organics // Current TV

Organic Farming Gains Momentum with New OFRF Report and Growing Congressional Support

Washington, D.C. (September 19, 2011) The highly anticipated report released today by... more

JanforGore
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8 months ago
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Monsanto goes to court to ban Brazil govt brochure on organics

The powerful biotechnology giant, which dominates Brazil's soya industry, has got... more

JanforGore
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11 months ago
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Study: "No Benefits of Organics"... Failure to Disclose Research Study's Link to Monsanto

By Holly Case, Natural Food Network Newsletter Editor Every now and then the... more

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1 year ago
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Seabreeze Organic Farm: A San Diego Area CSA - A Mini Tour

Sharing this very cool four minute video: A friend of mine works with this great... more

SeaJade
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2 years ago
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Biodynamic wines have the flavor of devotion

Twenty years before J.I. Rodale coined the term "organic" in the early 1940s, an Austrian named Rudolf Steiner had already introduced another holistic approach to sustainable agriculture: biodynamics. Caricatured as new-age crazies burying dung-stuffed bull's horns under the new moon, practitioners of biodynamics view farms as self-sustaining organisms that interact with their surrounding ecosystems -- including the spiritual and cosmic realms -- and go to enormous lengths to maintain the harmony and health of these ecosystems. While the biodynamics community is small, it is growing, particularly in winemaking.

Over the last few years, I have been lucky to taste more than 70 biodynamic wines. What did I expect from these grapes, grown in balance with cosmic forces? Would I see God, or should I bring someone to talk me down from my levitating lotus?

Of course not, but I did expect the wines to be delicious, because I knew I was going to find in them what I always look for in every fine wine: passion. No matter what you think of biodynamics (and I advocate it for the way it promotes environmental sustainability and stewardship of the land), the fact of the matter is that its complexities necessitate extraordinary care, and that level of care, when applied by skilled winemakers, almost always produces great wines.

Nicolas Joly is an indefatigable true believer, the father of biodynamic winemaking in the United States, though he is French and owns one of the world's greatest white wine vineyards, Coulée de Serrant, in the Loire Valley village of Savennières. He preaches from personal experience, with the zealotry of the converted.

Coulée de Serrant was first planted by Cistercian monks in 1130. With the ancient monastery still on the grounds of the estate, in the mid-1970s, French agricultural agents told Joly that his family's methods were archaic, and that they should adopt the use of chemical fertilizers and insecticides. A graduate of Columbia University and a former investment banker, Joly encouraged his family to join the modern age and embrace this high-tech approach.

But soon, he noticed that the color of the soils changed, and that the birds, animals and beneficial insects abandoned Coulée de Serrant. The vineyard had lost its life, and Joly began his search for alternatives to compacting the soil with chemicals. In 1984, he turned to biodynamics, with an approach kind of like ramped-up organics: trying to maintain a healthy biodiversity in his vineyards, unlike typical monoculture farms, which basically keep anything that's not being harvested out of the picture entirely. He replaced synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides with homeopathic concoctions, focusing on seasonally available mixtures made from products available on the vineyard itself. After just five years of growing according to those methods, Joly "began to see nature reborn," and eventually he published "Wine From Sky to Earth: Growing and Appreciating Biodynamic Wine," which has become the bible for the biodynamic wine movement. (Joly's current essays can be found here). :

http://www.coulee-de-serrant.com/index-en.htmlTwenty years before J.I. Rodale coined the term "organic" in the early... more

JanforGore
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Permaculture - Greening The Desert - the Follow Up

This is awesome! Great success at creating abundant food forest in challenging desert... more

SeaJade
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2 years ago
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Fruits & Vegetables - Non-GMO Shopping Guide

Many soups and sauces are highly processed, so examine the ingredient lists closely to... more

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2 years ago
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List of entheogens - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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7 Ways We've Failed Miserably at Trying to Outsmart Nature

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Frugal & Natural Pest Control: Fruit Flies & Ants Be Gone! – Passionate Homemaking

At the end of the article she suggests freezing jar and all, or you might want to... more

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2 years ago
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E A R T H . C L I N I C - Folk Remedies and Holistic Cures

More of the natural alternative options, as oppossed to whatever chemical, over the... more

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Acid Reflux Cures on Earth Clinic, Your Source for Home Remedies!

here we have some really good alternatives for acid reflux. The over the counter... more

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2 years ago
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Anti-inflammatory Diet | Natural Health Alternatives

foods that will illiminate inflamation for things like gout, fibromialgia, stiff joints,

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2 years ago
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Eater's dilemma: Which foods are really safe? - TODAY: Books

Michael Pallon book In Defense of Food plain and simple. " Eat food. Not to... more

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2 years ago
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The Organic & Non-GMO Report | Information to ensure a safe, healthy, and sustainable food supply

Don't copy and paste the whole article! Don't you want your story to be more... more

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NewVideo Page - Institute for Responsible Technology

for anyone searching for a list of non-gmo food sources click on the non-gmo shopping tab.

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The Regulations That Pose a Threat to Local Farms

We are what we eat, feed ourselves clean, fresh, unadulterated foods, we will feel... more

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2 years ago
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The vegetable gardeners of Havana

Climate change, drought, population growth - they could all threaten future food supplies. But global agriculture, with its dependence on fuel and fertilisers is also highly vulnerable to an oil shortage, as Cuba found out 20 years ago.

Around Cuba's capital Havana, it is quite remarkable how often you see a neatly tended plot of land right in the heart of the city.

Sometimes smack bang between tower block estates or next door to the crumbling colonial houses, fresh fruit and vegetables are growing in abundance.

Some of the plots are small - just a few rows of lettuces and radishes being grown in an old parking space.

Other plots are much larger - the size of several football pitches. Usually they have a stall next to them to sell the produce at relatively low prices to local people.

Twenty years ago, Cuban agriculture looked very different. Between 1960 and 1989, a national policy of intensive specialised agriculture radically transformed Cuban farming into high-input mono-culture in which tobacco, sugar, and other cash crops were grown on large state farms.

Cuba exchanged its abundant produce for cheap, imported subsidised oil from the old Eastern Bloc. In fact, oil was so cheap, Cuba pursued a highly industrialised fuel-thirsty form of agriculture - not so different from the kind of farming we see in much of the West today.

But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the oil supply rapidly dried up, and, almost overnight, Cuba faced a major food crisis. Already affected by a US trade embargo, Cuba by necessity had to go back to basics to survive - rediscovering low-input self-reliant farming.

Oxen replaced tractors when Cuba became a low-fuel economy

With no petrol for tractors, oxen had to plough the land. With no oil-based fertilizers or pesticides, farmers had to turn to natural and organic replacements.

Today, about 300,000 oxen work on farms across the country and there are now more than 200 biological control centres which produce a whole host of biological agents in fungi, bacteria and beneficial insects.

Havana has almost 200 urban allotments - known as organiponicos - providing four million tons of vegetables every year - helping the country to become 90% self-sufficient in fruit and vegetables.

end of excerptClimate change, drought, population growth - they could all threaten future food... more

JanforGore
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2 years ago
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