I first encountered the concept of forest gardening in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland (1915) [relevant part pages 79-80]; the fictional race of women in her book have completely remade the forests to contain only beneficial and food-bearing plants, which live harmoniously together and replenish the soil naturally. This is actually being done, less than a hundred years later. More; similar, similar.
posted on Jul 7, 2008 - View this thread

The environmental cost of large-scale pot farming
posted on Jul 1, 2008 - View this thread

The U.S. Climate Change Science Program has just released "Synthesis and Assessment Product 4.3: The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity in the United States." It makes for pretty interesting reading.
posted on Jun 2, 2008 - View this thread

"King Cotton" created a huge demand for land and (slave) labor that changed early America's borders, population, and economics. But just as cotton affected history, history affected cotton: the story of naturally colored cottons -- brown, green, yellow, mauve, and reddish cottons -- has almost been lost.
posted on May 9, 2008 - View this thread

Cheap Corn Makes Your Life Short
posted on Apr 20, 2008 - View this thread

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 on Apr 3, 2008 - View this thread

I’ve discovered that typically, a farmer who grows the forbidden fruits and vegetables on corn acreage not only has to give up his subsidy for the year on that acreage, he is also penalized the market value of the illicit crop, and runs the risk that those acres will be permanently ineligible for any subsidies in the future. (The penalties apply only to fruits and vegetables — if the farmer decides to grow another commodity crop, or even nothing at all, there’s no problem.) If you can't stop demand, curtail production. One farmer's view on the power of commodity crops.
posted on Mar 1, 2008 - View this thread

Villagers in the mountains of northern India and Pakistan have been growing their own glaciers for centuries. They're small domesticated glaciers, cultivated by hand, and they provide a reliable source of water for agriculture. Legend has it that they made glaciers to block mountain passes and keep the Mongol Hordes out! More detail in New Scientist - subscription required, but you can probably see this instruction sheet.
posted on Feb 7, 2008 - View this thread

Undercover video (warning: very graphic) released by the Humane Society reveals abuse of animals on the slaughterhouse floor and other code violations.
posted on Feb 1, 2008 - View this thread

City Farmer is a Vancouver-based organization that's been promoting urban agriculture since 1978. If you dig around their sprawling website, you can find everything from this feel-good news story, to a series of links leading to a nice deep free book. Alternatively, their new blog has cool pictures.
posted on Jan 20, 2008 - View this thread

Axis of Agriculture: Tagging Terrorist Chickens If you worry about al-Qaeda infiltrating the Amish farming community or the organic food movement, you can finally relax.
posted on Jan 18, 2008 - View this thread

In 1798, English economist Thomas Malthus promised "Famine ... the last, the most dreadful resource of nature." It took another 125 years for world population to double, but only 50 more for it to redouble. By the 1940s, Mexi­co, China, India, Russia, and Europe were hungry.
posted on Jan 11, 2008 - View this thread

King of Fruits, Tempter of Adam, Prize of Paris: It's apple-picking time. The apple's origins reach into prehistory. Thanks to tremendous genetic variance in each new generation, humans have cultivated a dizzying number of named varieties, as many as 17,000, of which 7500 are available as growth stock. In the past, different apples were prized for particular strengths: cider pressing, storage, cooking, drying, or eating out of hand. Despite this bounty, just 15 shelf-stable, shiny, easy-to-pick varieties account for 90% of apple sales today. But heirloom apple growers are working to preserve the old flavors of the Roxbury Russet, the Westfield Seek-No-Further, the Fallawater, the Limbertwig, the King Luscious...
posted on Oct 2, 2007 - View this thread

"Find Good Food Near You. Want fresh, locally grown food, but don't know where to find it? The LocalHarvest community level map makes it easy to find sustainable farmers, farmers markets and Community Supported Agriculture projects (CSAs) in your area."
posted on Sep 30, 2007 - View this thread

Horse Power: A practical suggestion that would transform the way we live.
posted on Sep 3, 2007 - View this thread

As the global climate changes, agriculture is sure to be affected. The Stern Review explains that "developing countries - in particular the poorest - are heavily dependent on agriculture, the most climate-sensitive of all economic sectors." Working Group II of the IPCC says that: "Smallholder and subsistence farmers, pastoralists and artisanal fisherfolk will suffer complex, localised impacts of climate change (high confidence)." Meanwhile, some important staple crops are especially threatened by rising temperatures (though genetic engineering may help). You can experience a taste of it yourself, with a climate change awareness fast, taking place on Tuesday, September 4th.
posted on Aug 30, 2007 - View this thread

Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal by Joel Salatin. This Saturday will mark this article's four year anniversary. Frankly, I was mildly surprised not to have found it mentioned before in MeFi. It's a good read about a sad state of affairs; how our government is turning its own people into outlaws, because freedom has been traded in for an illusion of security. ...but then we already knew that. Don't we?
posted on Aug 29, 2007 - View this thread

The Case for Resilience. How Efficiency Maximizes Catastrophe.
posted on Aug 15, 2007 - View this thread

Farms Fund Robots to Replace Migrant Fruit Pickers
posted on Jun 26, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Feb 28, 2007 - View this thread

Norway unveils "Doomsday Vault" design. The Svalbard International Seed Vault, administered by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, aims to safeguard the world's agriculture from future catastrophies.
posted on Feb 8, 2007 - View this thread

"Tall-tale postcards emerged around the turn of the 20th century, when postcards came to function as surrogates for travel. People soon realized that postcards could be used to create or sustain a certain utopian myth about a town or region, and crafty photographers began to physically manipulate their photographs. Nowhere did these modified images, or "tall-tale postcards" as they came to be called, become more prevalent than in rural communities that hoped to forge an identity as places of agricultural abundance to encourage settlement and growth. Food sources specific to the region — vegetables, fruits, or fish — were the most common subjects."
posted on Dec 30, 2006 - View this thread

NewCROP index part of the Center for New Crops & Plant Products, at Purdue University is an amazing collection of commercial plant information. From Macadamia nuts and qinghao to Tumbleweed and Sweetgrass a broad range of plants are detailed. The information that is included for each ranges from a single paragraph for Quackgrass to dozens of internal and external links for Soybeans. Crops are listed both alphabetically by genus and common name. Warning: Web .95 navigation
posted on Sep 15, 2006 - View this thread

Quality from the Himalayas. Amid continuing civil violence, Nepal has just made a big push to escape poverty through your local Starbucks. Working with Winrock International, Nepal's tea growers are finalizing a Code of Conduct that would eliminate pesticides banned by the EU and commit tea growers to replenishing the soil, using organic fertilizers whenever and wherever possible, and using fair labor and wage practices -- making Nepal Orthodox Tea more environmentally- and worker-friendly than its better-known rival Darjeeling. In the process, they hope to create a gourmet niche product (pdf; go to p. 8) that appeals to the taste and sensibilities of socially-conscious Westerners through a partnership with Tazo (Starbucks' main tea supplier), as well as to modernize the local industry to create greater international awareness of its products.
posted on Aug 2, 2006 - View this thread

The Vanishing. "Bees are in grave danger. So is our food supply. Why something so small matters so much."
posted on Jul 9, 2006 - View this thread

The last hope of life on earth: Svalbard. Most of humanity depends on just 12 plant species, down from over 7,000 historically. Fortunately, seeds can be viable for up to thousands of years, and seed banks have already preserved many species, including the entire plant population of Antarctica. But with seed banks being destroyed as the result of wars and accident, Norway has has begun work on an underground facility, protected by polar bears, in the Arctic permafrost that is designed to hold millions of seeds, as "final safety net" for humanity.
posted on Jun 19, 2006 - View this thread

Exporting green and leafy water. Agricultural exports, including fresh fruit and vegetables, are an important source of income for many developing countries, but they also threaten the evironmental future of those same producers. "Irrigated agriculture accounts for 70% of the freshwater used globally", while only a part returns to the environment. It isn't just in Africa; in India and in North America, all over the globe, water supplies are being stretched to the point of near breaking. [more inside]
posted on Apr 29, 2006 - View this thread

Seeds of Imagination operates on the premise that talking (er, typing) to your plants encourages interesting growth. Try: sun, water, love, happy, fruit, etc. If a word is recognized, you will see it float up toward your plant. If not, it just disappears without a trace. You may also change the color of parts of the plant by typing in colors. (note: Flash, subtle ad)
posted on Apr 10, 2006 - View this thread

Black Farmers in America: video presentation (Quicktime) and photo essay by John Ficara
posted on Mar 14, 2006 - View this thread

2005 Washington State 10 largest agricultural commodities: (1) Apples, (2) Milk, (3) Wheat, (4) Potatoes, (5) Cattle and calves, (6) Hay, (7) Nursery and greenhouse products, (8) Marijuana, (9) Cherries, (10) Onions.
posted on Feb 17, 2006 - View this thread

The USDA is working on a plan to enforce registration and identification of all livestock animals in the US. [More Inside]
posted on Jan 12, 2006 - View this thread

The Story of Wheat
posted on Dec 27, 2005 - View this thread

Was agriculture a mistake? Guns, Germs, and Steel author Jared Diamond asks this question. Originally published in 1987, it's still completely relevant today. I personally feel that memes are the real culprit, and they are inevitable in any sizable social group with a common system of communication. Could agriculture be an ancient meme which has profoundly impacted the history of mankind?
posted on Jun 27, 2005 - View this thread

Sweeping out the Plains: "The great wave of population, which swept homesteaders onto the Northern Great Plains with the promise of free land and hope for a bright future around the turn of the last century, is sweeping back out again at the beginning of this one." This map of counties with 10% or more population loss in the last 20 years really highlights the phenomenon. A shorter version of this piece published in todays KC Star. (See also Endangered Historic Places: Prairie Churches.)
posted on May 29, 2005 - View this thread

Cash on the Scarecrow, Pork on the Plow
Matt Welch, using data from Environmental Working Group, examines the largesse of subsidies to Mellencamps.
posted on Apr 17, 2005 - View this thread

I know this has been on everyone's mind, but I just read this article today and was astounded at my lack of foresight. Silly me, here I was worrying about global warming when what I need to be fretting about is the decrease in fuel's impact on the structure of international banking! Will we run out of fossil fuel before it's too late to save the environment from pollution and greenhouse gasses? The abiotic nuts think we've got plenty more. Personally, I think we can kiss the marvel that is suburbia goodbye and start contemplating the fact that the focus on the post-post industrial revolution will not be information, but rather agriculture. And since solar panels and windmills and the like are made of materials that are extracted, transported, and fashioned by using oil-powered machinery, my money's on the folks who're stockpiling uranium for all those shiny new nuclear plants we're going to need. So, do we have a plan? You bet we do! Oh. Well, we'll just rely on the advancement of technology to allow us to weasel out of it! Me? I've actually always wanted a horse.
posted on Apr 14, 2005 - View this thread

Robo-tractor: Let the GPS do it!
posted on Apr 11, 2005 - View this thread

Community Supported Agriculture : Are you a city-dweller and tired of the wilted lettuce leaves your local grocery store considers a produce department? Looking for a way to support your local farmers while benefiting from great, fresh, often organic, in-season fruits and vegetables? Now is the time to find a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm. You buy a share (costing anywhere from $100 $600 early in the year), and every week throughout the growing season, your share pays you dividends. Here's a list of what you'd have gotten from one near me had you subscribed last year.
posted on Feb 3, 2005 - View this thread

Farmer Homer McFarland is being sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars by the Monsanto corporation. His crime? Replanting his crops' own seed, as farmers have done for millennia, which violates the biotech giant's intellectual property rights, the company claims. Quietly, Monsanto's aggressive "seed police" have been suing farmers in 25 states for years, often settling out of court for huge sums, according to the Center for Food Safety's new report, Monsanto vs. US farmers [PDF link]. For more information, also see a new documentary called The Future of Food.
posted on Jan 15, 2005 - View this thread

Got hay? The USDA helps you sell hay in Tennessee and buy hay in Minnesota.
posted on Jan 13, 2005 - View this thread

Tomatoes! They are delicious, or at least they used to be. First came ethylene ripening and monoculture which turned them into tasteless red baseballs, and taste was't the only problem. Then came this year's hurricanes which decimated the crops, driving prices up. And now, just when you think you've found a really tasty variant on the market with the wonderfully appropriate name of UglyRipe, the state growers board goes and bans them for being too ugly. If you agree that this sucks go and tell the guys in charge.

Man, that little red fruit sure does seem to cause a lot of trouble. Maybe we should try to smash them all.
posted on Dec 11, 2004 - View this thread

The Alien Plant.
In Georgia, the legend says
That you must close your windows
At night to keep it out of the house.
posted on Nov 11, 2004 - View this thread

Pork Farmers in Hog Heaven! Atkins and skyrocketing beef prices result in pork producers "experiencing demand far in excess of anything [they]'ve seen historically." Pork prices are very high on the spot and futures market but still a value relative to meat. Perhaps this will increase the demand for tasty Berkshire hog pork, the kind that pre-dates the breeding which produced the "other white meat."
posted on Oct 19, 2004 - View this thread

The failure of biotech. "In June 1996, the University of California, Davis, began an unprecedented effort to help the West African nation of Mali, using the promising and controversial new tool of agricultural biotechnology... Eight years later, no help whatsoever has arrived... In the hopes that inspired the effort - and the missteps that stifled it - lies a drama larger than the sum of its parts, one that shows both the promise and pitfalls of the largest technological leap in American agriculture since the tractor: biotechnology." The start of a five-part series in the Sacramento Bee: long, but well worth it. (Via MonkeyFilter.)
posted on Jun 6, 2004 - View this thread

The fabulous ruins of Detroit: "After decades of blight, large swathes of Detroit are being reclaimed by nature. Roughly a third of this 139-square-mile city consists of weed-choked lots and dilapidated buildings . . . rather than fight this return to nature, urban farmers have embraced it, gradually converting 15 acres of idle land into more than 40 community gardens and microfarms — some consuming entire blocks." [note: NY Times link]
posted on Dec 9, 2003 - View this thread

To protest the U.S.' agriculture policy, hundreds of farmers in Thailand have cursed George W. Bush with black magic. The commander-in-chief's soul now rests forever in a pot at the bottom of the Ping River. General William Boykin has volunteered to free the soul for the forces of righteousness. If only.
posted on Oct 18, 2003 - View this thread

You are fat because there is too much corn. [NYT, forfeit of first-born son required] I love good old-fashioned materialism, and Michael Pollan (author of The Botany of Desire) scores one for the team with this article on the economics of corn production. Are we fat because New Deal agricultural policy was overturned in the 70s by Rusty Butz? Now there's a trailing question we can all enjoy.
posted on Oct 11, 2003 - View this thread

'Superweeds' signal setback for genetically modified crops.
posted on Jun 25, 2003 - View this thread

Wild West Yorkshire Nature Diary. 'My diary describes a year in the life of woodland, field, marsh, river, canal . . . and a fairly wild back garden . . . in the Calder valley in coal measures country near Wakefield.'
Richard Bell's nature diary has been online since 1998.
The site's links page leads to more nature diaries and related resources :
Ackworth School's natural history diary, Roseberry Topping, an environmentally friendly slug trap, Yorkshire dialect verse, wildscapes from Texas, Notes from Pure Land Mountain (a journal from countryside Japan), and more.
Although it's not linked, An English Country Garden, chronicling a garden in a small village in Dorset, would not be out of place here; neither would Blackberry Creek Journal, 'a country newsletter about the seasons, animals, gardens and people of a small Michigan farm'. There is a huge collection of gardening journals and homepages here. [more inside]
posted on Mar 20, 2003 - View this thread

Buried within the $397 billion spending bill passed last night [Feb. 13] by Congress is a provision that would permit livestock producers to certify and label meat as "organic" even if the animals had been fed partly or entirely on conventional rather than organic grain. [from NYT] [more inside]
posted on Feb 23, 2003 - View this thread