Environment

Why Has Organic Farming Flatlined?

Organic farming should be in a Golden Age. Organic marketing groups, and the junkyard dogs they pay to attack scientists (1) finally got mandatory labeling on conventional food, the public is already spending $13,000,000,000 on organic food in the U.S. alo ...

Article - Hank Campbell - May 1 2019 - 10:57am

Rice Crops That Can Save Farmers Money And Cut Pollution

There are more than 120,000 varieties of rice stored at the germplasm bank at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines, but a new paper focused on varieties that met important criteria- currently grown by farmers, have a high yi ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 31 2016 - 11:00am

Farming Is Offsetting Natural Tree Cover Losses And Mitigating Climate Change

Farmers are doing a lot more than just feeding the world, they are also offsetting tropical forests declines, capturing nearly 0.75 giga-tons of carbon dioxide every year---but global warming estimates never account for that.  ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 2 2016 - 10:45am

Honey Bee Colonies Had A Worse Than Average Winter- But Don't Buy Hype About It

The number of honey bee colonies fell by nearly 12% last winter- according to a preliminary look at a survey of beekeepers, that is. The UK and Spain were worst affected this year. The prior year, other areas of Europe were hardest hit.  While environment ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 4 2016 - 11:34am

Laundry Adds Trade Amounts Of Flame Retardants To Surface Waters- Here's How

In recent years, litigation attorneys and environmental epidemiologists have attempted to link flame retardants, which were put in furniture and electronics to prevent immolation by national mandate, to health problems. Studies have shown that the substan ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 10 2016 - 11:17am

How Plant Leaves Grow Their Teeth

A peptide and its receptors work to regulate auxin response and control leaf tooth growth in plants. The plant hormone auxin has been known to take part in the development of leaf teeth, but the exact mechanism of their formation has been a mystery up til ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 3 2016 - 9:01pm

Puzzle: What's Gene Edited To Be Drought Resistant But Not A GMO? Corn

With GMOs going off patent, anti-science activists and the PR groups running interference for them (such as US Right To Know and Sourcewatch) are running out of time to use one of the arguments they love most to disguise the fact that they hate science; th ...

Blog Post - Hank Campbell - Sep 19 2016 - 9:01am

Feedback on the Forest Garden

My last post dealt with the permaculture edible forest garden, and it received some commentary on a couple of Facebook groups and permaculture forums. A lot of the responses were, predictably, from permaculture advocates who took umbrage at my having deig ...

Blog Post - Graham Strouts - Sep 21 2016 - 4:33pm

Bialowiezça: the Myth of the Primeval Forest

Over the past few weeks there have a been a series of reports raising concerns about the felling of old-growth trees in the ancient Bialowiezça forest in eastern Poland. A recent piece in the Guardian begins ...

Blog Post - Graham Strouts - Sep 22 2016 - 4:44am

Wolves in the backyard

In a Youtube video that has been viewed more than 25 million times,  George Monbiot explains with masterful clarity How Wolves Change Rivers. The short film tells the story of Yellowstone National Park, where wolves were reintroduced in 1995 after an abse ...

Blog Post - Graham Strouts - Sep 29 2016 - 7:31am