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2017-09/0639/en_head.json.gz/21789 | New generation of West Marin ranchers coming back to the family farm
A NEW GENERATION of ranchers is emerging in West Marin, young adults who are going off to college but returning home to leave their mark on family businesses that have been around for generations.One hundred years ago there were few career options for young people who grew up on a ranch. It was where they stayed to tend to animals and grow crops and eventually take over the family operation.Today options abound, but more young people are coming back home and finding fulfilling work on the farm."Most of the friends that are my age would never want to be stuck in Tomales," said 24-year-old Marissa Thornton, who came back to her family's ranch after graduating from Chico State University with a degree in animal science in 2010. "They would rather be in a city or traveling. In that way I am unique, I decided at a young age to be here and do this now. When I'm here I am the most satisfied."At her family's farm she works with her father helping raise beef and sheep on land that has been ranched for 150 years.But Thornton — the sixth generation of her family to live in West Marin — has her own ideas beyond traditional agriculture.She has free-range chickens and sells the eggs at a bakery in Petaluma under the name Marshall Home Ranch. Thornton also has bought eight dairy sheep and will start milking them in the spring. She will sell milk to a cheese maker initially, but has plans to make her own cheese."I love being outside. I could never have a job where I had to be inside," she said, looking over a hillside dotted with trees at the ranch. "I love animals and getting my hands dirty. In the long term I couldn't work for someone else, so this gives me the opportunity to be an entrepreneur and start a business, it's perfect."Like other young ranchers, Thornton is paying close attention to emerging niche markets that focus on locally produced and organic goods. "The market has changed so much, people are willing to pay more for local products," she said. "It didn't used to be that way when I was younger. The operations are more sustainable and in Marin that is important. It's a higher quality, it is hand-crafted. It's a good place to be if you want to be in agriculture. People want to support their local farmers."Marin agriculture is continuing to diversify its products. In the past 10 years the amount of locally produced products sold directly to consumers annually has doubled from $600,000 to $1.2 million, according to the University of California farm extension in Marin. Ten years ago the county had two local cheese makers, today there are nine. Marin also has 20 livestock producers growing for the local organic and grass-fed beef markets. Ten years ago there was none."In this area, organic is where it is going to go," said Jarrod Mendoza, 26, who produces organic milk on his ranch near the tip of the Point Reyes Peninsula on the historic "B" ranch. "It's hard for conventional dairies because you have to compete with huge operations."Mendoza, 26, also graduated from Chico State, but with a degree in criminal justice."My dad wanted us to get degrees in something else in case the industry went to hell," he said with a smile. "I thought about being in law enforcement, but once I got a sense for what they deal with, it made this job seem easy."In 2010 he came back to start his business, the Double M Dairy, and is the fourth generation of Mendozas to work the land in Point Reyes. He now has 210 cows in production and produces about 1,400 gallons of organic milk daily that find their way into stores such as Trader Joe's. He is contemplating growing crops and may even try cheese at some point."I like being able to call the shots and use some of my own ideas," he said. "Some things work, some things don't, but it's nice to try new approaches. It's nice being your own boss," Mendoza said, standing in front of his modest home with young cows milling nearby behind a fence. While keeping the family ranching business going was important to him, Mendoza said he will let his children do as they see fit."I didn't want to be the last guy on the chain, but with my kids, I will offer it to them, but they have to want to do it like I do. I don't want to guilt trip them into it," he said.Ellie Rilla, a member of the Marin Agricultural Land Trust Board of Directors who served as Marin's University of California farm adviser for 22 years, is pleased to see the transition to the new generation."We used to call them our next generation, but that time has arrived," she said.With the average age of a rancher at almost 60, many areas of the country are expecting hard transitions because the next generation is not staying, Rilla said. "We are blessed in Marin to have fourth- and fifth-generation families who have a strong bond and stewardship to their land and returning to work the ranch," she said. "They go away to college and return with degrees in animal science, dairy production, or business ready to dig in."Up the road in Valley Ford several younger ranchers and farmers from North Bay counties formed the Valley Ford Young Farmers Association to support one another and market their products. The interest in organic, cheese and other local markets is making agriculture more attractive for young people, Rilla said."Confidence, enthusiasm and willingness to take new risks in new markets comes when you see other Marin producers trying and succeeding," she said. "There's a sort of snowball effect."She noted MALT helps when it buys development rights from ranchers. That keeps the land free of sprawl and provides dollars to agriculture to support new endeavors.Amanda Moretti, 18, a third-generation dairy farmer from Tomales, spent this summer working the fertile West Marin loam on her family's ranch. Now she is back at Cornell University studying animal science with great plans for the future."Once I am finished with my schooling, I hope to work in the agriculture industry, specifically dairy industry, as a marketing director, financial manager or some other position within the business sector," she said. "Eventually, I plan to take over my family's dairy in order to continue our family tradition of dairying in the North Bay."While interested in the business end of agriculture, Moretti enjoys day-to-day chores such as feeding baby calves, as well as spending time outside and working side-by-side with her family. "My ultimate goal to settle in the rolling hills of Marin County, where I can spend time with my family and our cows," she said.Contact Mark Prado via email at [email protected] | 农业 |
2017-09/0639/en_head.json.gz/24180 | Scrapping regulations calls for discretion Feb 10, 2017 Stronger safety net is goal for National Cotton Council Jan 27, 2017 Oklahoma Peanut Expo March 23 in Altus Feb 08, 2017 Cattle industry 'very concerned' about Trump's pledge to renegotiate NAFTA Feb 06, 2017 Few days to review 2006 tax scenarios
Caroline Booth Lara | Dec 18, 2006
Though time is running short, agricultural producers do have a few weeks left to review their financial situations and identify ways to reduce their 2006 tax bills. The 2006 tax system is largely similar to last year’s, except for a few minor benefits that expired at the end of 2005. “There aren’t any surprises for 2006 taxes,” says Jose Pena, economist with Texas Cooperative Extension in Uvalde. “Ninety-nine percent of the benefits that expired, like the research and experimentation credit and the welfare-to-work credit, don’t apply to farmers.” The war in Iraq, the huge federal deficit and controversy over the last tax package have caused a stalemate in Congress as far as new tax laws go, Pena explains. Pena says the Section 179 expensing option for depreciable property used in business was increased to $108,000 to account for inflation. This can be used on computers, office furniture, equipment and vehicles, along with other tangible business property. “The SUV ‘loophole’ has been eliminated, so that means the expensing option is capped at $25,000 for SUVs with loaded weights between 6,000 and 14,000 pounds,” Pena says. The full expensing deduction is available for heavy non-SUVs, providing they are equipped with a cargo area of at least 6 feet in interior length and have an integral enclosure that fully encloses the driver’s compartment. Also producers should be aware of some standing provisions covering drought-related livestock sales, says Dan Childs, an agricultural economist at the Noble Foundation in Ardmore, Okla. “The tax implications of cattle sales caused by a drought are fairly straight-forward,” Childs says. “Two different tax treatments apply.” The first option covers draft, breeding or dairy animals. If a producer sells more animals than normal, he or she can elect not to recognize any gain if they use proceeds to purchase replacement livestock within two years from the end of the tax year in which the sale takes place. “The time period is extended to four years when the sale of animals in excess of normal was in a natural-disaster-designated area,” Childs says. The new livestock purchased must be used for the same purpose as those sold. Only the additional animals sold in excess of normal sales can be replaced without recognition of gain. The entire sales proceeds must be reinvested in at least the same number of animals as sold for no gain to be recognized. If the sales proceeds are reinvested in exactly the same number of animals, then the new animals will have the same basis as the animals sold. If a lesser amount than the sales proceeds is invested, a portion of the gain will need to be recognized. If more than the sales proceeds is invested, then the difference is added to the old basis to establish the new basis. “A producer can choose not to recognize the gain from the sale of animals in excess of the normal amount of sales by attaching a statement with the required information to their tax return,” Childs says. The second option applies to all livestock and allows for a one-year postponement of reporting the sales proceeds from livestock sold due to drought in excess of the number ordinarily sold. The animals do not have to be replaced as in the first option. Reporting sales proceeds is simply deferred for one year. However, several requirements must be met: a producer’s principal business must be farming; a producer must use the cash method of accounting; a producer must show that the livestock would normally have been sold in the following year; and the weather-related conditions that caused an area to be declared eligible for federal assistance must have caused the sale of livestock. “Again, a document containing the necessary information must be attached to a producer’s tax return indicating that an election has been made to defer the gain,” Childs says. | 农业 |
2017-09/0639/en_head.json.gz/25071 | Green Subsidies: India's Unfortunate Lesson
One of the focal points of the President's plan for reviving the US economy is federal subsidies for "green manufacturing" and "clean energy." Now, I've already laid out a lot of serious problems with such plans - the most important of which is America's unblemished record of utter incompetence when it comes to subsidizing products and companies to further vague environmental objectives. But another serious problem with green (and, well, pretty much all other) subsidies is the fact that they almost always lead to lots of harmful unintended consequences.
From today's Wall Street Journal comes an absolutely perfect (and sad) example in India of just how bad the unintended consequences of "green subsidies" can get:
India has been providing farmers with heavily subsidized fertilizer for more than three decades. The overuse of one type—urea—is so degrading the soil that yields on some crops are falling and import levels are rising. So are food prices, which jumped 19% last year. The country now produces less rice per hectare than its far poorer neighbors: Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
Agriculture's decline is emerging as one of the hottest political issues in the world's biggest democracy.
On Thursday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's cabinet announced that India would adopt a new subsidy program in April, hoping to replenish the soil by giving farmers incentives to use a better mix of nutrients. But in a major compromise, the government left in place the old subsidy on urea—meaning farmers will still have a big incentive to use too much of it....
Agriculture has lagged behind other industries such as manufacturing and services, posting less than 2% growth in the latest reports on gross domestic product. And double-digit food inflation and declining yields spell less money in the pockets of rural Indians.
India spends almost twice as much on food imports today as it did in 2002, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. Wheat imports hit 1.7 million tons in 2008, up from about 1,300 tons in 2002. Food prices rose 19% last year....
Behind the worsening picture is the government's agricultural policy. In an effort to boost food production, win farmer votes and encourage the domestic fertilizer industry, the government has increased its subsidy of urea over the years, and now pays about half of the domestic industry's cost of production.
Mr. Singh's government, recognizing the policy failure, announced a year ago that it intended to drop the existing subsidy system in favor of a new plan. But allowing urea's price to increase significantly would almost certainly trigger protests in rural India, which contains 70% of the electorate, political observers say.
The ministers of fertilizers and agriculture each declined requests for interviews....
Farmers spread the rice-size urea granules by hand or from tractors. They pay so little for it that in some areas they use many times the amount recommended by scientists, throwing off the chemistry of the soil, according to multiple studies by Indian agricultural experts.
Like humans, plants need balanced diets to thrive. Too much urea oversaturates plants with nitrogen without replenishing other nutrients that are vitally important, including phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, magnesium and calcium.
The government has subsidized other fertilizers besides urea. In budget crunches, subsidies on those fertilizers have been reduced or cut, but urea's subsidy has survived. That's because urea manufacturers form a powerful lobby, and farmers are most heavily reliant on this fertilizer, making it a political hot potato to raise the price.
As the soil's fertility has declined, farmers under pressure to increase output have spread even more urea on their land....Yikes. Be sure to read the whole thing here. What's most interesting is the vicious cycle that developed in India because of the original, and relatively small, fertilizer subsidy program that started over 40 years ago. The first fertilizer subsidies produced a powerful and bloated industry and millions of dependent farmers. With all those new companies and farmers, more subsidies followed, and the cost of the subsidy program exploded - it was about $640 million in 1976 but $20 billion last year. When the government sought to reduce or eliminate the subsidy, the industry and farmers fiercely protested and, with the help of their favorite legislators, forced the government to "compromise" in the early 1990s and only subsidize one kind of fertilizer - urea. That decision led to even more urea production and use, and not only started harming crop yields, but also destroyed domestic manufacturers of competitive fertilizers like phosphorous. So the government decided to subsidize those fertilizers, but the subsidy, bound by budget constraints, was too small and failed to jumpstart production of urea alternatives, thus wasting millions of taxpayer dollars and doing nothing to solve the government-caused problem. In the end, the urea subsidy remains (mostly) in place, state budgets are buckling, crops are suffering immensely, and both the domestic fertilizer and agriculture industries are proving increasingly unprofitable (thus, imports are increasing rapidly to fill the void). Oh, and all that fertilizer overuse has severely tainted the local water supply around many farming communities. All in all, it's an abject disaster bordering on national tragedy. All because of a few million dollars in "green" government fertilizer subsidies.
But I'm sure that the billions and billions of dollars that President Obama wants to provide to his favorite "green" companies won't have any of these nasty unintended consequences. I mean, all of our other forays into the environmental market have worked out so gosh darn well, right?
Riiiiiiiight.
Subsidies,
Surely subsidies is a problem. But more than that the recent jump in agri prices in India is the forward trading of agri produts by the traders manipulating on the commodity exchange. Surely there is a clear nexus between the trading community as well as the politicians supporting the same. Earlier it was in the hand of the few, now it is legalized and rampant.
RickRussellTX
I don't think there is any evidence to indicate that commodities trading causes jumps in prices that would not have occurred due to other problems. Indeed, with a few rare exceptions (e.g. speculative hoarding, like you saw in the rice market a couple of years ago), commodities markets with their futures and options contracts reduce volatility by allowing both buyers and sellers to hedge against sudden changes in supply due to non-economic factors like weather or pests.It's an economic reality that "the trading community" will never be able to sell a product for more than what someone is willing to pay for it, and they will never be able to buy a product for less than what someone is willing to price it. Consequently, their long-run affect on commodities prices must be zero; the most they can do is shift variations in time and arbitrage small fractions off the trading system -- a small price to pay for a more efficient, less volatile commodities market. | 农业 |
2017-09/0639/en_head.json.gz/25364 | Global Farmer Network
By: Global Farmer Network
The Global Farmer Network are farmers committed to inserting their voice and perspective in the global dialogue regarding food and nutritional security.
Elected For the Common Good
In his victory speech on Election Night, Barack Obama said that America has “sent a message to the world.”
He was talking about national unity. A week ago, we were red Republicans and blue Democrats. Today we’re red, white, and blue Americans. President-elect Obama is right about that.
We need to send another message to the world as well--one that says the United States won’t embrace the specter of protectionism, even in a time of economic anxiety. Cracking down on freer trade and trade agreements will only make our problems worse.
Throughout the presidential campaign, Obama said that our country must improve its image abroad. Rightly or wrongly, too many foreigners see the United States as a menace rather than a force for good. During his speech in Berlin this summer, Obama recognized this challenge: “In Europe, the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world, rather than a force to help make it right, has become all too common.”
The anti-Americans will probably always be with us, from the snobbish salons of Paris to the terror-loving madrassas of Pakistan. But surely we can do better in the eyes of the world. One of the fundamental promises of Obama’s candidacy is that under his leadership, we will. As he said at the Democratic convention in August, “just as we keep our promise to the next generation here at home, so must we keep America’s promise abroad.”
Protectionism is a sure-fire way to blow it. It doesn’t keep a promise abroad. Instead, protectionism breaks a promise--a promise of American leadership on global economic issues.
Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has fought for trade liberalization around the planet, to the benefit of ordinary people everywhere. Times may be tough right now, but on any objective scale that takes in the full sweep of history, we’ve never been more prosperous. Just a generation ago, there were no high-speed web connections, cell phones, or iPods. There were no GPS devices in minivans or combines. There was no agricultural biotechnology, keeping down our costs and boosting our yields so that farmers can continue to feed a hungry world.
The ability to buy and sell goods and services across borders has underwritten much of this progress. Economic isolationism would threaten these gains--especially the ones that we still hope to achieve for the next generation.
Earlier this year, during the Democratic primaries, Obama suggested that the United States “renegotiate” or even “opt-out” of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Talk about breaking a promise!
The good news is that a little while later, Obama seemed to retreat from these rash comments. The guy with the famously cool temperament more or less admitted that his rhetoric had turned a little hot during the pressures of a high-stakes campaign.
“I believe in free trade,” he said in June. “As somebody who lived overseas, who has family overseas, I’ve seen what’s happened in terms of rising living standards around the globe. And that’s a good thing for America, it’s good for our national security.”
Now this was a change I could believe in!
Our economy is in rough shape at the moment, and not everybody believes in free trade. Some public officials in Washington won’t resist the deadly allure of protectionism. Special interests will plead with them to close borders and raise tariffs. It won’t matter to them that this will hurt people whose jobs are tied to the export market. It won’t matter to them that it will inflate consumer prices for everyone. It won’t matter to them that the world will wonder why America is turning inward.
The very opposite of a special interest, after all, is the common good.
So as much as I’d like to urge Obama to push through the Bush administration’s sensible free-trade agreements with Colombia and South Korea, and to ask Congress to renew Trade Promotion Authority, my first request of our next president is a simple one.
When it comes to trade policy, for the sake of our economy here at home and America’s image abroad: Start by doing no harm.
Dean Kleckner, an Iowa farmer, chairs Truth About Trade & Technology. www.truthabouttrade.org
Matt Bogard
Actually, I think the useful idiots are the ones in denial of basic economic truths, who in the face of evidence, are not shaken in their anticapitalist dogma, trade more freedom for more government, because it feels so good.
On another note, Mr. Kleckner with regard to sensible free trade, did you see Greg Mankiw's article in the times. If not check out his blog post at : http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2008/11/memo-to-potus-elect.html
I think you will enjoy it. Best. Anonymous
you sir are just another useful idiot | 农业 |
2017-09/0639/en_head.json.gz/25697 | Just peachy enough
Rosa Parra, 9, helps fill a bin of an early variety of local peach at the Mt. Garfield Fruits and Vegetables stand near Palisade. The stand enjoyed brisk business this past weekend after cherries, apricots — and peaches — arrived.
It’s no secret: We love peaches. So when a cruel cold snap this spring wiped out many of this year’s early peaches, folks took notice. As other more cold-hardy peach varieties begin to hit roadside market stands and farmers markets in the next couple weeks, some growers hope those sales can make up for a slow start to the fruit and vegetable selling season.
Bruce Herman of Herman Produce, 753 Elberta Ave. in Palisade, said their cotton-candy pink stand just off Interstate 70 hasn’t yet received the influx of visitors as in years past. While they have a limited amount of early peaches, the good news is there will be plenty of the luscious fruits for locals in coming weeks. The company is not selling peaches to wholesale distributors this year because of the shortages.
“We have high hopes. It’s going to be a better year than we thought,” he said. “We’ll have a good local crop here in a couple weeks.” The dozens of fruit and veggie stands around the Grand Valley rely on the draw from peaches and tomatoes to get folks in the door. Once there, buyers tend to shop around for other fruits and veggies. It also isn’t helpful that most of area’s cherries and apricots succumbed to the frost. Those fruits are usually in abundance this time of year.
However, some local stands feature those treats after purchasing them from orchards in areas around Delta and Paonia.
On Saturday, Mt. Garfield Fruit and Vegetable Stand, 3371 Front St., finally saw a healthy dose of customers come through. The stand has cherries and apricots and a limited selection of Paul Friday peaches, an early variety. “Everything’s late because of the weather,” said a woman who was working there. “I was getting worried,” she added, about a lack of customers recently.
Alida Helmer of Alida’s Fruits, 3402 C 1/2 Road, said the stand had some early peaches earlier this week, but sold out. Tomatoes should be for sale there this week.
“I think it’s been a littler slower, but I’ve had a lot of people stop here today,” she said from her stand. “I can’t say that we’ve been swamped.” Lee DeVries of DeVries Farm Market, 31 1/2 C Road, confirmed that most people first seek peaches when out shopping for local produce. They will have them soon.
“That is the draw,” DeVries said. “Then they pick up other stuff.” | 农业 |
2017-09/0640/en_head.json.gz/768 | You are hereHome » The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of...
The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food (Hardcover)
By Dan Barber $29.95 Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
" E]ngaging, funny and delicious... I would call this The Omnivore's Dilemma 2.0." --Chicago Tribune At the heart of today's optimistic farm-to-table food culture is a dark secret: the local food movement has failed to change how we eat. It has also offered a false promise for the future of food. Our concern over factory farms and chemically grown crops might have sparked a social movement, but chef Dan Barber, recently showcased on Netflix's Chef's Table, reveals that even the most enlightened eating of today is ultimately detrimental to the environment and to individual health. And it doesn't involve truly delicious food. Based on ten years of surveying farming communities around the world, Barber's The Third Plate offers a radical new way of thinking about food that will heal the land and taste good, too. The Third Plate is grounded in the history of American cuisine over the last two centuries. Traditionally, we have dined on the "first plate," a classic meal centered on a large cut of meat with few vegetables. Thankfully, that's become largely passe. The farm-to-table movement has championed the "second plate," where the meat is from free-range animals and the vegetables are locally sourced. It's better-tasting, and better for the planet, but the second plate's architecture is identical to that of the first. It, too, is damaging--disrupting the ecological balances of the planet, causing soil depletion and nutrient loss--and in the end it isn't a sustainable way to farm or eat. The solution, explains Barber, lies in the "third plate" an integrated system of vegetable, grain, and livestock production that is fully supported--in fact, dictated--by what we choose to cook for dinner. The third plate is where good farming and good food intersect. While the third plate is a novelty in America, Barber demonstrates that this way of eating is rooted in worldwide tradition. He explores the time-honored farming practices of the southern Spanish dehesa, a region producing high-grade olives, acorns, cork, wool, and the renowned jamon iberico. Off the Straits of Gibraltar, Barber investigates the future of seafood through a revolutionary aquaculture operation and an ancient tuna-fishing ritual. In upstate New York, Barber learns from a flourishing mixed-crop farm whose innovative organic practices have revived the land and resurrected an industry. And in Washington State he works with cutting-edge seedsmen developing new varieties of grain in collaboration with local bakers, millers, and malt makers. Drawing on the wisdom and experience of chefs and farmers from around the world, Barber builds a dazzling panorama of ethical and flavorful eating destined to refashion Americans' deepest beliefs about food. A vivid and profound work that takes readers into the kitchens and fields revolutionizing the way we eat, The Third Plate redefines nutrition, agriculture, and taste for the twenty-first century. The Third Plate charts a bright path forward for eaters and chefs alike, daring everyone to imagine a future for our national cuisine that is as sustainable as it is delicious. The Wall Street Journal " F]un to read, a lively mix of food history, environmental philosophy and restaurant lore... an important and exciting addition to the sustainability discussion." The Atlantic "When The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan's now-classic 2006 work, questioned the logic of our nation's food system, "local" and "organic" weren't ubiquitous the way they are today. Embracing Pollan's iconoclasm, but applying it to the updated food landscape of 2014, The Third Plate reconsiders fundamental assumptions of the movement Pollan's book helped to spark. In four sections--"Soil," "Land, "Sea," and "Seed"--The Third Plate outlines how his pursuit of intense flavor repeatedly forced him to look beyond individual ingredients at a region's broader story--and demonstrates how land, communities, and taste benefit when ecology informs the way we source, cook, and eat. About the Author
DAN BARBER is the executive chef of Blue Hill, a restaurant in Manhattan s West Village, and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, located within the nonprofit farm Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture. His opinions on food and agricultural policy have appeared in The New York Times, along with many other publications, and he was recently showcased on Netflix'sChef's Table. Barber has received multiple James Beard awards, including Best Chef: New York City (2006) and the country s Outstanding Chef (2009). In 2009 he was named one of Time magazine s 100 most influential people in the world. @DanBarber" Product Details
Related Editions (all) Kobo eBook (May 20th, 2014): $13.99
Compact Disc (May 20th, 2014): $45.00 | 农业 |
2017-09/0640/en_head.json.gz/1203 | Ideas shared for bridging urban-rural divide
Whether the topic is use of technology in food production, how to insure safe food or whether climate change is real, it's no secret that rural residents often see the issues much differently than their urban counterparts.
By Candace KrebsContributing Writer
OKLAHOMA CITY — Whether the topic is use of technology in food production, how to insure safe food or whether climate change is real, it's no secret that rural residents often see the issues much differently than their urban counterparts."We in agriculture are part of the Red State-Blue State polarization going on right now," said Bruce Knight, a longtime Washington insider and legislative consultant who remains involved in a family farming operation in South Dakota.Knight was one of multiple speakers at the International Leadership Alumni Conference, a four-day gathering of approximately 75 ag leadership graduates from around the U.S. and Canada, who addressed the growing urban-rural rift.Knight spoke about a Farm Bill that is in the third year of a fractious reauthorization process — which he said could easily result in another one-year extension of current policy — but he urged farm leaders to step back and take a wider view."Are we looking ahead to the next generation chBallenges?" Knight asked. "Farm Bills are written looking in the rear-view mirror. We are probably headed for a much smaller Farm Bill than we have today. It's probably time to move beyond the fight over reallocating funds to rebuilding our infrastructure. It's time to shift the focus from price security to risk management and long-term research investment."Agriculture needs to pursue what he called "sustainable intensification" in order to meet the needs of the future."We are now farming by the inch instead of by the acre," he said. He pointed to the Bipartisan Policy Center, a legislative consultancy formed by former Senators Bob Dole of Kansas and Tom Daschle of South Dakota, as a rare example of common sense in Washington. They "look at the bigger picture and routinely tackle the tough issues," such as how to respond proactively to the threat of climate change, he said. Tough talk from Kevin Murphy, the Kansas City-based founder of Food Chain Communications and publisher of a website called Truthinfood.org, seemed to strike a cord with many in the audience.Murphy contends that agriculturalists are losing today's public relations battle because they have been reluctant to enter into the debate over religion, ethics and morality."I've been on lots of college campuses, and I'm not optimistic," Murphy said. "I have been really depressed by agriculture's response to the accusations that we are unethical. The image people have of the character of farmers is rapidly eroding. The activist groups are selling compassion, and that's what we're up against."It's gotten to the point where he said he feels judged if he buys a bag of cheap dog food.Murphy was not a fan of the much-promoted "Food Dialogues" undertaken by U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance, a public relations collaboration of various commodity groups and leading agribusinesses. He called it "too middle of the road" and "too politically correct" and questioned the effectiveness of the group's recent "listening tour.""We're wasting these dollars and that just means we're losing faster," he said.Both he and Knight said one possible solution might lie in transforming commodity check-off programs to make them more flexible.Check-off campaigns need to mature beyond bare bones messaging, Murphy suggested."We're still stuck in generating awareness," he said of check-off promotions. "The next step we have to get to is education. We've got to get more detailed."Knight agreed that some older check-off programs were due for reform, since they impose numerous restrictions on how funds can be spent. "We need to look at all these little rules and overhaul them," he said. Jayson Lusk, a food economist at Oklahoma State University who grew up on a hardscrabble farm in West Texas, said meaningful consumer research is needed to address topics like the true economics and sustainability of locally grown food."We have to couple our concerns with evidence," he said.Lusk lays out his case against knee-jerk reactions to modern food production in a new book called "The Food Police: A Well-Fed Manifesto About the Politics of Your Plate." His ideas have been published on mainstream media sites such as the Wall Street Journal and Time.com. While many popular books and films offer doom and gloom about the food industry, Lusk said modern technologies represent to him "the triumph of human ingenuity over nature's indifference to us."Concerns of the "cultural elitists" are full of contradictions, he added. At the same time critics were saying corn was too cheap, headlines around the world were decrying rising food prices as a "crisis" devastating to the world's poorest."There's a lot of good food and good agriculture out there, and I think it's important to recognize that," Lusk said. "Trade is beneficial. It has made us very wealthy over time."Farms offer toursSeveral farmers in the Oklahoma City area hosted tours during the conference.Among them was Virgil Slagell, who participated in the Oklahoma Ag Leadership Program back in the mid-1980s. At that time, at least 75 percent of his fellow class members were engaged in production agriculture, he said, and only a handful represented related industries and associations.Today that ratio is reversed."There's starting to be so few of us in production ag that we just don't seem to matter anymore," he said.Slagell and his crew at Triple S Farms were in the middle of watermelon harvest. He said his farm is subjected to four separate audits every year, requiring one employee to handle paperwork full-time."They love paper," he said of the auditors. "If you don't document it, it didn't happen."Considering all that, it pains him to go to the grocery store and see how his produce is handled after it leaves the farm, he added."They set out a bin of watermelons and everybody who comes by touches everything," he said. "After it leaves here, it's out of our hands. We don't have any control over kitchen hygiene. But if they trace something back to our farm, we're broke, whether it's our fault or not."Increased regulation and difficulty hiring needed labor are two of the main factors hurting production agriculture, he and other host farmers said. Slagell's neighbor, Dean Smith, who grows specialty peppers that are sold to spice extraction companies in addition to other crops, said offering tours was the best way he knew to bridge the urban-rural divide. He typically hosts two or three groups a year, including visitors from the local technical school that get a chance to drive his auto-steer tractors."I just like to show them that farmers are real people," Smith said. | 农业 |
2017-09/0640/en_head.json.gz/1377 | Randolph Center Fish Farm A ‘Low Profile Operation’ Tweet
People / Jul. 9, 2009 12:00am EDT
By Martha Slater Randolph Center Fish Farm
A ‘Low Profile Operation’
By Martha Slater Louis Warlick gets ready to feed some of his mature trout in one of many ponds on his Randolph Center property. (Herald / Tim Calabro)
If you want to hear an interesting fish story, just ask Louis Warlick of Peak Pond Farm in Randolph Center, who knows a great deal about the care and feeding of freshwater fish.
Warlick’s fish farm, which he and his wife, Patty Akley-Warlick, started 25 years ago, is the oldest privately-owned fish hatchery in the state. Accompanied by his faithful pair of 12-year-old chocolate labs, Kobe and Jack, Warlick recently gave the Herald a tour of his operation. Warlick does most of the work on the fish farm by himself, with occasional help from family and friends. He buys eggs for brook and rainbow trout from the state in September, and hatches the eggs in the middle of the winter.
As he leads his visitors through the fields across from his house, Warlick noted that he goes to the hatchery in Salisbury and brings the eggs home in jars of water, then transfers them to his hatching troughs, where a gravity-flow system, fed by several natural springs and ponds, supplies water to the long narrow metal troughs and a number of circular black plastic rearing tanks, all housed in a structure that resembles a greenhouse. As with human babies, fish babies have to be fed often, and Warlick explained that a fish’s appetite depends upon the temperature of the water. They like it best between 50-60 degrees.
“If the water’s too cold, it slows their metabolism way down and they don’t want to eat,” he said. Right now, he’s feeding them tiny brown pellets that contain vitamin-enriched fish meal, grain, proteins, and fat. “The feed we use is the same thing used to feed the salmon you buy at the store,” he added.
One tub will hold 900-1,000 fingerlings, which is the sixth of seven steps in the fish growth cycle. The eggs become sac fry, fry, swim up fry, and advanced fry, before attaining fingerling status, and ending up as stocking fish. He sells the fish to be stocked in ponds by fish and game clubs and for fishing derbies, primarily in the spring, which is his busiest season. The fish, which can grow to an average of 6-8 inches in length in a year, are sold at many stages. Orders are filled for a certain size and number of fish.
“With small fish, the typical order is for 100-200 fish; with bigger ones, it’s 50-100,” Warlick explained, “although I’ve had orders of anywhere from five to 1,000 fish at a time.” Warlick’s operation has to be licensed by the state and inspected annually by the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife, under an inspection program funded by the state agriculture department.
The fish operation takes up about 5-6 acres of Warlick’s 41-acre farm. He bought the property 28 years ago, and he and his wife raised their three daughters there. “Originally, we had a pick-your-own strawberries operation here and after I dug a pond to irrigate the berries, I was told by a soil conservation engineer that I had more water than the Pennsylvania state hatchery,” Warlick recalled. “My old friend, Hank Hewitt, used to belong to the Sunny Brook Trout Farm, a club that was open to the public, and he suggested that I get some fish and put them in the water troughs I had for the draft horses. From there, I borrowed some money, dug ponds, and learned as I went along. Jack Hardy, who owned a hatchery in Plainfield, helped me by taking me around to a lot of hatcheries, and was very generous with his time. I read a lot on the subject for the first four or five years, and mostly just sold fish to Jack.”
In addition to being a fish farmer, Warlick works as a carpenter and property caretaker. The work on the fish farm slows down in the winter, but he explained that, “the troughs don’t freeze because the water comes out of the ground warm enough and keeps moving.” Of course, he notes, he does have to keep paths open and clear snow off the top of the greenhouse, “so, at midnight when it’s snowing, I’m down here shoveling!” His plans for next year include putting a new plastic roof on the greenhouse and rearranging the tank setup.
Warlick, who has passed along the help he received by mentoring several others who have started hatchery businesses, says that one of the secrets to his success is that “I’m blessed with really good quality water for raising fish. It’s all gravity-flow spring water—as good as it can get.”
Besides, he adds, “I have no electricity, no heat and no employees to pay—that’s how we’ve survived so long. We’re a low-profile operation!” | 农业 |
2017-09/0640/en_head.json.gz/1421 | Can Anyone Grow Their Own Food ‘From the Ground Up’?
[25 September 2013]
By Catherine Ramsdell
When Jeanne Nolan was just a teenager, she left her parents’ comfortable home and lifestyle and ended up living on a commune (cult?) called Zendik Farm. Throughout From the Ground Up, Nolan weaves in memories from her time there. Many are unsettling—such as when Nolan was mocked and left alone in a hospital to give birth because she needed an epidural after 15hours of labor. But some are not. Zendik Farm taught her much about conservation and nature—from growing organic food to butchering chickens to making natural medicines to cure ailing goats.
After leaving the commune, Nolan became a professional organic gardener. She created gardens at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, opened her own organic gardening business, and worked with nonprofits to create gardens for lower income communities. Here, too, are interesting thoughts. Nolan describes her first job and her computer mishaps. Technology didn’t appear to be a big part of the commune lifestyle—Nolan states “The world had leaped into the digital age while I’d been pulling weeds.” She includes her gardening mistakes as well, such as her panic over a garden full of nut grass, something that is described as a “particularly noxious weed”. She also talks about the people she meets—a young boy who was in occupational therapy for early stage ADHD who was completely “focused and absorbed” when gardening and a woman who wanted an organic garden because cancer runs in her family.
Not surprisingly, Nolan also is an advocate for eating locally grown food and includes a fair share of research on various subjects relating to food, health, and the environment, from lead poisoning to cancer causing chemicals to energy: “One fast-food cheeseburger, according to one estimate, generates between seven and fourteen pounds of carbon dioxide, versus roughly half a pound of carbon dioxide per pound of many fresh-grown vegetables. Processed foods take an environmental toll: 16 percent of the total energy currently used in the U.S. food system goes to processing.” In a world where books about food, carbon footprints, and urban gardening are popping on an almost overwhelming basis, Nolan sets herself (and her book) a part a bit by showing how a regular person can exact change. For much of the book, Nolan is both a single parent and in a financially insecure place. At one time she thinks “This is absurd. I’m a thirty-five-year-old unemployed single mom who was at one point was on track to go to an Ivy League school. Now I’m not qualified for an entry-level clerical job.” Once she becomes a professional gardener, her financial stability increases, but it takes a toll on her personal life and at one point, her daughter screams “This house is disgusting…We can’t live like this…I hate you.” Through it all, though, Nolan maintains optimism—even though it feels a little forced at times.
Further, Nolan is also in this for life—her story is not an experiment to see if she can live a year without buying anything that isn’t locally grown or something of that nature. Nolan clearly wants to present organic gardening and eating well as doable, and for the most part, she succeeds. Some of her detailed descriptions of creating raised beds on rooftops might be a little much for the beginning gardener, but Nolan finishes the book with a series of tips (e.g., How to grow a food garden in ten steps and ten favorite gardening products) and includes “certain general guidelines for success—five principles that will help [people] grow food anywhere, whether on a rural farm, in the city, or in the suburbs.” Nolan’s story is inspiring, her tales of the commune strangely fascinating yet often disturbing, and her statistics impressively frightening. In the beginning all this information blends well. Nolan moves, for example, from a nervous reunion with friends (after leaving the commune) to a discussion of how outsiders were treated at the commune (and how members of the commune were treated if they were too close to people on the outside). Later in the book, some of the leaps between the present, the past, and the research aren’t quite as seamless. Part memoir, part lecture, and part how to, From the Ground Up is as thoughtful, complicated and chaotic as the gardening (and life) journey it describes. Perhaps more importantly, Nolan’s encouraging tone, honest style, and practical advice do make you believe that no matter where you live or what you know (or don’t know about plants) you can create an edible garden.
Published at: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/from-the-ground-up-by-jeanne-nolan/ | 农业 |
2017-09/0640/en_head.json.gz/1532 | Resistance management even more critical with new herbicides Feb 06, 2017 Plan for strong disease, nematode pressure early this year Feb 02, 2017 US cotton moves to rebrand its promise to the world Feb 02, 2017 David Blakemore to lead National Cotton Ginners Association Feb 14, 2017 Crops>Peanuts From Sunbelt Expo
Paul L. Hollis | Dec 20, 2000
James Lee Adams `Farmer of the Year' James Lee Adams, a resourceful farmer who runs an operation that utilizes every byproduct available to him, has been chosen as the Lancaster/Sunbelt Expo Southeastern Farmer of the Year for the year 2000. Adams was announced as the Southeastern winner during the opening day of the Sunbelt Agricultural Exposition in Moultrie, Ga. "Anyone who has been able to farm and still is farming after all we've been through the past few years could stand here just as well as me," said Adams in accepting the award. "On behalf of all farmers, and what they've accomplished for this country, I accept this award." "Mr. Adams is representative of the modern farmer who takes advantage of modern technology, utilizes products that would be considered waste in many business ventures and believes in promoting agriculture to the general public and in working with both national and foreign governments to market and promote agricultural products. "He is to be commended, as are all of the winners who represent what is outstanding in America today," said J. Thomas Ryan, executive vice president of Swisher International whose Lancaster Premium Chewing Tobacco brand has sponsored the award for 11 years along with the Sunbelt Agricultural Exposition. Adams was chosen for the honor from finalists who represented eight Southeastern states. He was selected for the Southeastern honor by a group of judges who visited each of the state winners in August of this year. He received a check for $12,500 from Swisher International, a year's supply of clothing from the Williamson-Dickie Company, the use of a Massey Ferguson 4200 series tractor for a year from AGCO, a $1,000 gift certificate from Southern States Cooperative and a custom- made gun safe from Misty Morn Safes. Additionally, he and each of the state winners received a check for $1,500 from Swisher International and a $500 gift certificate from Southern States. "We are proud to honor James Lee Adams as the 11th Lancaster/Sunbelt Expo Southeastern Farmer of the Year," said Chip Blalock, director of the Sunbelt Expo. "He is among an outstanding group of agricultural entrepreneurs who are featured in the Hall of Honor at the Sunbelt Expo headquarters building." Adams previously was named the Lancaster/Sunbelt Expo Southeastern Farmer of the Year for Georgia in 1992. Georgia Extension officials had encouraged him for several years to allow his farming operation to be nominated for the honor a second time. The seven other winners who also were honored during the Expo are, from Alabama, George Hamilton of Hillsboro; Florida, Damon Deas of Jennings; Mississippi, James Tackett of Schlater; North Carolina, Reid Gray of Statesville; South Carolina, Raymond Galloway, Jr., of Darlington; Tennessee, Harris Armour III of Somerville; and Virginia, John Davis of Port Royal. Adams has a wide variety of enterprises on his 2,000-acre fully irrigated farm in southwest Georgia. He grows pecans, peanuts, cotton and corn, raises stocker cattle, has broiler houses and raises alligators. Adams, who has been farming for 31 years, oversees the operation which involves all family members. Each of the crop and animal enterprises complements one another, says Adams. "We utilize everything," he says. "Chicken litter is used for fertilizer, peanut hulls are used for bedding in poultry houses, cattle graze in the winter under center pivots and the cattle are used in pecan groves during the summer where they graze beneath the pecan trees and serve as a pruning tool by eating the lower limbs from the trees. This make harvesting pecans easier and more economical." Dead chickens, he adds, are used as food for alligators. The next step, says Adams, is to install greenhouses next to poultry houses to capture heat expelled from the poultry houses during the winter. When Adams joined his father as a $100-per-week employee, he left a job which had paid considerably more. But he also brought a considerable amount of expertise from his previous experience. "I believe we have the most complete set of records of anybody," says Adams. "All of our farm records since 1978 are on computer. This includes yields, daily weather and farming operations and costs." Adams installed the personal computers and wrote the software for the programs. Adams installed irrigation on his farm in 1972. "I believe we were among the first in the Southeast to install center pivots. Sixty-eight percent of agricultural losses are related to dry weather, and it's difficult to pre-sell or hedge production with erratic yields," he says. Adams has built an efficient and cost-effective farming operation. "Our goal is not to be the largest farm but to be the most efficient," he notes. The development of the alligator farming operation is an indication of that philosophy. Adams' son-in-law, Mark Glass, operates this venture which has 8,000 alligators and is being expanded to house 12,000. Hides and meat are being marketed from this venture which originally was designed to dispose of dead chickens. "We have designed the alligator houses and they have landfill liners so the hides aren't damaged. They must be perfect for the buyers." Adams also promotes agriculture by speaking to groups and by heading up industry organizations, such as serving as the president of the American Soybean Association. He has traveled worldwide to market American farm products and has been active in trade negotiations. He and his wife, Sue, have three children - Vicki Adams Davis, Susan Adams Glass and Sarah Adams, who is a student at Brenau College. Adams was nominated for the Georgia honor by Extension Agent Rad Yager. | 农业 |
2017-09/0640/en_head.json.gz/2783 | Cover crop cocktails are more than a salad bar Feb 15, 2017 5 ways to celebrate National FFA Week Feb 17, 2017 Seedstock Directory Dec 28, 2015 Directing nature? Gene editing offers big potential Feb 16, 2017 Agenda Diablo Trust Honored With BEEF 2011 Trailblazer Award
It started as an effort to simply remain in business. It turned into an example of how disparate views can come together. Burt Rutherford | Nov 01, 2011
The early ’90s were a tenuous time to be a public lands rancher. The rallying cry of “Cattle Free by ’93” rang loud, and sometimes violently, within the environmental-activist crowd. Even state and federal land management agencies seemed to think it was a good idea. It was against this tumultuous backdrop that two Northern Arizona ranches looked back at their historic past and forward to an uncertain future. “We were running into quite a bit of conflict with other public land users,” remembers Bob Prosser, who along with his wife, Judy, run the Bar T Bar ranch headquartered in Winslow, AZ. That conflict had both the Bar T Bar and the neighboring Flying M, owned by Jack Metzger, wife Mandy and his sister Kit, worried whether they had a long-term future on the land. So, the two families took a decidedly non-traditional approach to the situation. In 1993, the year the environmental activists had targeted for their demise, they called a community gathering in Flagstaff. There, they proposed an unlikely alliance they dubbed the Diablo Trust, named after Diablo Canyon, which forms a boundary between the two ranches. The idea was to develop a collaborative process that included the wide and disparate views and agendas from ranchers, state and federal agencies, wildlife enthusiasts, academia and environmentalists. It’s likely that other ranchers in the West thought it was more of an unholy alliance than an unlikely one. The thought of inviting the very people who wanted cattle off public lands to be part of a collaborative management process designed to keep the ranches in business was a concept beyond comprehension. But to the Prossers and the Metzgers, it made sense. Continued conflict wasn’t getting them anywhere. In fact, it was moving them backward, draining time and energy away from being good stewards of the resource, and exacting an emotional toll that ultimately threatened their very existence. “We had never really connected with the public,” Kit Metzger says, “but we were hearing all this talk about what everybody else wanted to see out here. So we thought we need to invite all the people who come out here on the ground or have something to do with managing the ground, and see if we can come up with some common goals.” What is the Diablo Trust? And so, against the backdrop of “Cattle Free by ’93,” the Diablo Trust was born. It’s not a “trust” in the fiduciary sense of a land trust or a conservation easement. Rather, the “trust” comes from the heritage of the West’s ranching tradition where a word was a commitment and a handshake sealed the deal. The Prossers and the Metzgers knew that for sustainability, a trusting relationship that holds the collaborative group together was essential. What it is, then, is a forum and a venue where ranchers, environmentalists, federal and state land managers, scientists, recreationalists and others work together to achieve a variety of shared goals. Ultimately, however, their goal is to create an environment of trust and interdependence that will allow the two ranches to carry over to the next generation. Said succinctly, its mission is: “Learning from the land and sharing our knowledge so there will always be a West.” That’s not a nostalgic statement, the group says on its website. “On the contrary, it reflects our forward-looking commitment to working ranches as long-term, economically viable enterprises, while maintaining unfragmented landscapes and restoring native ecosystems.” The Diablo Trust works toward that goal by involving 26 collaborating groups that represent various public land users, and the state and federal agencies that manage those lands, ag groups and universities. The land area of the two ranches is roughly 426,000 acres of intermingled private and public land. Approximately a third of that 665-square-mile area is private land, with the rest owned by either the Forest Service or the Arizona State Land Department, on which the ranches have grazing permits. The Diablo Trust has a full- and part-time paid staff. Monthly meetings are open to anyone who wants to participate. A 10-person board of directors oversees its activities, which are spread out between several working groups that conduct projects in wildlife management, watershed improvement, land and forage management, and monitoring and data collection, among others. Its funding comes from donations, grants and the two ranches. But its heart and soul is the land, and its promise is the example it sets – that collaboration is better than conflict and working together accomplishes much more than working apart. “There are 4-5 billion acres of land on this planet with similar topography, geology and climate to the American West,” says Jack Metzger. “If these American ecosystems aren’t used as a global laboratory, then where on this planet – with what money and parallel sources of academia, land agency expertise and educated people living on the land – will this be done? And when will we start?” Does it work? While all that looks good in concept, getting people with widely divergent resource-management views to agree on much of anything is a daunting challenge. But the Diablo Trust seems to have found sufficient middle ground, with what its staffer Derrick Widmark calls the “radical center,” to accomplish some remarkable things. “It has its moments…any kind of collaborative organization that relies on consensus building is difficult because it takes so long to make a decision,” says Judy Prosser, Diablo Trust president. “But, when you do come to a consensus, it’s a strong one and it’s supported by a wide array of people.” An example is one of the first projects the group undertook, a project that endures even today. “The big push when we got started was to deal with the dwindling antelope population, the growing elk population and a limited amount of spring feed for all during drought years,” Bob says. Given the emotional rhetoric of the time, the conventional wisdom held that cattle were causing the antelope herd to crash. But the Bar T Bar and the Flying M have always taken a very scientific, objective approach to ranching, and they felt such an approach was crucial within the Diablo Trust as well. So, to answer the question of what was causing dwindling antelope numbers and resource damage, the Diablo Trust, with the support of the agencies and sportsmen, initiated an extensive utilization monitoring effort that drilled down to which herbivore ate what, how much, and at what time of year. Out of that came a dataset that shed objective light on the situation, showing that cattle weren’t the issue; it was the elk. Based on that data, the groups launched a collaborative effort to reduce the elk population due to its impact on the resource, particularly in the winter and spring. They didn’t stop there. They also launched an aggressive vegetative management and water-distribution effort, as well as modifying many miles of fence to allow better access for the antelope between pastures. With help from the Diablo Trust and funding from the agencies, they’ve removed junipers from around 40,000 acres of private, state and federal lands since the mid ’90s. To determine the success of the project, radio collars were used to track the antelope. “Prior to that, there had been very few antelope pass through those areas. After that, the telemetry on those antelope changed significantly and they started moving back in,” Bob says. Winning converts That was the first piece of hard data indicating that a century of encroachment by junipers was part of the antelope problem. By removing the trees, the habitat was regenerated and restored, very much to the liking of both the resident and migratory antelope. “With this data in hand, the Game and Fish became probably the biggest driver of the entire effort,” Bob says. That monitoring and management effort continues today. “It’s the single largest utilization database in the state,” Bob says. “In fact, right now they’re talking about increasing the elk herd and that’s certainly substantiated by the data we’re collecting.” Since then, the Diablo Trust has enjoyed additional success, including the development of a full environmental impact statement (EIS), backed by the Diablo Trust collaborators, that was presented to the Forest Service when the 10-year grazing permits for the two ranches came due. “Doing an EIS was very innovative,” Judy says. “To my knowledge, it had never been done before. Six years of work and 650 pages. Needless to say, it has substance to it! We refer back to it all the time when we go out to do a project or talk to people about whatever issue comes up.” It was also instrumental in keeping the two ranches viable. “We were able to maintain our permits, which could have had a big cut,” Kit says. “Then, we would really have had only one choice, and that would have been to start selling off (private land).” However, because the private land is intermingled with public land, that would break up the open space that many public land users cherish. “So we had a lot of people help on that issue, a lot of support to maintain it as a working ranch and keep it open space, keep the wildlife values,” she says. “They could see the writing on the wall because Arizona has been subdivided so much.” The Diablo Trust’s latest effort is called CROP, for Coordinated Resource Operational Plan. “The agencies have a real revolving door of people,” Kit says. “Just about the time you get them on board and they understand what you’re doing, they move up the ladder,” Judy adds. “And you start all over again with a new person.” So the Diablo Trust produced a document that contains maps and a history of the projects they’ve been working on over the years. When new staff comes on board, they’re handed a copy of the document to get them up to speed with the trust’s past, present and future. In the meantime, the Diablo Trust will continue to be an industry trailblazer as it works collaboratively to keep the “new” West, with its various and often conflicting philosophies, a place where ranches can still call home. For more information on Diablo Trust, go to diablotrust.org. | 农业 |
2017-09/0640/en_head.json.gz/3015 | Sell to the Women
Tags: looking back, Sam Moore, women, During first half of the last century (sounds like a long time ago, doesn't it? But wait—I lived through two thirds of that long ago century—unbelievable!) many farm equipment dealers sold water systems, lighting plants, washing machines and other household appliances. These dealers had long been used to selling only to “the man of the house,” because it was he who controlled the purse strings. A writer in the July 29th, 1922 issue of Implement & Tractor Trade Journal, a magazine aimed at dealers, has much to say about that “mistaken idea,” as he calls it. He traveled through Rice County, Kansas, during wheat harvest time and says the wheat crop was good and the fall’s corn crop would be just as fine. As a result, farmers were already planning to buy lots of new field equipment.
On a hunch, he talked to twenty or so farm women and found that although there were many fine farm houses, the wives still lagged way behind their husbands in labor saving equipment. The county had 305 tractors, but only 188 power washing machines, 90 home lighting systems, and 139 homes with running water in the kitchen, with the last item being the most desirable to the ladies followed by a home lighting plant.
One farm wife, who had a twelve room house with “practically every modern convenience,” told him, “Don’t blame the men because more women don’t have these things. The women could have conveniences if they would ask for them. She could have labor saving equipment providing she just demands it. You should direct your selling arguments at her.”
Another lady told the reporter that, due to her conveniences, she was able to regulate her work in an orderly manner. Monday is washing day, the wash being done and the house straightened up by 10 o’clock due to her power washer. Tuesday is ironing day and the day the light plant batteries are charged, probably due to the drain on them from the 32-volt iron. Wednesday she makes butter in the morning using an electric churn and sews with her electric sewing machine. Thursday is her “day off” to which she believes she’s entitled. Friday is cleaning day using the electric vacuum sweeper. Saturday is baking time, the dough being prepared by the children in an electric bread mixer before breakfast. This lady also reported that she had been to town three times that week on harvest errands for her husband, but was still up with her work.
A Mrs. Tobias credited her running water, light plant, and electric washer and iron with making the family $1,200 the previous year. That’s how much her flock of chickens had made and she explained that she could never have tended such a large flock without the conveniences.
Mrs. Tobias also told the reporter that “When my child was a little baby, I told my husband if he would get me a power washer I would gladly dispense with a girl to help, so he spent $90 on a washer. A neighbor, who also had a baby, hired a girl at $10 a week to help. She kept the girl four months, spent $160, and had nothing to show for it at the end.”
An enlightened farmer named Lattimer said he has had a lighting plant for six years that powers 32 lights, a washer and an iron. He also uses the gas engine on the light plant to saw his cord wood. Lattimer says, “The woman should get a piece of labor saving equipment every time the man does. It is true that the fields and herds of the farm bring in the money but efficiency and comfort are as necessary in the home as in the barn and field if you are to have a happy, contented farm family.”
At the last house he visited, the reporter found evidence that the farm wife herself was often to blame for the lack of modern conveniences. The farm was rented and that lady, a Mrs. Correll, who had only running water in her kitchen from a gravity tank outside, told him the story. The men of the family had a spare tank and offered rig it up to give her running water in the kitchen. She said she “objected strenuously,” because she “did not want to spend any money on a rented place.” The men went ahead anyway and the project cost but $15.00. “Now,” said Mrs. Correll, “I wouldn't be without water in my kitchen for the world.”
So the reporter concluded from his interviews that “the women, themselves, are the answer to the problem of selling labor saving conveniences for the farm home, such as water systems, lighting plants and other household devices.” When I was very small on our western Pennsylvania farm, water had to be carried about 100 yards up a steep grade from a spring below the house, as the well right outside the kitchen door had failed. We got commercial electricity about 1938 and Dad installed an electric pump in the cellar. That gave Mom running water (cold only, no water heater) in the kitchen and it was piped to the chicken houses as well (we finally got a bathroom when I was in high school).
There was an electric refrigerator, a wringer washing machine, and an electric iron, as well. Mom had to cook and bake on a coal kitchen range, hang her clothes outside to dry, and work her sewing machine with a foot treadle, but there was a radio and she had a piano that she loved to play. I don’t know if she was content, but that maybe wasn't as important to folks back then as it is today.
Photo by Sam Moore: My mother at the farm house sink in the mid-1940s. | 农业 |
2017-09/0640/en_head.json.gz/3097 | Hidden New Jersey
The travels and adventures of a couple of nuts wandering around New Jersey, looking for history, birds and other stuff.
A few of our sources
HNJ in the media
NJ 350
Newark's State Fair was a great state fair
Midwestern-born friends of ours admitted to being a bit confused at the hubbub advertised as the State Fair and held in the parking lot of the Meadowlands Sports Complex earlier this summer. I can't say I blame them: it wasn't a real state fair, with 4H exhibits, tractor pulls and judged livestock shows. That's held at the Sussex County Fairgrounds in August. The other one, technically named "State Fair Meadowlands," looks like a street carnival on steroids. No self-respecting livestock would step foot there.
Excuse me. Can you tell me how to get to the PATH train?
Interestingly enough, the East Rutherford version was a bit closer, geographically, to the first permanent home of New Jersey's premier agricultural exhibition: Newark. Yup, the state's largest city was once the place where farmers and their families learned the latest about livestock and crops, enjoying fun and games while they were at it. Technically, the site of the fair, the current-day Weequahic Park, was in Clinton, an small community that was yet to be absorbed by Newark. In the years before the site became a county park, it was largely farmland, neighbored by marsh instead of apartment buildings, highways and train tracks.
Clinton had a better deserved reputation for breeding mosquitoes than for crop production until James Jay Mapes came to town. A noted scientist with an interest in agriculture, he purchased an unproductive farm there in 1847 as a laboratory for his theories in crop rotation, fertilization and seeding. His work wasn't just successful, it proved the value of scientific agriculture in improving soil quality and crop yield.
Though many farmers had scorned 'book farming' before, the results were undeniable, and Mapes became the closest thing to an agricultural rock star as was possible in the mid 19th century.
Who wouldn't want to boost production on their own acreage, and who better learn from than the master himself? Mapes took to the speaking circuit, drawing on his considerable wit and speaking skills to present over 150 lectures on scientific farming. He also patented and sold his phosphate fertilizer branded as, what else, "Mapes Fertilizer."
The farm in Clinton became a popular draw for knowledge-hungry farmers, so much so that in 1866, the organizers of the New Jersey state agricultural fair chose it as the event's permanent site. Besides the usual seminars, shows and competitions, farmers and their families could enjoy food, drink, shows and games of chance at the newly-dubbed Waverly Fairgrounds. The grandstand and racing oval constructed for the fair proved so durable that it stood until 1960, evolving from a horse track to automobile racing.
Clinton's days as the capital (at least for a few days a year) of New Jersey agriculture ended in 1899, as Essex County amassed several tracts of land to become present-day Weequahic Park. The last bits of the township were annexed to Newark in 1902, completing a process that had gone back and forth for close to 70 years. In any case, the years of moos, manure and midways were over for the park, but it would later host significant events, including a celebration of the city's 250th anniversary in 1916.
county park,
farms,
Weequahic Park
Weequahic Park, Newark, NJ, USA
Tomato hangover: 80 varieties at Rutgers' Snyder Farm
Wait a minute, Bunol, Spain. You may have La Tomatina, but you don't have the Great Tomato Tasting. Both happen on the last Wednesday in August, but we New Jerseyans celebrate our tomatoes by sampling their deliciousness, rather than letting them get overripe and then throwing them at each other in some sort of wacky bacchanalia.
Well, some of us do, anyway. For several years I've been meaning to head to Pittstown, where Rutgers and the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension host the annual open house and tomato tasting at the Snyder Farm Research and Extension Farm.
This year I finally made it, and if it's possible to overdose on tomatoes, I think I did.
Before I get into that, however, a few words about the farm itself. Originally, the 390 acre property was owned by Cliff and Melda Snyder, well-known in the community for their embrace of the science of agriculture and the technology that proved to help farmers increase yield. Cliff was the longtime president of the Hunterdon County Board of Agriculture, while Melda served both there and was director of the New Jersey Farm Bureau. Both welcomed their colleagues to the farm to learn more about advances in agricultural science.
When Melda died in 1988 (Cliff had predeceased her 20 years earlier), she bequeathed the farm to Rutgers, which has transformed it into a research facility to foster sustainable agriculture. In other words, while the farm's staff works to develop crop plants to keep New Jersey farms profitable, there's a strong emphasis on environmental responsibility and educating the public.
The farm itself is a bit off the beaten track -- take Route 78 to Clinton, then some country roads that bring you into Pittstown and beyond, passing a good amount of working acreage along the way. Rather than a broad expanse of one or two crops, the Snyder farm has a wide variety -- corn in one area, small orchards of apples and peaches in another, as well as other crops. It's kind of like a gardening hobbyist's fantasy, except that research scientists are closely controlling and monitoring the conditions.
And then, of course, there are the tomatoes -- about 80 different varieties, served up in bite-sized chunks for sampling. Whether you're a fan of grape tomatoes, beefsteak, plum tomatoes, sauce tomatoes, you name it and it's there. Rather than try to explain, I'll give you a look at just a few of the offerings:
The grape tomatoes were very popular and came in many
different colors.
No, that's not a small watermelon.
It's a grape tomato called Lucky Tiger.
Pear tomatoes. They had red ones, too, but these were more fun. Imagine the sauce from this one!
The Large Tomato table, where volunteers cored the fruit before cutting it into sample chunks. I lost count of my samples somewhere around 40 and felt a sudden need for something, well, NOT tomato. Fortunately several other tables were offering alternatives, including exactly what I needed: basil. Mixed with small bits of tomato, mozzarella and a dash of olive oil (we're in New Jersey, after all), it was the perfect palate cleanser. But then there were the peaches and the melon and the apples and the honey and even hazelnuts. The only thing missing was blueberries, whose season has already passed. A few bushes were still bearing fruit in the display garden, but I resisted the urge to pluck a couple of berries and run.
Needing a break from noshing on healthy food, I jumped on a hay wagon for a narrated tour of the research fields. A volunteer Rutgers Master Gardener shared insights on the studies being done at the farm: peach trees that grow more vertically to increase the number of trees that can be planted on a tract, the relative effectiveness of various fertilizers on corn (chicken guano seems pretty helpful, whole milk not so much), halting the impact of basil downy mildew on one of my favorite herbs. And in one very special area, researchers are monitoring the progress of their efforts to recreate the Rutgers tomato originally hybridized and introduced by the school in 1934.
As I marveled at the number of apples and peaches hanging tantalizingly from the trees, our guide noted that the farm donates about 30 tons of harvested fruit and vegetables to food banks every year. Some fruit, she admitted, was left beyond the electrified fence to bribe deer to stay out of the farm and away from the plants.
I may have gone for the tomatoes, but I left feeling even prouder of our state's flagship university and its agricultural extension program. The folks at the Snyder farm are living up to the example of the folks who donated the land, finding new and more responsible ways for Garden State farmers to provide us with healthy, abundant produce. And, well, I ate enough fruit and vegetables to make my parents beam with pride.
But I have to admit: on the way home, I stopped for some mutz and focaccia. There's only so much tomato I can eat without bread and cheese.
(Check Rutgers' New Jersey Agricultural Extension Station website for more information on the 2015 event.)
Hunterdon County,
Pittstown,
Rutgers,
140 Locust Grove Road, Pittstown, NJ, USA
French, botany and a debate on socialism: Just another week at Miss Dana's School for Young Ladies
Today it's the site of a wine store, but back in the day, 163 South Street in Morristown hosted one of the nation's most progressive educational institutions for young women. No historical markers commemorate the site, but Miss Dana's School for Young Ladies deserves note as an incubator for independent thought for women of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
I wish I could say I discovered Miss Dana's totally on my own, but getting there was more like a scavenger hunt than a field trip. Our friend Joe Bilby, co-author of 350 Years of New Jersey History, From Stuyvesant to Sandy, mentioned Dorothy Parker's birthday as one of the historical nuggets he regularly posts on the National Guard Militia Museum of New Jersey Facebook page. Research on the Algonquin Round Table wit led to Miss Dana, but more on that connection later.
As we learned when we stumbled on the site of the Bordentown Female College, women's education in 19th century America generally took one of two routes. Some of the institutes, seminaries or colleges founded exclusively for girls focused on the type of higher education that we're familiar with today. Others were basically finishing schools that prepared daughters of wealthy parents for their entry into polite society, teaching manners, literature and the culinary arts so they could have a decent conversation with their future husbands and neighbors.
Despite the impression you might get from its innocent-sounding name, Miss Dana's School was a serious educational institution. The property on South Street was originally home to the more studious-sounding Morris Female Institute but became Miss Dana's when Elizabeth Dana leased it in 1877 after leaving her English and French Boarding School in Dobbs Ferry, NY. What happened to the Female Institute isn't clear, but if the scathing assessment provided by Rutgers Professor G.W. Atherton is any indication, it didn't live up to its scholarly name. (Either that, or Atherton made a hobby of exposing self-professed educators who consistently employed bad grammar and paltry vocabulary.) Miss Dana's proved popular with prominent families, both in New Jersey and around the country. Classes were small, limited to 15 girls taught in seminar style to assure personal attention. Students learned the classics -- Greek, Latin, literature, history and the Bible -- in addition to mathematics and hard sciences like chemistry and physics. Botany, psychology, studio art, music, logic and other electives were also available to round out the students' education. Noted scholars visited the school to lecture on current events and politics; in fact, Reverend William Griffis, one of the first Americans to travel extensively to Japan, came to the school to share his impressions of the East. (You might recall we "met" Rev. Griffis through our research on the Japanese graves in New Brunswick's Willow Grove Cemetery.)
Parents could send their daughters to Miss Dana's with the assurance that if the girls took to their studies, they'd be assured a path to further success at one of the nation's top women's colleges. Graduating from her school meant an automatic acceptance to Vassar College, with no other entrance requirements necessary.
Unlike her predecessors at the Morris Female Institute, Miss Dana had a penchant for excellence that transcended the classroom. As one indication, in 1893 the school became the first in the state to hire a resident nurse. Marietta Burtis Squire was at the top of her field; at other points in her career she was the first president of the State Board of Examiners for Nurses and Superintendent of the Orange Memorial Hospital.
Elizabeth Dana died in April 1908, having prepared a few hundred women for higher education and productive lives. The school closed four years later, but her legacy lives on. Just after her death, students and alumnae endowed a reading prize in her name at Vassar, which the college continues to award to the student who undertakes and completes the best independent reading project over their summer break.
So what's the connection to Dorothy Parker, poet, author and satirist? Born in Long Branch as Dorothy Rothschild, she lived with her family in Manhattan but boarded at Miss Dana's after a stint at a Catholic school in the city. (She joked that she was encouraged to leave after characterizing the immaculate conception as "spontaneous combustion.") She graduated in 1911 as part of the school's last class. Her biographer, Arthur F. Kinney, suggests that the education Parker got in the Morristown school may have influenced her worldview and political interests. As he notes, the weekly current events discussions during her senior year "focused on such themes as exploitation in the slums, reports of muckrakers, and the growth of the Socialist party." The final issue of the school paper before her graduation included articles on child labor in American sweatshops and U.S. expansion in the Pacific region.
One has to wonder how many other girls' schools in that day were encouraging that kind of discussion. While finishing schools taught young women how to conduct a pleasant conversation, Miss Dana encouraged her students to think for themselves. She was well ahead of her time.
Morris County,
Morristown,
women with moxie
163 South Street, Morristown, NJ, USA
A variety store of history: the King Homestead in Ledgewood
Our visit to Ledgewood's historic King Store opened our eyes to the retail world of a small community along the Morris Canal in the 19th-early 20th century timeframe. A walk next door to Theodore King's Queen Anne/vernacular style homestead led us to an experience which, if it were a shopping destination, would be a mall with surprisingly varied stores. I expected it would give us a view into the merchant class, much as the store had represented the community and transient customers, but the mix of exhibits led me to think about a lot more than that.
This view of the King family home shows the front porch
to the right, side porch to the left, with Mr. King's office at center,
probably added on after the house was built.
One of the things I love about local house museums is the stories they tell through the hodgepodge of artifacts they display, and the King homestead is no exception. The buildings themselves are sometimes the only place where small historical societies can show their diverse collections or share what's remarkable about the community. From their perspective, I'd gather the arrangement is often a blessing because they don't have the resources or sufficient artifacts to interpret an entire house for one given era. In my eyes, museums like these are one-stop wonders where I can learn what local residents find most remarkable about their own communities.
The King homestead is kind of like that. Built in the mid 1880s with the proceeds of the entrepreneur's many businesses, it now serves two purposes. Walk up across the broad, inviting porch and into the house, and you can turn to the left to learn about the King family and their life there, or check out the rooms on the right for a view into the history of the Roxbury area. Or both.
Heading to the left, we were greeted by Roxbury Historic Trust President Miriam Morris, who led us through the house, narrating its history and the Trust's efforts to bring it back to its former glory. The Roxbury Rotary stabilized the home after they finished work on the King Store, upgrading utilities and fixing the chimney before turning the property over to the Trust. As you walk around, you see places where more work needs to be done, but the overall impression is of visiting a very much lived-in older relative's home, complete with vintage and antique furniture.
Theodore King's small office stands just off a corner of the parlor, ready to receive business, but the home feels more like the dominion of his daughter Emma Louise, the last of the family to live there. There's even a collection of Depression glass laid out on the dining room table, a temporary exhibit that underscores another facet of life in the community over the years.
The dining room offers a pleasant surprise: a wrap-around mural of a pastoral scene, with lovely trees and some grazing cattle. Painted by British artist James W. Marland in 1935, it may include elements of the scenery that once surrounded the house, though it's more reminiscent of English countryside. Not much is known about the artist, who first arrived in the United States in the early 1900s and seems to have settled in Morristown and Budd Lake several years later, returning to England just before his death in 1972. As part of its research on Marland, the Trust is looking for additional surviving examples of his work in the area. Miriam mentioned that he'd done some additional work in the bathroom and had stencilled the upper walls of one of the upstairs bedrooms.
Heading to the other side of the house, we got another surprise. A full room contains an exhibit inspired by the Minisink Trail, the Lenape thoroughfare that predates Main Street, the road on which the house and store now stand. As one of the signatories of the 2010 Treaty of Renewed Friendship with the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania, the Trust is committed to sharing the tribe's history and relationship with the region. In particular, the room's exhibit covers the forced departure of much of the Lenape population from New Jersey and the re-emergence of the community despite the common belief that no natives live here.
Closer to the front of the house, the rest of the Ledgewood/Roxbury area gets its due through the "Heels, Wheels and Keels" room. Drawn on the walls is a representation of the transportation routes through the area: the Minisink Trail, early 19th century turnpikes, the Morris Canal and current-day highways. Reflecting the "innovation" portion of the theme for New Jersey's 350th anniversary, a temporary exhibit highlights the inventions and technology developed in the area and by local residents, a good part of it from AT&T and Bell Labs.
Like the King Store, the homestead is open only once a month, on the second Sunday afternoon of the month from April through December. It's well worth a visit, not just as a symbol of how New Jerseyans lived and worked, but as a great example of the classic community museum. Stop by and tell them Hidden New Jersey sent you!
historic house,
King House,
Ledgewood,
Lenape,
Morris Canal,
209 Main Street, Ledgewood, NJ, USA
A time capsule view into the past: Ledgewood's King Store
Morris County's old Ledgewood Circle is no more, but if you follow a couple of small brown directional signs to the Drakesville Historic District, you'll find one of the earliest remnants of what made this crossroads the focus of a rural community from the heyday of the Morris Canal until the early 1900s.
Just off the intersection of Routes 10 and 46, the Roxbury Historic Trust is in the process of restoring the King Store and Homestead. Hidden New Jersey friend Kelly Palazzi suggested we check it out, but it wasn't easy: the property is open only on the second Sunday of the month and is closed entirely from January through March.
It's easy to imagine a few neighbors trading newson the porch of the old King Store.
Our welcome to the King Store was probably a lot like the one a canal boat crew would have gotten in the 1800s: the proprietors were standing in the doorway of the stone building and called out a greeting as we pulled up. Walking onto the porch and into the store was like stepping back in time: the interior was lined with wooden shelves, groceries and sundries of a previous age stocked here and there. A cast-iron stove stands in the center of the room, just in front of a large scale, and a tall set of cubby holes near the door sufficed as the community's post office. In the back room, the wooden doors of a large icebox are open to help visitors imagine how milk and other perishables were kept fresh in the days before refrigeration.
Our friendly guides explained that the store was built around 1826 on what was then the Essex-Morris-Sussex Turnpike, one of the first roads chartered by the New Jersey Legislature at the start of the 19th century. The original owners, the Woodruff family, operated the store until 1835 before closing it for unknown reasons. Two years later, canal boat owner Albert Riggs bought the property and reopened it to serve the local community and the increasing traffic through the nearby Morris Canal lock and two planes. Riggs transferred ownership and operation of the store to his son-in-law Theodore King in 1873, and the new storekeeper and his wife Emma moved into the living quarters above the mercantile.
Brands of the past find their homes on the King Store shelves.
Though competition from the railroads was already digging into the canal's business, King was on his way to prosperity. Besides the popular general store, he got into the mining business and bought significant tracts of land, some of which he sold at a handsome profit while retaining the rest as vacation rental space. He also operated hotels and a steamboat company to cater to the tourist trade at nearby Lake Hopatcong. The proceeds from all of these businesses enabled him to build a comfortable Victorian home on the lot next to the store, where he could keep an eye on business while enjoying time with his wife and their daughter, Emma Louise.
King died in 1926, and with him the store. His daughter simply locked the door, leaving the goods sitting on the shelves. Dwindling traffic on Canal had ended with its termination a few years before. According to our guide, family members would come in from time to time to take items they fancied, but for the most part, the building was a de facto time capsule. Louise King divided her time between New Jersey and Florida until her death in 1975. Fresh milk, anyone?
A few years later, the Roxbury Rotary Club took on the store as a civic project, clearing the overgrown, weeded lot and acquiring state Green Acres funding to buy the property for the township. Now the responsibility of the Roxbury Historic Trust, the King Store is slowly being restored; a new slate roof is the latest improvement, along with a refurbished scale sitting next to the porch.
While work clearly needs to be done to stabilize the structure to prevent further decay, there's much to be said for keeping a good part of the current look. Too much paint and varnish would take away the character of a classic general store. As it stands, it doesn't take much to imagine a local farmer or canal mule tender at the counter, ordering supplies and settling his bill.
The next stop on our visit to historic Drakestown was the King house, just next door... but that's a story for our next installment. Posted by
general store,
Anchors, birds, farmhouses and oil: the evolution of Bayonne's Constable Hook
Last week's visit to Bayonne revealed more than an interesting avian visitor and a surprisingly highbrow golf course. A small sign at the start of the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway revealed that Henry Hudson himself might have been the first to discover the site's ornithological gifts. Equally as interesting, my research revealed a truly hidden morsel of Dutch-American heritage lurking within the city's industrial heart.
Henry Hudson: possibly the first guy to bird at Bayonne
I guess I shouldn't have been surprised to read that Hudson anchored his ship, the Half Moon, not far from the site of the current-day walkway when he first visited the area. Histories of early New World visitation by European explorers credit the English-born, Dutch-employed sea captain with discovering New York Harbor, Manhattan and the river that was later named for him. They don't say much, if anything, about the place where he parked the craft after sailing through the Verrazzano Narrows upon his arrival in September 1609.
As it turns out, it was at a bulge along the peninsula between the river and the Kill van Kull, now known as Constable Hook in Bayonne. Hudson reportedly called the area Bird Point in recognition of the prevalence of gulls at the site.
In fairness, the Dutch West India Company wasn't paying Hudson to look for birds, but for the northwest trade route to Asia. According to the First History of Bayonne printed for the 250th anniversary of the city's settlement, the local natives were both friendly and generous. Members of the Raritan branch of the Lenape tribe "visited his vessel daily, bringing furs, oysters, corn, beans, pumpkins, grapes and apples to trade." The dense forests of the area were home to an abundance of animals including panthers, bears, snakes, beavers and rabbits, making the region even more attractive for settlement and establishing trade.
Some of the encounters between natives and newcomers turned violent during Hudson's 1609 visit to the area, but I couldn't find accounts of any disputes at Bird Point -- it's possible they might have occurred on nearby Staten Island or perhaps farther south near Sandy Hook. What is known is that Hudson stayed near Bayonne only for a short time, leaving to explore the river route clear up to present-day Albany.
The Bird Point peninsula remained solely in Lenape hands until 1646, when the Dutch West India Company granted the land to constable Jacob Jacobsen Roy, who apparently never did anything with the property. Instead, the tract lay unchanged until about 1700, when Pieter von Buskirk arrived from Manhattan to build a house and start a farm. About 35 years later, he buried his wife Tryntje nearby, starting a family cemetery that reportedly grew over the years to include neighbors as well.
For 200 years von Buskirk's descendants lived on the property as the world changed around them. The family sold a portion of the land to the Hazard Powder Company in 1798, probably one of the first signs of heavy industry in the area. Real estate speculation and the attendant population growth spurred the communities of Constable Hook, Bergen Point, Salterville and Centerville to unite as Bayonne in 1861. The Central Railroad of New Jersey laid tracks into the city, bringing even more industrialization. And finally, in 1872, John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company became the first of several refiners to settle on Constable Hook, attracted by its key position on New York Bay.
By 1900, the land Pieter von Buskirk tended tilled had become a different kind of farm, lined with acres of oil tanks to serve what was, for a time the world's largest refinery. The family farmhouse was demolished by Standard Oil in 1906; many of the cemetery plots were emptied, their contents moved to other graveyards despite a court battle waged by family members who reportedly hadn't visited in decades. Another burial ground started by one of Pieter's descendants remains, still in some semblance of order among the massive tanks of a company that specializes in oil and chemical storage. (Look closely at the grassy area on this Google Earth view and you might locate it.)
You have to wonder if the spirits of Pieter and Tryntje von Buskirk wander the streets of Bayonne looking for their homestead, and perhaps the gulls of Bird Point. Maybe they gain some solace from the restored wetlands near the waterfront walkway, or perhaps they've found some peace in their ultimate resting place, though not on their own family property.
Bayonne,
Dutch settlement,
Dutch West Indies Company,
Henry Hudson,
Hudson County,
Hudson County, NJ, USA
All hail the King (rail) of Bayonne!
Wow, was all I could say. I went to Bayonne to find a new species for my New Jersey birding list, and I was astounded by what else I found.
The New Jersey birding community has been abuzz with the sighting of a King rail near the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway, a natural oasis of sorts nestled among the city's shipping terminals and oil tanks. Finding rare avian visitors in industrialized areas is no real shock for local birders - as we've found often in Hudson County, pockets of nature thrive where some would assume it to be impossible, and water quality has improved enough to host wildlife. I wasn't quite sure what I'd find there, but I was prepared for just about anything. Maps of the area showed a good-sized green area labeled "Bayonne Golf Club" on a tract of land jutting into upper New York Bay. Rather than looking into it before my trip, I just headed out, road directions in hand.
As for the King rail, it's a rarer visitor to New Jersey's marshes than the species usually seen here, the Clapper rail. Well, it's usually more "hearing" than "seeing": secretive by nature, rails generally live among the reeds and grasses of wetlands, frustrating birders by their clapping calls. (Needless to say, rails are masters at the game of Marco Polo.) If you're going to see them at all, it's likely to be at low tide as they come out to feed on crustaceans and insects. Clappers tend toward saltwater marshes, while Kings are freshwater birds, with the two species sometimes sharing space (and cross mating) in brackish marshes. Bayonne, located on the bay where Hudson River and Atlantic Ocean waters meet and mix, is apparently geographically desirable for Kings and Clappers.
After a wrong turn that landed me in Bayonne's Marine Ocean Terminal, I found parking for the Walkway in a strip mall lot. I was barely out of my car when I saw a binocular-wearing couple coming off the path. "Here for the rail?" one asked. Just down the path a bit, alongside the long bridge, he told me, adding that other birders were still there. The usual rule was in force: when in doubt where to find a chase bird, look for the crowd.
The walkway winds along the northern edge of what's traditionally known as Constable Hook, with an inlet on one side and a reclaimed landfill on the other. This, as I discovered, was no typical capped landfill, but more on that in a moment. The wild grasses and flowers on the undulating slope put me in the mind of Scotland or Ireland, and the goldfinches perching on the thistles had to agree that someone had done a good job of making a nice habitat. I noticed a few egrets in the inlet to my left, patiently waiting for an early lunch to swim by.
The farther I walked along, the more the pieces came together. The "Bayonne Golf Club" I'd seen on the map isn't a city owned course; it's an all-out exclusive country club, modeled after the traditional links courses in Scotland. At the crest of the hill was a large, expensive-looking clubhouse with a huge American flag flying beside it. According to designer Eric Bergstol, as quoted on Golf.com, the economics of converting the landfill and doing the necessary wetlands mitigation blew the concept of a low-cost public links course out of the water, so it appears he hit for the fences. Bulldozer-sculpted hills and dales are lined by grasses, shrubs and flowers recommended by a Rutgers agronomist, all within the backdrop of Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty and the container cranes of the port. As part of the deal, the developers were required to provide public access to the waterfront, hence the walkway.
The King rail had found a home in a most regal environment.
Fortunately, if a rule of finding chase birds is to find the crowd, the next rule is to look wherever you see someone aiming their optics. As I crossed the bridge on the walkway, I encountered a man with a viewing scope aimed between the railing and support struts. Maybe he had the rail? I walked up slowly, figuring not to scare it if it was there. It wasn't, but the consolation was a very cooperative Yellow-crowned night heron, plus more specific guidance on the rail's whereabouts. It wasn't much farther - maybe 100 feet.
Two birders were on the site as I arrived, waiting for the secretive rail to emerge from the grass to forage on the small patch of mud to the side of the bridge. A little farther down, where a wider mudflat held a stream, they'd seen a rail chick who was a bit less shy, and in the distance they'd noticed a Clapper rail.
Yup, that's the King rail, right in the middle.
Knowing I wouldn't be able to differentiate a King rail chick from a Clapper rail chick, I decided to wait the adult King out by the mud patch. A moment or two later, I noticed some movement in the grass, just behind the first layer of reedy grass. Looking closer, I was pretty sure it was the King (overall, they're a rustier shade than their cousins), but it was tough to tell because he was preening. I wasn't going to let that be the sum of my first-ever look at his species, so I sat down to wait, staring at that patch of grass as the occasional golf cart whirred past behind me.
It may sound crazy, but in situations like that, I like to send a mental message to the bird, letting him know it's safe and I just want to admire him. Sometimes it works; other times it rises to levels of frustration that nearly lead me to a Sheldon Cooper-type tantrum.
Are we in golf heaven? No, Bayonne.
This time it worked. Like an actor coming onstage, the rail emerged from the curtain of grass to walk to an open area where I could see him completely. Stopping, he posed with his wings raised above his back, as if to air them. Then, like a model, he walked a few more steps and turned, allowing me to see the rest of him as I committed him to memory.
Just as I was thanking the bird for being so cooperative, a golf cart stopped behind me and the King ducked back into the grass. Two course employees were wondering why so many binocular-toting people had been standing around the bridge for the past few days. Pulling out my Sibley guide to show them, I explained the significance of the rail and complimented them on the golf club's work to create a good environment for birds. It didn't occur to me until now that the rail was as much of a VIP (or VIB) as any of the club's members, and he didn't require use of the club's exclusive boat or helicopter to get to the links.
King rail,
landfill,
Pandas rejoice: bamboo abounds in New Brunswick
We didn't see any pandas on our last trip to New Brunswick, but I honestly wouldn't have been shocked if we had, based on what we found.
Toward the end of our recent visit to Rutgers Gardens, we found ourselves in a less showy part of the property. A greenhouse, service buildings and a tractor or two got me thinking that we might have inadvertently walked into an area where visitors weren't encouraged to go. No signs were warning us away, so we figured we'd keep going until they did.
Then, at a point, the usual New Jersey-type overgrowth of shrubs, grass and vines evolved into a monoculture of bamboo. I mean, a LOT of bamboo. "This can't be a coincidence" quantities of bamboo. A break in the exotic wall of greenery drew us onto a footpath arched by distinctly Asian overgrowth. We'd stumbled upon Rutgers Gardens' real secret: its one acre bamboo forest.
Neither Ivan nor I had ever seen a grove of bamboo so expansive, except maybe at a zoo somewhere. As we continued our exploration, a winding path brought us to a rocky brook crossed by a simple wooden footbridge. I half expected to find a Zen sand garden, or perhaps a statue of a sitting Buddha nestled somewhere, but all we found was green foliage and the gentle babble of water streaming by.
The grove's species, Phyllostachys nuda, is known as running bamboo for its tendency of spreading aggressively if it's not hemmed in by concrete or water barriers. While that creates challenges for gardeners, it's a boon to the environment: the faster a plant grows, the more carbon dioxide it removes from the atmosphere. Native to China's Zhejiang province, this evergreen plant can withstand temperatures as low as -15 degrees Fahrenheit, making it more than suitable to New Jersey's climate. Growers in Idaho have seen the species do well in areas where temperatures dip into the -30 degree Fahrenheit range.
How did bamboo get to Rutgers, and why? According to the Gardens' website, a small grove was originally planted on site in the 1940s as a winter home for honeybee colonies. Maybe it wasn't intended to become the forest it's grown to be, but Rutgers is making the best of it: once a culm (as the stalks are called by botanists) reaches the end of its five to seven year lifespan, it's removed in order to let a newer, healthier one take its place. The cuttings are sold during the Gardens' annual spring flower fair in May. Considering that a new culm can grow to a height of 30 feet in just a few weeks, any bare patches in the grove are filled pretty quickly.
Every culm around us looked healthy and about two inches around at most; a good knock on a few revealed a very solid report, similar to what you'd hear from a good quality tree wood. Rutgers might be missing out on an opportunity here: combine rampant bamboo with the seemingly ubiquitous Phragmites growing in marshes and on roadsides, and you've got building and roofing material in abundance.
In any case, we're getting ahead of ourselves. The Rutgers bamboo grove is beautiful just as it is: a quiet, out of the way place to relax and contemplate life, and an authentic Zen-type experience. Save the plane fare to the Far East: bamboo heaven is just a few miles from Turnpike interchange 9.
Oh, and here's a bonus haiku:
Rutgers bamboo grove
Bliss hidden in New Brunswick
Peaceful, calm and green
botanical gardens,
Rutgers Gardens
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA
A surprising secret garden grows between the Turnpike and Route One
For a while, we've been meaning to get to Rutgers Gardens, the 180-acre bit of bliss located not far off Route One on Ryders Lane in New Brunswick. It's tucked so securely away from the hubbub of the University that many New Jerseyans, let alone Rutgers students and alumni, know about it. Though I visited once or twice during my college years, I honestly forgot exactly where it was and how to get there. Directional signage from the major campuses is virtually non-existent, and if there's any indication from the highway, I must have missed it.
In any case, I had visions of beautiful flowering gardens, well-kept trees and shrubs, and maybe a Rutgers-bred hybrid or twenty in the mix. Given that the WPA-built Log Cabin building on the grounds is a popular wedding reception site, I figured odds were good that we'd see a newly-married couple posing amid the greenery.
The recently hitched folks weren't there yet, but the gardens didn't disappoint. Ivan and I visited on a cloudy August morning, hoping to dodge the rain that was supposed to fall sporadically through the day. We basically had the place to ourselves, give or take a dog walker or two, but it was still early.
Consistent with Rutgers' leadership in holly breeding, visitors are greeted to the site by the nation's second largest American holly collection as they drive onto the grounds. Not far away is an impressive variety of shrubs, leading Ivan to comment that RU had missed its chance to rename its mascot the Scarlet Knight who says NI! (Bring them a shrubbery, anyone? Anyone?) Evergreens, ornamental trees and rhododendrons all get extensive space, too.
Stopping by a cheery potting shed that doubles as a gift shop and information desk, we met a friendly volunteer who filled us in on the latest. The gardens were started in the 1920's as a teaching tool for students in the plant sciences and has evolved over the years to include a broad range of species. Though the land and buildings are owned by the University, the gardens are totally self-sustaining, gaining their revenue from facility rentals and events like farm markets, classes, tours and membership fees, which enables them to offer free admission to the property. In fact, we just missed the annual open house, a major fundraiser that included tours, discussions with horticulturists, a wine tasting and plant sale.
The showiest area of the property is the Donald B. Lacey Display Garden, named for the state agricultural extension specialist in horticulture who converted it from a huge bearded iris collection to a display of annuals the home gardener can grow in his or her own plot. To celebrate the display's 50th year, Rutgers Gardens' "Best in Show, Sun to Snow" theme highlights what the staff feels are the best species of annuals, perennials and vegetables to grow in New Jersey. The selections change regularly to reflect the growing and blooming seasons for each species. Just behind a locked gate was a large volunteer-run vegetable garden with tomatoes and all sorts of summer squash ripening tantalizingly.
Hikers looking for a less manicured bond with nature can check out the Frank G. Helyar Woods, a 70 acre old-growth forest of beech, hickory and oak trees. Unfortunately the well-marked 2.5 mile path was blocked by a felled tree about 20 yards in, preventing us sandal-shod explorers from trekking much further. Maybe another day, with more energy and wearing more suitable gear, we'll check it out again; it's said to be a nice jaunt out to Weston's Mill Pond and an abandoned Christmas tree farm left to grow on its own.
As we looped around the back end of the Gardens, we found another forest with a more passable trail, but that's a story for next time. Stay tuned!
horticulture,
Rutgers Gardens, Rutgers–New Brunswick, Rutgers University, 112 Ryders Lane, New Brunswick, NJ, USA
Visiting the Rich and Famous at Riverview Cemetery in Trenton
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Mendham: George Washington perked here
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2017-09/0640/en_head.json.gz/3619 | an occasional magazine about land rights
Reclaim the Fields
Ed Hamer discovers a European youth movement taking action on the issue of access to agricultural land
If the statistics are to be believed farming must be up there as one of the least attractive jobs facing school-leavers in the UK. With a typical wage middling at £4.50 an hour1 and the average farmer pushing 622, the future looks far from rosy for an industry recently charged by the government with securing the nations food supplies over the next 20 years. Or so you would think.
Take a walk through a typical student Barrio in Bristol, Leeds or London however and you may well come to a different conclusion. Among the multitude of backyard veg-plots, edible window-boxes and youthful looking allotmenteers you see, you are more than likely to witness guerrilla-gardening in action or overhear the word "permaculture" casually dropped into a passing conversation.
There is no doubt about it, growing-your-own now competes with recycling, energy saving, and cutting short-haul flights in the efforts of the country's youth to act decisively on the environment. And while many of these urban gardeners are happy simply to be greening-up their own streets, there are many, many more who are desperate to get back to the land.
So what's the problem? On the one hand it appears we are faced with an ageing farming population, endowed with acres of land but lacking young recruits, while on the other, an emerging movement of motivated young growers are desperate to farm but frustrated by a lack of land. The solution it seems could be simple, the reality however is far from it.
The current state of land ownership in the UK, which has placed our entire country's farmland in the hands of less than one per cent of the population3, has its roots stretching from the original enclosures of the 14th century to the progressive industrialisation and more recent gentrification of the British countryside. Economies of scale dictate that, today even the children of farming families face little prospect gaining agricultural employment in an industry in which a 90-acre farm can only realistically support a single wage4.
Of course, it hasn't always been this way. In 1950 120,000 people were directly employed in farming in the UK5 with many young lads leaving school at 14 to pursue a worthy career on the farm. Within 30 years however the systematic intensification of farming, which accompanied the UK's entry to the Common Agricultural Policy, had claimed over half of these jobs and taken the majority of our small farmers to the wall.
Without doubt, access to land remains the single greatest obstacle facing a new generation of growers. A combination of property speculation and city bonuses have seen land prices inflated by an average of £2,000 per acre within the past 10 years alone and as much as £10,000 in some areas of the country6. Volatility in the agriculture sector has also left many farmers reluctant to lease even the smallest area of productive ground.
Access to capital is also sadly lacking. Thirty years ago it was still possible to take out a mortgage on a 30-acre smallholding and service your re-payments through a combination of hard work and sensible business management. Today that same smallholding is likely to have been featured in the pages of some glossy lifestyle magazine and no amount of hard work is going to allow you to afford it.
Farming skills and knowledge too have been severely undermined by the race for modernisation. The government's own department for the environment food & rural affairs (Defra) acknowledges that the industry must act to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels7, but how many farmers do we still have left who can teach us how to use a scythe, lay a hedge or farm with a horse?
In January this year the government released what was heralded as "the most comprehensive review of UK food security for more than 60 years'', Food 2030; A Strategy for the Future. Although the 84-page document identifies many of the issues raised above, it's prescriptions are certainly more relevant to an upcoming general election than a genuine attempt at addressing the root causes of the farming crisis.
Despite this frustration, it is this blatant lack of political leadership which has prompted the youth to act. The same motivation which has seen young climate change activists mobilising across Europe in increasing numbers over recent years has galvanized the need to get back to the land: The simple fact that if you're under 30 the peer-reviewed science is going to hit the fan within your lifetime.
Whichever way you look at it the futures of climate change and agriculture are undeniably linked. Whether its the impacts on land use which will accompany a four-degree rise in global temperatures over the next century, the collapse of globalized agriculture in the face of peak oil, or simply the staggering challenge of feeding 9 billion people by 2050, a new perspective on how and what we farm is desperately needed.
It is in reaction to this challenge then that a new youth coalition Reclaim the Fields, (RTF) is now emerging from the continent. Taking its name from the road protest collective which swept the UK in the early 1990s, the movement intends to employ the same creative mix of political lobbying, networking and direct action in its objective to get the 21st century peasantry back onto the land.
Morgan Ody is a young farmer from Brittany and one of the group's founding members, she explains how the idea for RTF first came out of the 2008 European Social Forum in Malmo, Sweden: "The Social Forum brought together people from permaculture and farming backgrounds who were full of hope but lacking a political perspective, as well as activists and squatters who were very politicised and very radical but also tended to be quite pessimistic."
"Through sharing our experiences we were able to firstly offer the activists some hope, and secondly to offer the young farmers the political thinking to globalise their struggle. It soon became clear that access to land was a common problem, not just in Belgium, France or Switzerland, but a problem facing young people across Europe."
In October the same year several RTF members travelled to Mozambique for the fifth international conference of La Via Campesina, representing 148 peasant farming organisations worldwide. "La Via Campesina was really the central inspiration Reclaim the Fields" explains Morgan. "They have pioneered a model of networking between international and local peasant groups to share experiences on securing land tenure, resisting globalisation and spreading appropriate technology. Ultimately this is what we would like to achieve with RTF."
"There is however a big difference between the way Via Campesina operates; as a network of organisations, and how we would like to work. It is important to recognise that is not in the youth culture to be part of an organisation but instead to find a more horizontal structure. We want to be a network of individuals each doing his or her own thing but working towards a common goal; access to land. To achieve this our first priority was to bring all of these like minded youth together."
In October 2009 RTF held their first international gathering at Cravirola, a 400 hectare mixed farm in the French Ariege. The co-ordinating group were expecting 150-200 people to respond to the call for the camp, in the event more than 400 turned up. "We were completely overwhelmed by how many people actually arrived" Morgan says, "it was a shock but also a welcome surprise that this issue has so much support".
First and foremost the camp was an opportunity for networking and sharing experiences; from securing farm tenancy in Belgium to black-market abattoirs in the Alps, trashing GM crops in Germany and dodging EU imposed livestock vaccinations in Slovenia. The five-day gathering included practical workshops on gaining access to land, exploiting legal loopholes, low-impact development and GM free-zones.
The camp seminars resulted in a series of draft proposals for the RTF membership to act upon over the coming months. These included; establishing informal working groups at the local level, providing a central website for activists and peasants to network, mobilise and communicate online and compiling a list of collective projects and farmers who are looking for young people to work.
In addition there was a strong consensus that RTF should have a visible presence at the UNFCCC climate conference in Copenhagen; "to highlight the role agriculture plays in both contributing to, and remedying climate change". Many, including Adam Fulop who travelled from Hungary to take part in RTF's actions, saw Copenhagen as the place: "To make a stand and start the process of reclaiming the land."
"Access to land is the biggest obstacle facing young people in Europe who want to become peasants, and climate change has a direct impact on this" explains Adam: "Carbon trading is leading to further privatisation of land, water, seeds and farming resources. This can only make the situation worse for young farmers trying to start farming in Europe."
"We share the view held by Via Campesina that small-scale peasant farmers offer a low-carbon future for agriculture. Through an agro-ecological approach to farming peasant agriculture can actually use organic matter to lock carbon into the soil. Instead of this we see deals on the table at Copenhagen actually encouraging large-scale oil-dependent agriculture that increases carbon emissions, its crazy."
More than 40 members of RTF from across Europe travelled to Copenhagen between December 11 and 18 to take part in meetings and direct actions at the COP15 summit. The affable Swedes laid-on a soup kitchen and pedalled illegal seeds to the masses, while RTF supported Via Campesina's demo outside the Danish Meat Board in protest at factory farming and feedgrain imports.
Tuesday December 15 was declared as an official 'Agriculture Day of Action' with RTF taking part in a demonstration through the centre of Copenhagen targeting agri-business interests, supermarkets and agrofuels. On December 16 RTF took part in the 'Reclaim the Power' action which saw more than 4,000 demonstrators hold a "peoples assembly" outside the conference centre.
Despite the complete failure of the talks at Copenhagen to achieve anything other than a collective burst of hot air, those who travelled there under the RTF banner remained positive: "In a way we see this failure to reach an agreement as a victory for the peasantry" explains Morgan, "There is little doubt that the measures under discussion this week would have only accelerated the erosion of our land, our resources and our way of life. We now have a little more time to get ourselves mobilised."
The UK movement it appears could learn a lot from RTF's approach. Although many UK-based activists took part in actions during the Agriculture Day at Copenhagen, there was little interaction between regional groups and few of these were even aware of RTF. "This is one of our biggest problems" agrees Adam, "Our challenge is not only to raise our profile, but to contact more and more youth who are based in cities and involve them in the struggle to get back to the land."
Morgan also sees mobilisation at the national level as the next priority for RTF: "It may be that in 2010 we do not have an international camp but rather four of five national or regional camps. At Cravirola we agreed it is now time to come together at the local level, to make our movement strong, and plan for land occupations in 2010. This is how we aim to bring people together with a strong common cause while at the same time respecting the youth culture of autonomy."
Here in the UK Reclaim the Fields will undoubtedly find sympathisers among urban permaculture groups, climate campers and WWOOFers alike. Taking the movement mainstream however may be a different story. Organic Futures, the Soil Association's attempt at inspiring a youth wing has failed to do just that due to its obsession with a single issue: Organics.
Instead of a black and white ideology which threatens to be divisive, RTF must embrace a broad range of issues which will unite young people regardless of their persuasion, political, farming or otherwise. There is no reason why a young farmer from Shropshire who goes fox hunting cannot stand side by side with a peasant squatter from the Basque in demanding a future on the land.
In embracing the youth culture of autonomy RTF has certainly found a niche which appeals across both cultural and social boundaries, something which has been particularly key to the success of Climate Camp actions across Europe over recent years. The challenge it seems is how to achieve the movement's goal of a united European-wide coalition while remaining true to a fully autonomous structure.
In kick-starting Reclaim the Fields in the UK it will be essential to draw on existing networks from as wide a social spectrum as possible. Permaculturalists, young organic farmers and climate change activists will have to interact with students from Conservative agricultural colleges and Young Farmers' Clubs (YFC). It is only through doing this that we can abandon traditional stereotypes and realise that the call for access to land is greater than any of us could have hoped for.
Just as the climate change debate has inspired a new generation to push the environment onto the political agenda, those of us who feel particularly passionate about food and farming have the potential to do the same for agriculture. Whether your motivation stems from a need for employment, a respect for a way of life, or the right to decide how your food is produced, a single banner uniting these issues is undoubtedly an effective tool in forcing local, regional and national governments to take these concerns seriously.
In the meantime, it is becoming increasingly clear that a resurgence in growing-skills and an appetite for direct action among the youth has combined with the most fragile state of our agriculture sector for more than fifty years. In the absence of political leadership it seems that actively Reclaiming the Fields may offer the most immediate and practical solution to getting ourselves onto the land.
www.reclaimthefields.org
REFERENCES1. Helena Norberg-Hodge, Peter Goering & John Page, From the Ground Up, Rethinking Industrial Agriculture. International Society for Ecology & Culture. Zed Books 2001.2. Eurostat: Agriculture and fisheries: Farm Structure Survey in the United Kingdom 2007.3. Kevin Cahill, Who Owns Britain, Cannongate 2001.4.Defra "Joint Announcement by the Agricultural Departments of the United Kingdom; latest national statistics on farm incomes released by the Agricultural Departments of the UK", released 29 January 2009.5. Helena Norberg-Hodge, Peter Goering & John Page, From the Ground Up, Rethinking Industrial Agriculture. International Society for Ecology & Culture. Zed Books 2001.6. Press Release by The UK Land Directory: "Agricultural Land Prices are expected to nearly double in value between 2010 and 2012", October 19 2009.7. Defra, Food 2030: A Strategy for the Future, published January 5 2010. Reclaim the Fields
This article originally appeared as 'Reclaim the Fields' in The Land Issue 8 Winter 2009
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2017-09/0640/en_head.json.gz/3726 | Business Your Balance +tax
Growing success
Local mushroom farm thriving
By: Murray McNeill Posted: 03/17/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: Tweet Post Reddit ShareThis Print
This article was published 16/3/2010 (2534 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The province's only commercial mushroom farm has boosted its sales and production by about 25 per cent since adding a second production plant late last year.Winnipeg-based Loveday Mushroom Farms Ltd. is churning out about 72,576 kilograms of mushrooms a week at its two plants -- a 125,000-square-foot facility that's been operating on Mission Street for the last 63 years, and a new 73,000-square-foot one that opened last November just east of the city.
KEN GIGLIOTTI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESSBurton Loveday, president and general manager of Loveday Mushroom Farms, says business is great for the company. Purchase Photo Print
The new Cedar Lake Road "farm" has a full-time staff of 20 and was needed because the Mission Street plant couldn't keep up with the growing demand for mushrooms.Company president and general manager Burton Loveday, who is the fourth-generation Loveday to run the family owned business, said the company had been turning down orders because it didn't have the capacity to fill them all."We had already lost some business to our competitors -- maybe 10,000 pounds per week," he said, adding the firm's main competition comes from two B.C. firms (Champs Mushrooms and All Seasons Mushroom Farm Inc).But that's no longer a problem, he said, and shouldn't be in the future because the new plant was designed so it could easily be expanded.Another benefit of building a second plant is that it enabled Loveday Mushroom Farms to modernize some of its operations and begin producing organically grown mushrooms."That's a niche and a need that we wanted to fill," Loveday said.The difference between organic and non-organic mushrooms is that the organic ones are grown in a certified, pesticide- and fungicide-free facility that is audited annually and uses only certified compounds for cleaning its equipment.Loveday said while demand for organic mushrooms is still limited -- they account for only about two per cent of the company's sales -- he expects it to grow as health-conscious consumers become more selective about the foods they eat. And when it does, the new plant will be able to meet the increased demand.Loveday Mushroom Farms has about a dozen large customers in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and northwestern Ontario. They include all of the major grocery store chains and regional food distributors.This is the fourth expansion the company has undertaken in its 78-year history, and the largest in more than 25 years. Loveday wouldn't reveal how much it cost, other than say it was a multi-million-dollar project.For competitive reasons, he also wouldn't reveal the company's annual sales.He said the company's growth in sales occurred about seven years ago when its only competition in the province -- the K&G Foods mushroom plant in Portage la Prairie -- closed and it picked up most of its [email protected] Loveday Mushroom Farms Ltd.:
Owned and operated since 1932 by Winnipeg's Loveday family.Operates two mushroom plants or "farms" -- a 125,000-square-foot facility at 556 Mission Ave. in Winnipeg and a 73,000-square-foot one located just east of the city at 23080 Cedar Lake Rd.Produces 72,576 kilograms of mushrooms a week, compared to 58,968 prior to the expansion.Produces more mushrooms in two hours than it did in an entire year during its first few years in operation.Employs 170 people.Grows five different types of mushrooms: white, oyster, portabella, crimini, shiitaki and enoki.The company has invested more that $3 million over the last five years on new equipment and plant upgrades to help reduce odours emanating from its Mission Street plant, which produces the composting material for both facilities.-- Source: Loveday Read more by Murray McNeill. | 农业 |
2017-09/0640/en_head.json.gz/4185 | Tag: grant news Nine new Trellis Fund projects awarded The Horticulture Innovation Lab has announced nine new projects in Africa and Asia as part of its Trellis Fund program.
Each of these six-month projects is funded with a $2,000 grant, with work scheduled to begin in 2017. A U.S. graduate student with related expertise will be matched to each project, to provide additional agricultural knowledge and support for local goals.
“We are pleased to build new relationships with local organizations, with support from our innovative Trellis Fund program,” said Elizabeth Mitcham, director of the Horticulture Innovation Lab at the University of California, Davis. “We believe this model, which links knowledgeable U.S. university students with local, on-the-ground practitioners, can help further extend horticultural expertise to farmers nearby.”
Six of the newly awarded Trellis Fund projects are Continue reading Nine new Trellis Fund projects awarded
Posted on September 19, 2016October 20, 2016Author Brenda DawsonCategories Program news, Trellis FundTags Cambodia, Ghana, grant news, Kenya, Nepal, Trellis, UgandaLeave a comment on Nine new Trellis Fund projects awarded MásRiego project starts in Guatemala Expanding irrigation and climate-smart farming to Guatemala
An international team led by UC Davis is working to connect 9,000 rural households in Guatemala with improved water management and climate-smart agriculture strategies, to increase food security and reduce poverty.
Called MásRiego (“more irrigation”), the project aims to increase farmers’ incomes and their use of climate-smart strategies, including drip irrigation, rainwater harvesting, reduced tillage, mulch use and diverse crop rotation. To enable farmers to adopt these new practices, the team will not only provide trainings but also build partnerships to increase farmers’ access to needed microcredit financing and irrigation equipment.
“The opportunity to impact so many farmers’ lives on this scale is exciting,” said Beth Mitcham, director of the Horticulture Innovation Lab. “We’re taking lessons learned from our previous research — in Guatemala, Honduras and Cambodia — and building a team to help more small-scale farmers apply our findings and successfully use these innovative practices.”
The new project is part of the U.S. government’s Feed the Future initiative. It represents an additional $3.4 million investment in the UC Davis-led Horticulture Innovation Lab by the U.S. Agency for International Development’s mission in Guatemala.
Partnering with UC Davis is an international team with representatives from Centro de Paz Bárbara Ford in Guatemala; Universidad Rafael Landívar in Guatemala; the Panamerican Agricultural School, Zamorano, in Honduras; Kansas State University; and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. Continue reading MásRiego project starts in Guatemala
Posted on August 3, 2016September 12, 2016Author Brenda DawsonCategories Conservation Agriculture, Irrigation, Program newsTags associate award, Centro de Paz Bárbara Ford, conservation agriculture, Feed the Future, grant news, Guatemala, Kansas State University, MasRiego, NC A&T, UC Davis, Universidad Rafael Landivar, USAID, ZamoranoLeave a comment on MásRiego project starts in Guatemala Call for Trellis Fund project proposals The Horticulture Innovation Lab is seeking project proposals from organizations in developing countries for small horticultural projects, through its Trellis Fund.
The Trellis Fund will offer 15 grants, up to $2,000 each, to local organizations for six-month projects that address horticultural challenges in the region. Organizations in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Nepal, Rwanda, Senegal, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia are eligible to apply.
Project proposals must identify a problem faced by local farmers related to horticultural crop production, Continue reading Call for Trellis Fund project proposals
Posted on November 4, 2015January 4, 2017Author Brenda DawsonCategories Opportunities, Program news, Trellis FundTags funding, grant, grant news, Trellis1 Comment on Call for Trellis Fund project proposals U.S. scientists begin new horticulture projects in developing countries Agricultural scientists from five land-grant universities have been awarded $4.2 million to research ways to improve livelihoods for smallholder fruit and vegetable farmers in developing countries.
Posted on February 24, 2015January 3, 2017Author adminCategories Program newsTags conservation agriculture, Feed the Future, gender equity, grafting, grant news, irrigation, NC A&T, Nutrition-sensitive, Penn State, Rutgers, UC Davis, USAID, UW-Madison2 Comments on U.S. scientists begin new horticulture projects in developing countries Five more years for the Horticulture Innovation Lab New grant aims to build global food security through produce research
A new $18.75 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development will boost international fruit and vegetable research led by the University of California, Davis.
The award extends for five more years a research program established at UC Davis in 2009 as the Horticulture Collaborative Research Support Program. Recently, the program was renamed the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Horticulture.
“We believe this new, larger investment validates the work we’ve done with the Horticulture Innovation Lab and recognizes the pivotal role that fruits and vegetables play in people’s lives, both in improving health and increasing rural incomes,” said Elizabeth Mitcham, program director and a UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Plant Sciences.
New tools for farmers around the world
In its first four years, the Horticulture Innovation Lab trained nearly 32,000 individuals in more than 30 countries, including more than 9,800 farmers who have improved their farming practices. The program also established regional centers in Thailand, Honduras and Kenya as hubs to circulate the program’s research findings.
Through collaborative research, the program has successfully adapted more than 500 new tools, management practices and seed varieties to aid farmers who grow fruits and vegetables in different countries.
One such tool is called the CoolBot, a temperature control system developed by an American farmer as an inexpensive way to cool his farm’s produce. The system was later marketed to other small-scale farmers in the United States to reduce losses of fruits and vegetables after harvest.
The Horticulture Innovation Lab has tested the CoolBot with farmers in Honduras, Uganda, Kenya, Cambodia, Bangladesh, and elsewhere — including at the UC Davis Student Farm.
Similarly, the program has successfully adapted:
zeolite-based drying beads made by a private company to dry and store high-quality seeds for better germination in tropical climates;
agricultural nets that keep pests away from crops with products made by a local mosquito bed net company in Tanzania; and
an inexpensive solar dryer design with a chimney, designed by UC Davis scientists to more efficiently dry and preserve fresh fruits and vegetables even on cloudy days.
The Horticulture Innovation Lab tests and adapts these innovations through grant-funded research projects led by U.S. universities with international partners including entrepreneurs, foreign scientists, farm extension agents, government representatives and other.
Noel Makete, a Kenyan scientist, checks on vegetables in a solar dryer during a Horticulture Innovation Lab training session in Arusha, Tanzania, during the program’s first five years. (Horticulture Innovation Lab photo by Amanda Crump)
“This award underscores our university’s renewed emphasis on international agriculture. It also emphasizes our partnerships with other land-grant universities to solve global problems by pooling our expertise,” said Jim Hill, associate dean of the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
“These kinds of programs foster not only solutions to agricultural problems, but also leadership skills and long-term relationships that turn our partners into unofficial U.S. ambassadors in the long run,” he said.
Global food security on behalf of the American people
Amanda Crump, associate director, hangs a new office sign as the program adjusts to its new name, the Horticulture Innovation Lab. (Horticulture Innovation Lab photo by Brenda Dawson)
The Horticulture Innovation Lab is one of 24 innovation labs that leverage U.S. university research to advance agricultural science and reduce poverty in developing countries. The labs are part of Feed the Future, the U.S. government’s global hunger and food security initiative. UC Davis leads five of the Feed the Future Innovation Labs with USAID funding, more than any other university.
Currently, the program is selecting new research projects that focus on ways to reduce postharvest losses in fruits and vegetables, ways to improve nutritional deficiencies through horticulture, and address gender equity in agriculture.
About Feed the Future
Feed the Future is the U.S. government’s global hunger and food security initiative. With an emphasis on smallholder farmers — particularly women — Feed the Future supports a country-led approach to reduce hunger, poverty and undernutrition by promoting growth in the agriculture sector.
About the U.S. Agency for International Development
The U.S. Agency for International Development administers the U.S. foreign assistance program providing economic and humanitarian assistance in more than 80 countries worldwide. The agency leads the U.S. government’s efforts to end extreme poverty and promote resilient, democratic societies.
UC Davis is growing California
At UC Davis, we and our partners are nourishing our state with food, economic activity and better health, playing a key part in the state’s role as the top national agricultural producer for more than 50 years. UC Davis is participating in UC’s Global Food Initiative launched by UC President Janet Napolitano, harnessing the collective power of UC to help feed the world and steer it on the path to sustainability.
About UC Davis
UC Davis is a global community of individuals united to better humanity and our natural world while seeking solutions to some of our most pressing challenges. Located near the California state capital, UC Davis has more than 34,000 students, and the full-time equivalent of 4,100 faculty and other academics and 17,400 staff. The campus has an annual research budget of over $750 million, a comprehensive health system and about two dozen specialized research centers. The university offers interdisciplinary graduate study and 99 undergraduate majors in four colleges and six professional schools.
This press release was originally published by UC Davis News Service. The Horticulture Innovation Lab builds international partnerships for fruit and vegetable research that improves livelihoods in developing countries. The program is led by a team at UC Davis, with funding from USAID as part of the U.S. government’s Feed the Future initiative. For more information, visit http://horticulture.ucdavis.edu.
Top photo information: Sean Kearney, then a UC Davis graduate student, interviews farmers in Uganda for a project with Dr. Kate Scow during the Horticulture Innovation Lab’s first five years. (Horticulture Innovation Lab photo)
Posted on October 18, 2014January 3, 2017Author adminCategories Horticulture for development, Program newsTags grant news, UC Davis, USAID This blog is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The contents are the responsibility of the Horticulture Innovation Lab and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government. | 农业 |
2017-09/0640/en_head.json.gz/4540 | SADHU'S VISION
Thank you for visiting my website! I’m Sadhu, the founder of Govardhan Gardens, a natural living and self-sufficiency oriented farming project near Mayagüez, Puerto Rico.
After traveling the world for over 20 years, doing volunteer work for various cultural, social, altruistic and agricultural projects, an opportunity came up to acquire my own land. Thus, I could fulfill my old dream of living in nature and being as self-sufficient as possible. When I acquired my land, a ten acre farm, it had severely eroded, heavy clay soil and it was mostly covered with weeds; in short, it was a major challenge to even get the most basic cultivation going.
My first project was to grow as much of my own food as possible. Despite all the challenges, I lived off the grid for a while and was happily eating my own produce. At that time, there were not more than a handful of organic projects in Puerto Rico, and everyone grew more or less the same limited varieties of crops. I felt that there was a need to bring more diversity to the island and I started to systematically collect tropical fruit species. Since I needed an income to survive and develop my farm, I soon opened a small tropical fruit tree nursery.
Within less than a decade, I was able to establish the most diversified tropical fruit and nut collection as well as nursery in the Caribbean. By now, my farm has turned from a weeded place full of invasive plants into a true tropical fruit forest. In February of 2012, I reached my original goal of planting at least 350 tropical fruit and nut species at my farm. (Update July 2013: by now, the collection has reached 400 species - which surprises even me). Almost all of the collection species are spreading fast throughout Puerto Rico which is a big step in securing the fruit future of the island. About 160 of these new tropical fruit and nut species are the first ever being circulated in the Caribbean.
Throughout the years, I continued to systematically study, propagate and promote new tropical fruit, herb, vegetable and bamboo crops. In March of 2007, I published "Oro Verde - Securing the Future of our Food" - which is a proposal of how to improve or even revolutionize the derailed state of agriculture in Puerto Rico. I am happy to see how a new generation of small -scale farmers is taking advantage of this publication, and is currently helping to introduce a new era of sustainable, holistic farming in the tropics.
Puerto Rico, like most other Caribbean islands, lacks biological and genetic diversity of vegetables, grains and herbs. In order to help improve this situation, I started the Oro Verde Foundation with the help of a local activist and farmer, Magha Garcia. From my perspective, the acquisition of the hundreds of required tropical vegetable and herb species is a major challenge, and foremost, the endeavor is a race against time. Open pollinated heirloom seeds are disappearing at an alarming rate and ruthless corporations are working hard to control the world's seed market.
In the fall of 2007, I began to add a bamboo collection of high quality structural, edible and ornamental bamboos. (A special thank you for his guidance and help goes out to Jim Rehor, who has one of the most beautiful bamboo collections in the Western hemisphere). I consider bamboo cultivation one of the more important steps towards self sufficiency for any small scale farmer. Some of my nursery species are already used by farmers as wind breaks, living fences and even as a food source. I am looking forward to the day when I can start to popularize bamboo construction projects in Puerto Rico. All these years of improving Govardhan Garden's eco system has led to an increased bird population (Birds @ Govardhan Gardens). In order to protect and support the avian community, I have written a Bird Manifesto and the farm has become a true bird sanctuary, with over 50 species frequenting or living here. I also started an island-wide program of studying local and visiting tropical bird species systematically. By the end of 2015, was able to document 170 species, which increased to over 220 species by November 2016. I am currently trying to find land for a privately run bird sanctuary in the southwest of Puerto Rico. Please contact me in case you want to support this important project. In 2015, a local TV documentary was put together about the farm. July 2015 marked the planting of the 450th tropical fruit/nut species, which happened to be Garcinia multiflora. The Garcinia collection itself has expanded into one of the largest private Garcinia collections in the world (50 edible species).
In December of 2015, I completed a compendium of the best 1,000 fruits on the planet. The work was done for a friend of mine, who is considering to put up a new fruit web site for fruit enthusiasts.
In July 2016, I gave two interviews that were read by tens of thousands of people on the island and abroad: http://www.organicfarm.net/Article_Naled_Assault.htm, http://www.organicfarm.net/Article_Naled_Aftermath.htm There is undoubtedly much work to do and maybe not that much time left. We are living in a fast paced materialistic time where money, power, exploitation and mass manipulation dominate practically every sphere of life. It is not surprising that these unhealthy dynamics are resulting in an artificial economy, based on the exploitation of limited natural resources. Now that this artificial economy is about to crumble under the weight of having reached its peak, sustainable agriculture and lifestyle are again in a position to resolve many of humanity’s deep-rooted problems.
In general, a citizen has only two identities for our governments: being a tax payer and devoted, materialistic consumer. All necessities of life are increasingly controlled by centralized powers and my work is to fight these powers in order to create a network of independent self-sufficiency oriented communities.
Every other year, another false hope or dream is sold to the public. Currently, there is much talk about the progressive "green wave", and as usual, it is a dishonest product meant to be sold with high profit margins. Almost all "green" products have the same unsustainable, toxic background as any of the conventional products ( Link to Solar Power Article ). It did not take long and the once idealistic organic movement has been infiltrated by opportunistic and ill motivated people who have no concern for true holistic eco-farming or nature in general. All they see is a new opportunity for high profits and a white-wash of their bad conscience for having been addicted to toxic agricultural practices. The fight over government grants for organic and sustainable projects has already begun, and the same power hungry and greedy people who were enthusiastic proponents of mono culture and toxic chemicals, are now the ones grabbing most of the federal funds circulating in the system. As usual, the honest and hard working small scale farmer doesn't see a cent of these funds.
It is not difficult to understand what all of this has done to our agriculture. As a result of unqualified agricultural leadership, Puerto Rico's agriculture has been pushed to the brink of extinction. Today, there are only 18,000 registered farms and slightly over 30,000 farmers left. Much of the farm land (several thousand acres per year for the last six decades) around the island is sold, broken down into smaller plots and subjected to erosion, neglect or housing developments. A good percentage of these 18,000 farms are not under cultivation and the vast majority of the cultivated land has practically no diversity. The main concern for the local department of agriculture is still the coffee mono culture industry, which ultimately doesn't benefit anyone. After all, we need to grow food, not unhealthy stimulants. Instead of seeing farming as an ecologically responsible lifestyle, Puerto Rico's agricultural "leaders" see farming merely as a business based on exploiting farm land.
For too long now, Puerto Rico’s agriculture has followed the same trend that prevails almost worldwide by only growing a few mono-crops that are “cultivated” with an array of pesticides, chemical fertilizers and herbicides. The average modern farmer and sadly especially the government has had little or no concern or vision for an ecologically sound and sustainable agriculture. Not many farmers know about the medicinal, nutritional or insecticidal properties of herbs, fruits or vegetables, and only very few are self-sufficiency oriented. Instead of seeing farming as an ecologically responsible lifestyle, modern agronomists see farmers merely as a business based on exploiting farm land.
Currently, the island is highly food-dependent (about 94% of all foods consumed in Puerto Rico are imported). Unknown to most, a large percentage of those imported foods contain hundreds of dangerous chemical additives and transgenic ingredients. “Oro Verde – Securing the Future of our Food” explains how the island could turn towards a healthy, decentralized food production and become largely food self-sufficient.
Holistic farming can be a meaningful and fulfilling way of life and it will always remain the most important natural means of economic security. To reach this point, nothing short of a complete paradigm change is required. I hope to be instrumental in paving the way for this change by inspiring people to become independent thinkers and true lovers of Mother Nature.
Feel free to contact me if you need help with finding, designing or developing agricultural land in Puerto Rico or the Caribbean.
For those of you who would like to visit in person, the fruit tree and bamboo nursery are open by appointment at any time of the year. Extended farm tours are only possible during the dry season (January-March). - Sadhu ARTICLES BY SADHU
Bamboo History of Puerto Rico Fruit History of Puerto Rico San Juan Conference Food Security in Puerto Rico? Organic Certification in Puerto Rico Solar Power Coming Your Way Puerto Rico's Stolen Seed Future Acquiring and Raising Goats in the Tropics Q&A: Organic Agriculture in Puerto Rico Tribute to Bob Marley Monsanto, Seed Regulation in PR Dangerous Food Additives The Naled Assault on Puerto Rico The Naled Aftermath
I would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to everyone who has helped out this project over the years. Even if I can't acknowledge all of you individually since so many people have supported Govardhan Gardens in so many ways, I certainly remember every one of you.
If you would like to find out more about the tree sponsoring program and other opportunities to help the project, click here view sponsors and friends ECO LIBRARY
This revamped page is Govardhan Garden's new "eco library". You can find videos, links, articles and other media about relevant environmental topics.
Please contact me if you know of any additional good links that you think should be a part of this library. Thank you. view eco library Tropical Fruits Nursery Photos by Sadhu Govardhan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://organicfarm.net/contact.htm.
ORGANIC FARM is proudly powered by Browardstudios | Web2.0 Design by Navindra Lochan | | 农业 |
2017-09/0640/en_head.json.gz/4586 | Dry summer has Schuylkill County farmers at risk of losing crops
David Mckeown/staff photos
Michael Scheidel of Little Peace Farm, Schuylkill Haven, allows dry dirt to fall from his hand Monday.
Earlier this year, farmers were praying the rain would stop.Now, they want it to come back."It's very dry. Most of the crops I've seen around the county are really suffering. The corn is curling up pretty bad and there's places where it's even starting to turn brown. So we really need some rain in the next few days," Elizabeth A. Hinkel, district manager of the Schuylkill Conservation District, Pottsville, said Thursday.Schuylkill County has baked under a heat wave this week, along with much of the United States. There is a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms today, with a 50 percent chance of precipitation and a high near 89, according to the website for the National Weather Service, State College.Chris Maccarone, a program technician with the Farm Service Agency, Pottsville, believes that if the heat persists, the state will declare a disaster because of drought."The corn's dying," Maccarone said. "Right now is a very critical time for corn in the county. The corn is in tassel. It's pollinating right now. When the tassels come out on the corn, that's when the corn starts pollinating and if there's no rain to aid in pollination and the plants are stressed, a lot of times it won't fill out," Hinkel said."And pumpkins are shriveling up, and a majority of farmers in Schuylkill County do not have irrigation systems, so if it doesn't rain there's a good chance right now they're going to lose their crops," Maccarone said.Hinkel said a good inch of rain would help."But hopefully it doesn't downpour all at once," Hinkel said.Mother Nature hasn't been giving farmers much of a break this year.In May, rain was putting farmers like Robin Hetherington of B&R Farms, Ringtown, off their usual planting schedules. At the time, there were 5.7 inches of rain more than normal, according to Bill Gartner, a meteorologist with the NWS."That rain delayed planting, and with wet soils in the spring, sometimes that can tend to really aggravate things even more when it dries out. It can almost turn to concrete. It gets really dry and the plants often time don't have a really good root system that's down in the soil," Hinkel said.On July 18, Mike Scheidel, owner of Little Peace Farm, an organic farm at 257 Moonhill Drive, Schuylkill Haven, said the heat was damaging crops.According to the 2008-09 edition of Pennsylvania Agricultural Statistics, the most current edition, there are 965 farms in Schuylkill County that make up a total of 118,000 acres. The average size of a farm in the county is 122 acres, said Dwane Miller, county extension director with Penn State Extension Office, Pottsville. | 农业 |
2017-09/0640/en_head.json.gz/4736 | Food Giants Want 'Sustainable' Beef. But What Does That Mean? By Daniel Charles
Mar 25, 2014 TweetShareGoogle+Email Customers order food from a McDonald's restaurant in Des Plaines, Ill. The company has promised to start buying "verified sustainable beef" in 2016.
Originally published on March 25, 2014 3:07 pm McDonald's made a big green splash a few months ago by announcing that it will start buying "verified sustainable" beef in 2016. A chorus of voices responded, "What's 'verified sustainable' beef?" McDonald's, it turns out, is part of a group that's trying to come up with an answer. It's called the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, and its members include some of the biggest names in the beef industry as well as some environmental groups. Last week, the roundtable released a draft of principles and criteria for what might constitute sustainable beef. The document lays out general goals for a sustainable production system, such as minimizing greenhouse gas emissions and damage to ecosystems. But it doesn't say exactly how much "minimizing" it actually takes to qualify as "sustainable." "Those metrics have to be developed nationally," says Alex Bjork, manager of agriculture supply chains at the World Wildlife Fund, a member of the Sustainable Beef Roundtable. Beef production raises different concerns in different countries. In Brazil, "we'd like to see deforestation eliminated," says Bjork. In Australia, environmentalists want to stop sediment washing from grazing areas into the ocean, damaging the Great Barrier Reef. In the U.S., the goal may be to "keep ranchers ranching" in a way that preserves healthy grasslands. On top of those complications, there are trade-offs between different goals. Raising cattle on grass is generally worse for the climate; cattle grow more slowly and emit more greenhouse gases per pound of beef produced. On the other hand, grazing cattle can help preserve diverse grassland ecosystems. For all those reasons, actually getting to a consensus definition of sustainable beef may take a very long time. "Twenty years is kind of the time frame that we're looking at," Bjork says. So why did McDonald's promise to start buying "verified sustainable" beef in 2016? As it happens, that's the year the Global Roundtable on Sustainable Beef plans to begin some pilot projects that will raise cattle in the major beef-producing countries. Researchers will measure the environmental and social effects of producing beef in those operations, and look for ways to do even better. So technically, the beef won't be "verified sustainable" just yet. And while some environmental groups have argued that reducing the demand and supply of meat should be the priority, Bjork is hoping that this effort to reform the beef industry can imitate the Forest Stewardship Council, an international initiative devoted to reducing the environmental damage caused by logging. That group, which is now 20 years old, also brings together private companies and their critics, and according to Bjork, it has led to a global consensus on how forests should be managed.Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/. TweetShareGoogle+EmailView the discussion thread. © 2017 WVXU | 农业 |
2017-09/0640/en_head.json.gz/4756 | DOW AGROSCIENCES' CEO ANTONIO GALINDEZ TO RETIRE, TIM HASSINGER PROMOTEDMar. 21, 2014Source: Dow AgroSciences news release After more than 31 years of service, Antonio Galindez, president and CEO of Dow AgroSciences (DAS), a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE:DOW) will retire from the Company, effective May 1. Tim Hassinger, global commercial leader for Dow AgroSciences and global leader of Dow AgroSciences' Crop Protection Global Business Unit, has been named as Galindez' successor.
Since joining Dow in 1983 as a field sales representative for agricultural products in Spain, Galindez has held a wide variety of leadership roles for both Dow and Dow AgroSciences. During his tenure, he served in a variety of marketing and business positions throughout Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific. In 2006, he was named DAS vice president of the Crop Protection and Seeds business and has been serving as President and CEO since 2009.
"Over the last decade, Dow AgroSciences has become one of the fastest growing companies in the agricultural industry and has developed one of the richest innovation pipelines, with leading solutions in both crop protection and seeds, thanks in large part to Antonio's leadership," said Andrew N. Liveris, Dow chairman and CEO. "We thank him for his many years of service and have great confidence that Tim will build on to and accelerate business momentum going forward."
Hassinger joined Dow in 1984, working in various sales, marketing and supply chain roles before being named global business leader in the Insecticides Global Business Unit in 2001. After serving as the regional commercial unit leader for Greater China, Hassinger returned to Indianapolis and became global leader for Europe, Latin America and Pacific. He assumed his current Crop Protection Global Business Unit global leader responsibilities in 2009 and added global commercial leadership responsibilities last year.
As president and CEO, Hassinger will oversee the global Dow AgroSciences business and report to Bill Weideman, Dow executive vice president and chief financial officer. "Tim has proven leadership skills from his years of experience and expertise at Dow AgroSciences and within the broader global agriculture industry. He is positioned well to take the helm," said Weideman.
About Dow AgroSciences
Dow AgroSciences, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA, is committed to discovering, developing, and bringing to market crop protection and plant biotechnology solutions for the growing world. Dow AgroSciences is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company and had annual global sales of $7.1 billion in 2013. Learn more at www.dowagro.com. Follow Dow AgroSciences on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube or subscribe to our News Release RSS Feed.
About Dow
Dow (NYSE: DOW) combines the power of science and technology to passionately innovate what is essential to human progress. The Company is driving innovations that extract value from the intersection of chemical, physical and biological sciences to help address many of the world's most challenging problems such as the need for clean water, clean energy generation and conservation, and increasing agricultural productivity. Dow's integrated, market-driven, industry-leading portfolio of specialty chemical, advanced materials, agrosciences and plastics businesses delivers a broad range of technology-based products and solutions to customers in approximately 180 countries and in high growth sectors such as packaging, electronics, water, coatings and agriculture. In 2013, Dow had annual sales of more than $57 billion and employed approximately 53,000 people worldwide. The Company's more than 6,000 products are manufactured at 201 sites in 36 countries across the globe. References to "Dow" or the "Company" mean The Dow Chemical Company and its consolidated subsidiaries unless otherwise expressly noted. More information about Dow can be found at www.dow.com.Tweet | 农业 |
2017-09/0640/en_head.json.gz/5051 | Aggie Agriculture: A Recipe for Success in Horticulture Research and Information
Home gardening and the support of locally grown produce is on the rise across the nation. Aggie Horticulture, part of the Texas AgriLife Extension Service at Texas A & M University, is one of the world’s most popular resources on all things horticulture. Dr. Douglas Welsh, Associate Department Head, Professor and Extension Horticulturist at the Texas AgriLife Extension Service Department of Horticultural Sciences, speaks about the origins of Aggie Horticulture and its vital role as a resource for both industry professionals and private gardeners.
What is the aim of the Aggie Horticulture program?
The Aggie-Horticulture® website, aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu, is the primary Internet/electronic outreach of the Texas AgriLife Extension Service in regard to horticultural information. The website’s audience includes the gardening public, as well as the commercial nursery and landscape industry, commercial fruit, nut, and vegetable producers and processors, and horticultural educators across the nation. We feel that Aggie-Horticulture® is the best horticultural website in the world; by the numbers it is in the top 5. What are your responsibilities at Aggie Horticulture?
Martin Anderson serves as the website administrator. Our horticulture faculty, comprised of 44 Extension Horticulturists and County Extension Agents, provides content for the website. My role is simply to provide administrative oversight and get out of the way. Could you tell us about some of the recent projects that have been undertaken as part of Aggie Horticulture?
With over 100,000 documents on the website, revisions and updating is a continuous process. Recently, the Earth-Kind® website has been redesigned, revised, and updated. It provides insight into the widely popular Earth-Kind® Landscaping program which targets water conservation, reducing pesticide and fertilizer use, reducing yard waste entering land fills, and energy conservation. Earth-Kind® Roses are also featured on the website. How did the term “Aggie Horticulture” come about? Texas A&M University has historically been recognized as a top agricultural university. The students are called Aggies, referring to the agricultural roots of the university. The name, Aggie Horticulture, tied the website to two things to which we are committed, the Aggies and horticulture. Who founded Aggie Horticulture? In October 1994, Aggie Horticulture began serving gardening information. Dan Lineberger, Professor in the Department of Horticultural Sciences, was the founder of Aggie Horticulture.
Could you tell us about the responses you have received from those who have been affected by the program?
Perhaps the best evidence of the website’s impact is the web statistics which reflects use of the website. In 2009, Aggie-Horticulture® served over 7.9 million unique visitors, 12.7 million user sessions, and 52.6 million pages viewed. According to the Alexa Traffic Rankings, Aggie-Horticulture® is the number two website in the horticulture category nationwide (846 total websites). Aggie-Horticulture® is also the number seven website in Alexa Traffic Ranking under the category of agriculture nationwide (3,848 websites).
Does Aggie Horticulture accept volunteers?
The volunteers associated with Aggie Horticulture are Texas Master Gardeners. Their primary role as gardening educators is to use the resource of Aggie Horticulture as they provide information and educational activities to the gardening public.
You have been an expert in the field for over three decades. What would you like to see as the future of the horticulture field?
The local foods trend has begun and I am glad to see it. The interest and practice of home vegetable and fruit production is growing rapidly. Not since the late 1970s has such interest been seen. Aggie Horticulture is responding to the need for accurate, environmentally- sound, and practical gardening information. Popular | 农业 |
2017-09/0640/en_head.json.gz/6566 | "At either end of any food chain you find a biological system -- a patch of soil, a human body -- health of one is connected, literally, to the health of the other."
- Michael Pollan Join/Renew
You are here: PublicationsMaine Organic Farmer & GardenerSpring 1998Volunteer - Judy Kirk
Volunteer Profile – Judy Kirk
Judy Kirk remembers going to the Fleece Tent at the Common Ground Country Fair for the first time six years ago. “It’s pretty exciting when you walk into a tent with 500 fleeces. I was like a child in a candy store.” A fleece producer and spinner herself, she started getting “more and more involved,” visiting the tent every day of the Fair and participating in the shows. So three years ago, when the area’s coordinator was ready for a change, Judy took over. Now she shares the job with a co-coordinator, Jeanne Young. Judy and her computer do the summer work while Jeanne “irritates me really well (urging her on), and then, “come September, we both just work ourselves to death for three days.”
The fleece tent brings buyers and sellers of fleeces together. About 500 fleeces – unprocessed, “right off the animal” – are sold during the Fair. MOFGA gets 10% of the selling price. Most of the wool is from sheep, but llama, alpaca and mohair are also represented. The tent’s “great reputation and great diversity” draw people from all over New England, according to Judy. Her goal is to “help people understand fleece more,” and she sees education – shows, workshops, presentations – playing a larger role in the tent’s future. She also hopes to get more kids involved, with hands-on activities such as spinning and carding.
“Fiber I love,” says Judy, “but I love the animals most.” She has a small flock of Romneys on her two acres of land in Orono. “My sheep are my pets.” Three angora rabbits, down from a total of 20 a few years ago, live in an outbuilding, or, when it’s cold, her pantry. She also shares her home with her retail yarn shop, “Damsel Fly,” which she opened in 1981. The shop has been only a part-time avocation for the past five years, when she went back to school. She now has a degree in aquaculture and, while she may not be farming off the coast, the degree “gave me a lot of knowledge.” Now finished with school, she started working full-time at “The Store,” a natural foods store in Orono, last September.
She also gardens. “I’m a big gardener,” she says. Although she is the only human eating regularly at her house – her two children are grown and her husband died five years ago – she still grows at least 32 tomato plants because she “can’t resist” all the new and heirloom varieties. “It’s nuts, but I can’t help it.” She has an herb garden, raised beds for vegetables, raspberries, grapes and “lots of flowers.” Her children have inherited her zeal. Her daughter managed a nursery when she lived in New Mexico, then worked for Smith & Hawken in San Francisco. She now owns a plant and garden store in Orono. When she moved back, before her brother’s wedding last August, she and her mother “tore up the garden. We totally redid everything for the wedding.” The new lawns and plantings were a success. And while Judy has been growing hot peppers for her son for the past few years, she is sure that he and his wife “are going to have a great garden this year.” Besides, “I’m counting on him to get some this manure.”
With “fingers in so many pies,” Judy says of her life, “obviously I’ve got to cut back somewhere.” But of the big garden she says, “It’s hard to give up something like that.” And when asked if she plans to keep working with MOFGA, she just states, “Yep. I sure do.” She’s excited about the new site and the possibilities for a continuing agricultural program there. She volunteers at a living history museum, Leonard’s Mills, and says, “that’s fine, that’s history. But this [the new site] is today, this is not a historical museum, this is life. People will be able to see they can do it, too.”
– Ann Cox Halkett | 农业 |
2017-09/0640/en_head.json.gz/6765 | WACC joins FAO advisory group
Maria Cristina Forero Ramirez, 35, picking some of the tomatoes she produces in her garden as part of a project that supports 55 IDP women to produce their own food. The project helps women who are displaced by violence to produce food for their families and for sale. Photo: ACT/Sean Hawkey
WACC has accepted an invitation from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) to join an advisory group preparing for the International Forum on Communication for Development and Community Media for Family Farming (IFCCM), scheduled to take place at FAO headquarters in Rome on Oct. 28-29, 2014.
The forum is being organized by the FAO office of Partnerships, Advocacy and Capacity Development in the context of the 2014 International Year of Family Farming, which aims to raise the profile of family and smallholder farming.
The international forum is being organized in collaboration with the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC). The Forum is an official event of the Year of Family Farming and will also take place in connection with the Global Dialogue on Family Farming (30-31 October, 2014). The main objective of the Forum is to identify policy options, strategic partnerships and a road map to promote communication for development (ComDev) services in support of family farming and rural development.
“The invitation to join the advisory group is a recognition of WACC’s long-term experience in working with marginalized and dispossessed people whose rights to communicate are systematically denied,” said WACC general secretary the Rev. Dr. Karin Achtelstetter. She especially drew attention to WACC’s activities and projects in the areas of rural poverty reporting and community radio. The Forum will be an opportunity to showcase experiences and lessons learned about the contribution of ComDev and community media to rural development challenges. It will be preceded by virtual consultations to identify priorities and common agendas also at the regional level.
The advisory group will provide technical orientation to the IFCCM and follow-up to its resolutions. The group began its activities during the first week of July 2014, including organizational meetings, promotion of online consultations and studies on the role of ComDev and community media to advance family farming and the identification of partnerships and follow-up initiatives.
Categories: News Keywords: Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, International Year of Family Farming Add A Comment | 农业 |
2017-09/0640/en_head.json.gz/6955 | Industry Drought costs California's ag industry $2.2 billion
The Drought Monitor map of California, released on July 17, 2014. More than 80 percent of California is in extreme or worse drought, according to the latest Drought Monitor report. No drought improvement is expected through the end of October as the prospects of a mega El Niño fizzle.
The state’s agricultural industry is being hit especially hard by the drought.
A new study released last week put a hefty price tag on the state’s drought, which has cost the state’s agricultural industry an estimated $2.2 billion and put some 17,000 agricultural workers out of the job this year.
Scientists warn the worst of it may not even be over. The drought could last for several more years, even with the arrival of El Niño. “Statistically, the drought is likely to continue through 2015 – regardless of El Niño conditions,” the report said. “A continued drought also increases the vulnerability of agriculture, as urban users with largely adequate supplies in 2014 will likely buy water from agricultural areas.”
Climatologist Brian Fuchs of the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska agrees the drought won’t be easy to break.
He explained in a Los Angeles Times article here California’s prolonged drought means it will be “harder to break the cycle,” much like some thirsty regions in Oklahoma and the entire state of Texas, which have been struggling with drought since 2010.
Additional dry years in 2015 and 2016 could end up costing crop farming in Central Valley an estimated $1 billion annually.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the financial losses point to a need to build new reservoirs in the state. Previous proposals to expand water infrastructure have been met with opposition from environmental and other groups
"One of the saddest things about the losses caused by the drought is that they could have been prevented," said Paul Wenger, president of the California Farm Bureau Federation.
Richard Howitt, a University of California, Davis professor emeritus of agriculture and resource economics, told the Associated Press it’s time for farmers to take a lead in managing groundwater to irrigate crops and sustain the state’s agricultural industry.
"My message to farmers is treat groundwater like you treat your retirement account," Howitt said in an interview. "Know how much water's in it and how fast it's being used."
See, “California drought threatens to dry up farm wells.”
historic droughtcaliforniaagriculture About the Author: | 农业 |
2017-09/0614/en_head.json.gz/8172 | What are the main crops in Italy?
Italy's rich soil, especially in the Po region, makes it possible to grow rice, corn, wheat, grapes, olives and tomatoes. Italy uses a majority of these crops, but the country is a major exporter of rice.
What crops are grown in Italy?
What fruits are grown in Italy?
What do people eat in Italy?
Francesco Sgroi
Italy uses its land to grow field and tree crops. Some of these crops grow better in one area than another, and the country considers its rice, wheat, tomatoes, olives and grapes to be its most important crops.People in Italy use hard wheat to make pasta, and use soft wheat to produce bread and pizza crust. Two of the most successful agricultural exports out of Italy are olives and wine made from Italian grapes.
Learn more about Italy
britannica.com
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2017-09/0614/en_head.json.gz/8305 | You are here: Home › Resources › USDA › Survey of American Honeys, Part 10: Summary
Survey of American Honeys, Part 10: Summary Gleanings in Bee Culture – August, 1961
10. Summary 1/
JONATHAN W. WHITE, JR.
Eastern Regional Research Laboratory
Eastern Utilization Research and Development Division
Agricultural Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture
Philadelphia 18, Pennsylvania
This is the last of a series of ten articles on the different honeys of America.
In the previous articles in this series, we have attempted to describe briefly the high-lights of our analytical survey of the composition of American honeys. We have presented average values for the composition of honey, based on 490 analyses, and for honeydew based on 14 analyses. A listing of 74 types of honey and 4 honeydews has been included which shows generally how the various kinds of honey compare with average values and with one another.
The kinds of sugars, rare and common, that are found in honey were discussed. All honey samples were found to have the same sugars present, but the relative amounts did differ considerably.
Differences in composition of honey have been considered that can be ascribed to area of production. Probably the only reliable way to assess this factor is by statistically comparing average values for several samples of the same type of honey from different areas.
In other articles the relationship of color and of granulating tendency of honey to its composition were discussed. It was shown that the granulating tendency of honey can be predicted from its dextrose and water content. A D/W ratio of 1.70 or less generally means a non-granulating honey, while a value of 2.10 or more predicts a relatively rapid complete granulation. Values between these imply partial granulation.
In comparing dark honeys with light honeys, we have confirmed that the former show higher ash and nitrogen contents. We have also shown that the dark honeys are lower in dextrose and levulose content, granulate less, and are higher in acids.
Storage of honey at ordinary temperatures has been seen to cause considerable loss in free simple sugars, increases in more complex sugars, some increase in acids and rather considerable (3% per month) losses in diastase content.
The laboratory work in this project, representing nearly 10,000 separate analyses, was carried out by the individuals named in the first article in this series. We could not have done this work without the active cooperation of hundreds of honey producers, packers, extension specialists, apiary inspectors, national and state organizations and their officers and others. They cannot be named here, but we are greatly appreciative of their cooperation.
All of the individual analytical results, complete descriptions of all samples, and names of those cooperating appear in the final technical bulletin to be published by the Department of Agriculture. This will also contain descriptions of the analytical methods used, a review of the literature and show the statistical evaluations of the data.
In addition to the principal tables of data, averages are included for all floral types and blends in which more than one representative was present. Average values of all honey samples as classified by plant family is given, and a table showing the average composition of honey from each of the 47 states having samples, as well as a map showing sample distribution.
No mention has been made in these articles of the flavor of honey. This does not mean that it is not considered important, but simply that it is difficult to measure and practically impossible to describe. It is, of course, probably the most important single attribute of honey, and possibly the one that is least understood chemically. More attention should be given to flavor and its maintenance in honey, especially protection against processing factors within our control.
1/ This is one in a series of articles describing a large-scale study of the composition of honeys from over the United States. Complete data interpretation and conclusions will appear in a forthcoming Department of Agriculture publication. | 农业 |
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Industry models play a crucial role in driving enterprise intelligence transformation and innovative development. High-quality industry data is key to improving the performance of large models and realizing industry applications. However, datasets currently used for industry model training generally suffer from issues such as insufficient data volume, low quality, and lack of domain expertise.
To address these problems, we constructed and applied 22 industry data processing operators to clean and filter 3.4TB of high-quality multi-industry classified Chinese and English language pre-training datasets from over 100TB of open-source datasets including WuDaoCorpora, BAAI-CCI, redpajama, and SkyPile-150B. The filtered data consists of 1TB of Chinese data and 2.4TB of English data. To facilitate user utilization, we annotated the Chinese data with 12 types of labels including alphanumeric ratio, average line length, language confidence score, maximum line length, and perplexity.
Furthermore, to validate the dataset's performance, we conducted continued pre-training, SFT, and DPO training on a medical industry demonstration model. The results showed a 20% improvement in objective performance and a subjective win rate of 82%.
Industry categories: 18 categories including medical, education, literature, finance, travel, law, sports, automotive, news, etc. Rule-based filtering: Traditional Chinese conversion, email removal, IP address removal, link removal, Unicode repair, etc. Chinese data labels: Alphanumeric ratio, average line length, language confidence score, maximum line length, perplexity, toxicity character ratio, etc. Model-based filtering: Industry classification language model with 80% accuracy Data deduplication: MinHash document-level deduplication Data size: 1TB Chinese, 2.4TB English
Industry classification data size:
| Industry Category | Data Size (GB) | Industry Category | Data Size (GB) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Programming | 4.1 | Politics | 326.4 |
| Law | 274.6 | Mathematics | 5.9 |
| Education | 458.1 | Sports | 442 |
| Finance | 197.8 | Literature | 179.3 |
| Computer Science | 46.9 | News | 564.1 |
| Technology | 333.6 | Film & TV | 162.1 |
| Travel | 82.5 | Medicine | 189.4 |
| Agriculture | 41.6 | Automotive | 40.8 |
| Emotion | 31.7 | Artificial Intelligence | 5.6 |
| Total (GB) | 3386.5 |
For the convenience of users to download and use, we have split the large dataset into sub-datasets for 18 industries. The current one is the sub-dataset for the agriculture industry.
Data processing workflow:
- Downloads last month
- 98
Size of the auto-converted Parquet files (First 5GB):
2.83 GB
Number of rows (First 5GB):
796,241
Estimated number of rows:
7,008,196