 |
| From Wikipedia |
---------------------
Articles general
- Agriculture - "Agriculture is the artificial cultivation and processing of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fibers and other byproducts." - Wikipedia
- Biodynamic agriculture - "Biodynamic agriculture is a method of organic farming that treats farms as unified and individual organisms, emphasizing balancing the holistic development and interrelationship of the soil, plants, animals as a self-nourishing system without external inputs insofar as this is possible given the loss of nutrients due to the export of food."
- Extensive farming - "Extensive farming or Extensive agriculture (as opposed to Intensive farming) is an agricultural production system that uses small inputs of labour, fertilizers, and capital, relative to the land area being farmed."
- Factory farming - "Factory farming is a term referring to the process of raising livestock in confinement at high stocking density, where a farm operates as a factory — a practice typical in industrial farming by agribusinesses."
- Free range - "Free range is a term which outside of the United States denotes a method of farming husbandry where the animals are allowed to roam freely instead of being contained in any manner."
- Industrial agriculture - "Industrial agriculture is a form of modern farming that refers to the industrialized production of livestock, poultry, fish, and crops. The methods of industrial agriculture are technoscientific, economic, and political. They include innovation in agricultural machinery and farming methods, genetic technology, techniques for achieving economies of scale in production, the creation of new markets for consumption, the application of patent protection to genetic information, and global trade."
- Intensive farming - "Intensive farming or intensive agriculture is an agricultural production system characterized by the high inputs of capital, labour, or heavy usage of technologies such as pesticides and chemical fertilizers relative to land area."
- Organic farming - "Organic farming is the form of agriculture that relies on techniques such as crop rotation, green manure, compost and biological pest control to maintain soil productivity and control pests on a farm. Organic farming excludes or strictly limits the use of manufactured fertilizers, pesticides (which include herbicides, insecticides and fungicides), plant growth regulators such as hormones, livestock antibiotics, food additives, and genetically modified organisms."
- Permaculture see Permaculture page in this blog
- Sustainable agriculture - "Sustainable agriculture is the practice of farming using principles of ecology, the study of relationships between organisms and their environment. It has been defined as "an integrated system of plant and animal production practices having a site-specific application that will last over the long term..."
- Urban agriculture - "Urban agriculture is the practice of cultivating, processing and distributing food in, or around (peri-urban), a village, town or city. Urban agriculture in addition can also involve animal husbandry, aquaculture, agro-forestry and horticulture. These activities also occur in peri-urban areas as well."
- Family Farmers Worse Off Despite High Prices - "Tim A. Wise: Family farmers caught in the middle between corporate monopolies" - The Real News Network video - May 24, 2011
- Unnatural selection: Wily weeds outwit herbicides - "The weedkillers atrazine and simazine were introduced in 1958. Ten years later, a plant nursery in the US that had been regularly using the pesticides reported that they were no longer effective against a plant called common groundsel – the first confirmed case of herbicide resistance." - New Scientist - May 9, 2011
- Neighbors oppose strawberry farms' fumigant use - "California regulators approved use of methyl iodide in December despite opposition from scientists and environmental and farmworker groups who claim it's highly toxic and can cause cancer. The chemical would likely be used primarily in California's $2 billion strawberry industry, which last year produced nearly 90 percent of the nation's strawberries on over 37,000 acres." - The Kansas City Star - May 13, 2011
- Prince Charles criticizes gov't farm subsidies - "... the Prince of Wales criticized government subsidies for large-scale agriculture and encouraged more government and business support for organic and environmentally-friendly food production. The United States spends tens of billions of dollars a year on such subsidies." - thecabin.net - May 4, 2011
- South Africa's white farmers are moving further north - "White South African farmers are now being courted by the north, by countries who believe their agricultural expertise can kickstart an agrarian revolution across the continent." - guardian.co.uk - May 1, 2011
- Discovery by Israeli scientists may lead to development of 'green' pesticides - "... soil bacteria works in harmony with one another to keep the system in proper health... The way it works, at least in theory, is that if scientists can outsmart the "smartest" bacteria, they can then develop unique, non-chemical methods of deterring crop damage. And though it may seem revolutionary, the process is actually what bacteria do naturally in soil when they are not disrupted by toxic pesticides." - Natural News - April 24, 2011
- The Growing Menace from Superweeds - "Pigweed, ragweed and other monsters have begun to outsmart the advanced technologies that protect the biggest U.S. cash crops" - Scientific American - April 19, 2011
- Eco-farming outperforms GMOs at improving crop yields and growing more food, says report - "UN Special Rapporteur explains that small-scale eco-farming reliant on natural growing methods works better than GMO and other pesticide-based agricultural systems at producing more and better food..." - Natural News - April 1, 2011
- Save Climate and Double Food Production With Eco-Farming - "Eco-farming could double food production in entire regions within 10 years while mitigating climate change, according to a new U.N. report released Tuesday in Geneva." - IPS - March 8, 2011
- Dirt! The Movie explores the vital importance of soil and why we must do everything possible to preserve and protect it - "Life on earth depends on the health and vitality of a seemingly simple and often overlooked natural element -- dirt." - Natural News - March 5, 2011 (see the trailer for this movie in the video playlist below)
- Farming in Celtic Britain - With photo of Celtic fields - "During the British Iron Age, large tracts of land in Southern and Eastern Britain were used to produce crops and the Celts who lived there were skilled arable farmers."
- Conventional agriculture using up global supply of phosphorus, causing widespread pollution - "Modern agriculture is heavily reliant on the use of phosphorus, a mineral necessary for proper plant and crop growth. But conventional growing methods have all but depleted this natural mineral from certain areas of farmland, which has resulted in the widespread mining of phosphorus to replace it." - Natural News - Feb 27, 2011
- Research topics: Gardening
- Research topics: Agriculture - playlist
Websites
- The Open Source Ecology wiki, home of the Global Village Construction Set, building open source technologies for resilient communities - Open source designs for farming tools
No comments:
Post a Comment