Tag: Agriculture

Industrial Food Production Is Failing Us, Regenerative Farming Is the Solution

Via The Defender

A new report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, based on interviews with more than 100 farmers and ranchers from 47 states, details how regenerative agriculture can make the food system more resilient and also protect biodiversity.

regenerative farming industrial ag feature

By Arohi Sharma, Lara Bryant and Ellen Lee

Our food and farming system is facing a reckoning — a global pandemic that upended supply chains and unearthed the horrific consequences of a consolidated meatpacking industry, climate change threatening food production across the country, fertilizer shortages, rising prices at the grocery store and a sector that accounts for 10% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

Our current agricultural system is failing us. It’s high time we build toward a stronger, healthier, more equitable and more resilient one.

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An Inconvenient Truth: The Peasant Food Web Feeds the World

Via Off-Guardian

In October 2020, CropLife International said that its new strategic partnership with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) would contribute to sustainable food systems.

It added that it was a first for the industry and the FAO and demonstrates the determination of the plant science sector to work constructively in a partnership where common goals are shared.

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NOT FARMING

Submitted by Hardscrabble Farmer

How do you lose 170 million dollars on a farm that hasn’t produced a single vegetable?

Use language like this…

“The company expects a full-year net loss between $170-$172.5M, including fourth-quarter non-cash goodwill and an intangible impairment charge of around $60M.”

Ah, the bugbear of agriculture, intangible impairment.

“One of the main drivers for share decline today was delays at two indoor verticle farms. The first was at an indoor facility that grows salad greens and another for tomatoes, and both won’t be fully operational until the end of the year. The company said last August that both facilities would be operational by the midpoint of the year.”

Verticle.

Here’s the new CEO and spell checker-

via GIPHY

Martha Stewart-Backed AppHarvest Plunges After Farm Delays

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/martha-stewart-backed-appharvest-plunges-after-farm-delaysOn Monday, high-tech greenhouse startup AppHarvest plunged as much as 23% to $2.66, a 52-week low after reporting worsening preliminary 2021 financial results and farm delays.

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Modified Hügelkultur Mounds for Fruit Trees

Following the same theme as my previous permaculture articles on blueberry beds and living fences, I’m going to provide some reasonably copious notes on my current process of constructing modified hügelkultur mounds for our fruit tree orchard. It will not include my efforts on the mini-gardens in between each tree (i.e. either in-row or between rows), nor will it include detailed information on the tree cultivars and rootstocks. However, this time around I will embed some accompanying images to serve as layman’s helpers. Hopefully my efforts will serve the reader well enough to facilitate the printing of a how-to guide.

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INDUSTRIALIZED AGRICULTURE – BIGGEST MISTAKE OF 20TH CENTURY

From Hardscrabble Farmer

Llpoh should have picked a better example of the success of industrialization than agriculture. If eating was simply a matter of producing the highest number of calories from a specific plot of land with the lowest investment of labor regardless of the amount of energy expended to do so, he’d be right. The problem with our current system of agriculture should be obvious to anyone with two eyeballs and heartbeat, but for some reason only the smallest minority of people are able to see the holistic panorama of industrialized agriculture and it’s downstream effects on the population.

Let’s examine some of the issues in greater detail before we decide what makes something successful as opposed to efficient.

Food is more than calories. I’m not a nutritionist or an MD, but I do know that calories are simply a mechanism for delivering energy to an organism, not a measure of nutritive value. If a toddler needed 500 calories a day and was offered a choice between a 500 calorie soft drink or an equal amount of vegetables, meat and fruit, only a sadist would feed the child the soft drink as a steady diet based on cost alone. `A single handful of fresh greens picked right out of the garden brings greater value to the life of a human being than a 2 liter Mountain Dew with ten times the calories.

Humans need better nutrition to live healthier and longer lives. Today we have calories produced by industrialized agriculture with little nutritive value that leave people to live miserable lives filled with preventable illnesses and multiple disabilities directly related to poor diet. The associated costs to re-mediate these problems using pharmaceuticals and overtaxing the healthcare system are never factored in, nor is the cost of lost labor directly related to these failings.

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