The government of Canada has decided to
end the
Canadian Wheat Board's single desk system for the sale and export of wheat and barley. This has been on the
Conservative agenda for
some time now, despite some claims that farmers
support the Wheat Board. Many are suggesting that the repercussions could stretch beyond wheat farmers; including concern for the town of Churchill, known mostly for the local
bear population, which does
95% of their port business through the Wheat Board.
A
history and
primer of the Wheat Board.
Previously
It's
co-op week on metafiler?
posted by Stagger Lee
on Oct 17, 2011 -
96 comments
Let's say just for a moment that you were ready to cash out. Quit your job. Sell your house. Take you and yours out of the rat race with a few hundred of your friends and family and relocate onto arable land. What tools would you need to sustain a livable—maybe even comfortable—lifestyle?
Open Source Ecology suggests you start with ~2.6 million dollars and
these |
fifty |
machines (← watch this first), collectively referred to as the Global Village Construction Set.
posted by carsonb
on Mar 28, 2011 -
48 comments
Now that winter is officially here, maybe you're thinking about warmer times, and your vegetable garden. Here are some online tools and resources to help you plan your next bumper crop.
Mother Earth News Garden Planner is an online app that can help you layout your garden, and once you've done that, it'll tell you when you should start planting, based on your location. It even takes into account things like successive sowing and crop rotation, all with an eye towards organic farming practices. (Don't like associating with the Mother Earthers? The same app is available via
GrowVeg.com.)
Considering more unusual varieties this year? How about heirloom varieties?
Seed Savers Exchange |
Victory Seeds |
Seeds of Change. And of course, there's always
Burpee for your more garden variety seeds.
And be sure to check out these
composting tips.
Or if all of this is just too much work, you can always sign up for a share in
a nearby CSA.
posted by crunchland
on Dec 22, 2010 -
22 comments
The Cornucopia Institute's
Organic Egg Scorecard ranks egg producers on a scale from 1 to 5 eggs,
using criteria like
outdoor access, indoor space per bird, ownership structure, beak trimming and other factors [pdf]. The scorecard is part of the Institute's new report,
Scrambled Eggs: Separating Factory Farm Egg Production from Authentic Organic Agriculture. The
executive summary [pdf] provides some political context.
"
Whole Foods, Walmart, A&P, Costco, Meijer, Safeway, and Trader Joe's store-brand eggs all received the lowest possible rating in Cornucopia's study."
posted by mediareport
on Oct 5, 2010 -
69 comments
Last year, Yang Youde learned that his land had been requisitioned. Since the compensation terms for breaking the contract had not been settled, he has refused to move out. "The evictors said many times that they will move on me." Earlier this year, Yang took measures to protect himself. He took a hand-truck and removed the front. Then he put in a set of rockets for use as an artillery battery.
posted by Artw
on Jun 8, 2010 -
34 comments
Asia Snapshots "is a blog that examines topics in Asia through the perspectives of interesting people interviewed by a group of bloggers in Mainland China, Vietnam, Taiwan, and more." Meet
Gao Qingrong and family, who along with seven other households are part of
an organic farm co-op in Anlong Village, Sichuan. Or there's
the tale of how one of the bloggers met Jun Jun, a male prostitute in Beijing; an encounter with
Silang Laji, a road maintenance worker in Kham, a Tibetan region of China; and
Gege, an enterprising journalist in Chengdu.
Via
posted by Abiezer
on Feb 28, 2010 -
4 comments
No conflict of interest there, no sir. Organic food fans and small farmers alike are saying if HR 875 is passed, it will mean the end of organic farming in the United States. An overstatement? Perhaps, but HR 875 has serious flaws. The bill, introduced by Rosa DeLauro last month (who happens to be married to Stanley Greenburg of Monsanto, the world's largest producer of herbicides, chemical fertilizers and genetically engineered seeds), is
here.
[more inside]
posted by bitter-girl.com
on Mar 18, 2009 -
56 comments
Vegetable farming! Boar breeding! All the maniac thrills of 17th century agriculture --
on your tabletop! Since its
introduction two years ago,
Agricola has grown from being a German hit to a runaway success worldwide -- at least among the niche market of serious board game fans.
[more inside]
posted by Shepherd
on Jan 29, 2009 -
34 comments
"Dear Mr. President-Elect, It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food." Michael Pollan advises the next president on what he can and should do to remake the way we grow and eat our food.
[Via]
posted by homunculus
on Oct 10, 2008 -
30 comments
P.F.1 (Public Farm One) is a project designed by WORK Architecture Company for MoMA and P.S.1's Young Architects Program. P.F.1’s intent is to "educate thousands of visitors on sustainable urban farming through the unique medium of contemporary architecture." An artist in Providence, RI developed a similar installation called
Green Zone, "an organic vegetable, herb, and flower garden planted in the detritus of wartime consumption: used tires, shopping bags, shoes, and other repurposed containers" at local venue
Firehouse 13.
posted by lunit
on Jul 16, 2008 -
5 comments
"As a great architect once said, 'Buildings should look like what they are'." John Jessop became so frustrated with the red tape required for his company to get permission to build a farm shed,
he submitted a sarcastic application . Read his full "Planning Application for Erection of Agricultural Implement Shed"
here [pdf, 3 pages]. No word yet on whether the shed was approved.
Via.
posted by amyms
on Apr 24, 2008 -
27 comments
The new face of hunger -- “World agriculture has entered a new, unsustainable and politically risky period” says the International Food Policy Research Institute. Food riots have erupted in countries all along the equator because of soaring food commodity prices. So, where does the world get more food? If the extra supplies are to come mainly from large farmers in America and Europe, then they may be
trapped in a farm subsidy Catch-22. Increase production per acre? We just learned about the myth of GM crops (
previously of MeFi). All of this is why some are just
sitting out Earth Day.
posted by netbros
on Apr 22, 2008 -
114 comments
Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear. "Monsanto already dominates America’s food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation’s tactics–ruthless legal battles against small farmers–is its decades-long history of toxic contamination."
posted by homunculus
on Apr 3, 2008 -
77 comments
In 1910 African-Americans owned
16-19
million acres of land in the United
States, much of it rural farmland. Today, that figure has dropped to less
than
8
million acres overall, and less than 2 million farm acres.
What
happened? In some cases,
violence— whites
would forcibly take farmland, a homestead, or a home from the black
residents, who were often powerless to fight back in the face of systemic
racism, threats of retaliation, and the 'enforcement' of the thefts by
the Ku Klux Klan. More perniciously, many of these losses were the result
of
forced partition land sales.
Many
legal
scholars and activists today
are working to
reverse the
trend.
[some pdfs]
posted by miss tea
on Dec 16, 2007 -
41 comments
The
Cooperative Extension Service, founded in 1914 in the US by the Smith-Lever Act, was established in concert with the
land-grant universities to develop practical applications of agricultural research, and spread them to farmers and others throughout the country. As part of this education program, the extension programs have produced and collected an extraordinary amount of practical advice, easily accessible to the layman...
[more inside]
posted by Upton O'Good
on Sep 18, 2007 -
12 comments
"My general feeling about farmers is that they can go fuck themselves."
The most recent essay published in the new online magazine '
The Smart Set', is a rather contrarian view of rural life, and poses an interesting question: just why does our society have a general consensus that rural=good and urban=bad?
"What do the farmers really believe, anyway? ... Don't they know that the mute indifference of nature is as terrifying and empty as the noisy scrambling of the metropolis?"
posted by woodblock100
on Sep 4, 2007 -
153 comments
Killered Bees. The NYTimes covers the mysterious collapse of commercial honeybee colonies over the last 5-months, covering
dozens of states. The disease,
Colony Collapse Disorder, does not have a determined cause. The
Canary Database indicates that
bees can serve as
"canaries in a coalmine" for human diseases, as many other animals do. Some of the suspected causative agents (as reported [
pdf] by
Penn State) include a immunodeficiency, the hive consumption of high-fructose corn syrup, nutritional stress, parasites, infectious diseases, stress due to colony splitting and relocation, insecticides, and antibiotic use. The die-offs are likely to adversely impact both
prices and crop yields.
posted by rzklkng
on Feb 28, 2007 -
45 comments
