- Shades of gray — local is good — in the organic vs conventional sterility. Yay!
- Lawyers wannabe farmers. They’ll need this font.
- Bartenders wannabe farmers too.
- Well 2.0 — mobile phones to control irrigation.
- Mango seeds source of biocides.
Rainbow sweetcorn not so sweet
Patrick at Bifurcated Carrots reports on his experiment this year growing Painted Hills sweetcorn. to summarise, the plants weren’t very robust, the yield was poor, and the kernels weren’t all that sweet. (Perhaps he should try Red Miracle next year.) On the plus side:
Wow! Multi-colored sweet corn! Can you believe it? A variation of the famous Painted Mountain corn! Perfectly edible. Truly a visual delight, if not a tasty one.
Pat admits that it needs more work to thrive under his conditions, and that he’s not about to take that on, which is fair enough. Maybe someone else will rise to the challenge.
Detroit, Cuba, and you
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Nibbles: Organocontroversy, Small farms, Organic can feed world, Cashmere
- Are Organic Veggies Better for You? Maybe, or maybe not. Either way, it’s a useless debate. Yay!
- Agroecology, Small Farms, and Food Sovereignty. Yay!
- “Study after study show that organic techniques can provide much more food per acre in developing countries than conventional chemical-based agriculture.” Define organic.
- Fashionistas driving desertification in Mongolia.
Inorganic farming
In the NYT article I just blogged about, there is a toxic aside:
The strength of the disease has shocked hardened farmers: topical copper sprays, a convenient organic preventive, have been much less effective than in past years.
Convenient organic preventive?
Organic farming has a few dirty secrets. This is one of the worst. For some reason, it is ok to spray inorganic copper, a toxic heavy metal, on organic crops. A farmer who cares about the environment, health, or whatever good thing organic farming stands for should not use it. Buyers of organic tomatoes in the northwest of the USA are being duped.