Tag Archives: Agriculture

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7 tips for creating a successful organic vegetable garden almost anywhere

April 30, 2012 by WRC559 1 Comment

(NaturalNews) There is nothing like enjoying the fruits of your labor, literally! The seeds you just planted turn out as little shoots and flowers until they grow into bulbs and finally young little things waiting for their weaning. Picking the tomatoes and leafy greens you’ve been waiting to grow for weeks, can give you a feeling of achievement and pride bordering almost on being a parent.

If you don’t have a green thumb, don’t worry. Gardening, like all skills, requires time to develop. There isn’t even a standard to follow. How you develop your garden will all depend on the resources on hand and how you want develop it.

Gardening as a hobby

Creating a vegetable garden is not rocket science. In fact, producing your own food and feeding your family in the process can be fun and inexpensive way of engaging in food production. It teaches you as well your family the value of self-reliance and food security.
You can indulge in this venture as a hobby and a source of physical activity, which contributes to the maintenance of mental health. As a means of making your own personal contribution, it is a delightful way to earn extra cash. The following are some techniques that you can use in plotting out your organic farming venture:

1. Avoid the use of chemical inputs – In organic farming, no chemical products like herbicides, pesticides or even fertilizers are used. Plants are allowed to grow without the intervention of chemicals allowing for safe handling from farm to plate guaranteeing a nutritious and healthy yield. Moreover, because no chemical inputs are used, it translates to large savings for farmers while keeping the environment safe.

2. Take advantage of the “biological fight”- In nature, agriculture can take advantage of organisms that are natural predators of parasites and are allies to plants. Insects like ladybugs and chrysopes feed on aphids, while frogs and birds eat insects, snails and worms. Welcoming these animals in your garden contribute to a healthy ecosystem that ensure your vegetables are safe from toxins.

3. Preserve hedges and thickets, replant along the borders to offer shelter and food to animals and insects useful to cultivation – To take advantage of the “biological fight,” provide the necessary environment for insects and animals that feed on pests can take shelter and feed. Preserving hedges and thickets encourages these beneficial predators to stay in your property and assist in your efforts at organic farming. This symbiotic mutual relationship can help farmers improve their yield while providing a balanced and sustainable nature-friendly ecosystem.

4. Use cultivation – Cultivating the earth depletes it from nutrients. It is, therefore, necessary to give it fallow period, so it can regain what it had lost after a cropping season. This method allows for simplification of organic farming since it can provide some natural advantages. The interchange of different plants that undermine disease and pests is cost-effective, because it takes away pest control and disease prevention and is normally done as a commercial, agricultural venture that makes for an ideal option to farmers everywhere.

5. Use natural fertilizers -Nature has its own fertilizers. They are either of animal origin such as manure or plant origin, like green manure or organic leftovers from the kitchen. Fertilizers help the soil retain nutrients. Moreover, the introduction of legumes whose roots contain bacteria that convert nitrogen in the air to soluble nitrogen in crop rotation allows for keeping the soil’s fertility intact.

6. Monitor seasonal conditions – Keeping tab on the environment to schedule the right moment to carry out treatments against certain diseases affecting plants can be identified, thus resulting in the use of the necessary products at the right time, saving money, time and effort.

7. Consider using raised beds -This method is advantageous for controlling aching backs and can help keep weeds at bay while saving space for other uses. Raised beds mean you don’t have to walk on your beds, and they are no wider than a couple of meters. You can reach anywhere in the bed without stepping on the soil and once undertaken, the garden won’t require some heavy digging.

Gardening is neither a new concept nor is it a fad. It is the oldest and most practical means of producing food. Organic vegetables are prettier, healthier and tastier than their non-organic cousins. Moreover, it benefits not just you but the environment as well as the animals that live of the land, resulting to a balanced and healthy ecosystem.

Sources for this article:
http://www.foodsecurity.org/UAHealthFactsheet.pdf
http://www.naturalnews.com/033925_organic_farming_crop_yields.html
http://jamesagbogun.hubpages.com
http://en.romaincampagna.it

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7 tips for creating a successful organic vegetable garden almost anywhere, Agriculture, Chemical substance, Fertilizer, Health, Industrial agriculture, Organic farming, Plant, Raised bed gardening

Monsanto ‘Biotechnology Book for Kids’ Caught Brainwashing Children

March 22, 2012 by WRC559 0 Comments

Anthony Gucciardi
Infowars.com
Thursday, March 22, 2012

Facing direct opposition from the public, biotechnology giants like Monsanto and Dow are now making a disturbing attempt to brainwash developing minds into accepting their genetically modified foods using blatant lies and propaganda. In a last ditch effort to potentially sway public opinion, the Council for Biotechnology Information (CBI) has launched the “Biotechnology Basics Activity Book” for kids. With the intent to be used by ‘agriculture and science teachers’, the activity book spreads absurd lies about GMO crops — even going as far as to say that they ‘improve our health’ and ‘help the environment’.

The book can be seen on the organization’s website, and makes it extremely apparent that it is full of misinformation and propaganda that completely ignores scientific research surrounding genetically modified organisms (GMOs). In fact, let’s examine some claims made by this book that serves as an ‘educational’ tool to be used by teachers. The first claim by the activity book is that genetically modified seeds actually grow more food than traditional seeds, and is followed by even more ridiculous statements. The activity book reads:

“Hi Kids! Welcome to the Biotechnology Basics Activity Book. This is an activity book for young people like you about biotechnology — a really neat topic…. You will see that biotechnology is being used to figure out how to: 1) grow more food; 2) help the environment; and 3) grow more nutritious food that improves our health. As you work through the puzzles in this book, you will learn more about biotechnology and all of the wonderful ways it can help people live better lives in a healthier world. Have fun!”

Disproving Monsanto’s Propaganda

According to 900 scientists, GMO crops actually do not grow more food than traditional farming practices. In fact, they are simply not an effective tool to fight starvation in any capacity, thanks to their excessive costs and immense failure to yield crops. Funded by the World Bank and United Nations, an organization was created known as the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD). Made up of 900 scientists and researchers, the group — whose mission was to examine the issue of world hunger — found that genetically modified crops were not a meaningful solution to the problem.

Instead, the group found that the genetically modified seeds were outperformed by traditional “agro-ecological” farming practices. Therefore, to say that biotech seeds and crops produce more food than traditional agriculture is not only scientifically incorrect according to these 900 scientists, but it is an outright lie.

Do GMOs ‘Improve Our Health’?

But what about the claim that GMOs improve our health? It turns out nothing could be farther from the truth. A prominent review of 19 studies examining the safety of GMO crops found that consumption of GMO corn or soybeans can lead to significant organ disruptions in rats and mice – particularly in the liver and kidneys. Of course the negative effects do not end there. Monsanto’s modified biopesticide, known as Bt, has been found to be killing human kidney cells in conjunction with Monsanto’s best-selling herbicide Roundup. That’s right, it exhibits direct toxicity to human cells.

Further adding to the long list of negative health consequences that go against the claim that the biotech inventions ‘improve our health’ , Monsanto’s Roundup ready crops have also been linked to mental illness, obesity, infertility, and DNA damage. Peer-reviewed research shows that Monsanto’s products are far from healthy, and to say that they actually improve our health is truly concerning when you consider the fact that children are reading this information as fact. The biotechnology organization also failed to mention how Monsanto has been caught running slave labor rings, forcing ‘employees’ into illegal working conditions in which they were forced to work 14 hours or more per day on the field. What’s more, the laborers were unable to leave the premises if they expected to ever receive their pay.

‘Helping the Environment’

The next claim that needs addressing is perhaps the most ludicrous of them all. Do Monsanto’s products really help the environment as the book claims? Remember, this is given to teachers as scientific information, not just presented as an opinion. Research has shown that Monsanto’s modified Bt pesticide is actually mutating the very genetic coding of insect life on the planet, creating super resistant ‘mutant’ bugs that are wreaking havoc on farms using Monsanto’s harmful concoctions across the globe. At least 8 populations of insects have developed some form of resistance, with 2 populations resistant to Bt sprays and at least 6 species resistant to Bt crops as a whole.

Perhaps most concerning is the mounting rootworm resistance as a result of Monsanto’s GMO corn usage. A group of 22 academic corn experts recently petitioned the EPA over the extreme danger presented by the crops, urging the EPA to take long awaited action. The experts sent a letter on March 5th to the agency explaining their worries regarding long-term corn production prospects in light of GMO crops failures. If nothing is done, experts worry that the future of agricultural stability is threatened. Experts are also concerned about the mass amount of ‘superweeds’ currently springing up around the globe as a result of Monsanto’s Roundup. These resistant weeds currently cover over 4.5 million hectares in the United States alone, though experts estimate the world-wide land coverage to have reached at least 120 million hectares by 2010. The onset of superweeds is being increasingly documented in Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Europe and South Africa.

The public is not buying the lies regarding Monsanto’s GMO crops, and as a result biotech giants are scrambling to preserve their dwindling role in our society. There is a serious war on for the minds of developing children right now, and it is being waged by government-approved mega corporations who care not for the health of these children but for profits. The claims made within this book are not only scientifically unfounded, but they are seriously dangerous to the health of children and adults alike. This phony book is far from an ‘educational’ resource.

This article first appeared at Natural Society