, we are, as a rule, overfed. And good nutrition is available from many sources in our diet. So I wasn’t surprised in the least when a report...

Shoppers face an array of choices on fruit but little guidance on which type to pick. Expensive organic? Pricey farmers' market? Cheap ones from the grocery store? Cost is certainly important. But there are essential numbers that go beyond the price tag. Which contain the highest levels of pesticides?

You can stop wasting your hard earned money at Democrat Party HQ...uh I mean Whole Paychecks...whoops Whole Foods Market. The following was reported in the Investor's Business Daily: "Organic food is no healthier than ordinary food, a large U.K. study found. Despite a small number of differences in nutrition between organic and conventionally produce food, no evidence of any extra health health benefit was found, London researchers said. The result was the same for studies of meat, dairy, and eggs." IBD 7/30/09 Seems that slapping an organic sticker on something these days is a license to steal. Thankfully I never...

Britain’s first ever green superstore is languishing ever deeper in the red after losing nearly £36million as the recession takes a bite out of organic food sales. The U.S. owners of Whole Foods Market had hoped to open 40 more emporiums across the UK after beginning trading in London in 2007. But, two years on, they have failed to leave the capital after their flagship British shop in up-market Kensington lost an astonishing £35.9million last year.

Farming has always been messy and painful, and bloody and dirty. It still is. This is something the critics of industrial farming never seem to understand. I’m dozing, as I often do on airplanes, but the guy behind me has been broadcasting nonstop for nearly three hours. I finally admit defeat and start some serious eavesdropping. He’s talking about food, damning farming, particularly livestock farming, compensating for his lack of knowledge with volume. I’m so tired of people who wouldn’t visit a doctor who used a stethoscope instead of an MRI demanding that farmers like me use 1930s technology to...