Touch the Soil News #2023 (photo – Healthy Foods) ( Public Domain – courtesy of the National Institutes of Health) The Kansas Reflector is a non-profit News portal that recently published an interesting take on how Federal dollars spent on agriculture that promotes food crops not particularly aligned with our nutritional needs. Paul Johnson of…
Touch the Soil News #2022 (photo – Food Bank Inventory) ( Public Domain) Some estimates are that sixty percent of workers live from paycheck to paycheck. While it is popular to look at each individual case, trying to find the reasons for this high number, perhaps the answers have more to do with the nation’s…
Touch the Soil News #2021 (photo – Quince Fruit, a genetically diverse cousin of the Pear – (CCA SA 3.0 Unported) The Food and Agriculture Organization has put together a comprehensive report and analysis on the crops that feed the world. Of concern is the genetic diversity of the foods we eat. Obesity is becoming…
Touch the Soil News #2020 (photo – Container Fish Farm – (Photo courtesy of Chong Jun Liang and Aqualita ) Called Decentralized Modular Recirculating Aquaculture System, the project is a fish farm in a container. The idea is to boost local food in high density cities where space comes at a premium. Whether or not…
Touch the Soil News #2019 (photo –Wheat Harvest – (Courtesy of USDA ) Trends often times not publicized can be more astonishing that the publicized trends. Take farmland for example. The USDA reports that in 1953, America’s “peak” farmland year, the nation was farming 1,205,740,000 acres. In 1953, America had a population of 160,180,000 people. …
Touch the Soil News #2018 (photo – Allotment Garden Plots in the UK- (CCA SA 2.0 Generic – Attribution: Romsey Allotment Gardens by Roy Hughes) Cities in modern times often came to be by paving over good farmland. Now, farmland, or even just gardening plots can be hard to come by in you live in…
Touch the Soil News #2017 (photo Subsistence Agriculture Southeast Spain- (CCA 4.0 International, Santalba ) In a world busy chasing after dollars, which certainly is important, we can overlook other things which are also important. The resources and productivity of what is in our region. A couple of reasons this is important, is because government…
Touch the Soil News #2016 (photo – Water Spigot- (CCA 3.0 Unported, Schyler ) The Vancouver Sun (from British Columbia, Canada) presented a fairly in-depth assessment of the city of Vancouver’s municipal water situation. When reading through the article, the question that arises is how familiar are we to the water security of our own…
Touch the Soil News #2015 (photo – WestWinn Urban Ag Aquaponics – (Courtesy of Westwinn Urban Ag Aquaponics https://www.westwinnag.com/) Newcastle News of Sharon, Pennsylvania bring the story of a brave new company – WestWinn Urban Ag. The company invested $4 million into an aquaculture growing enterprise in a former Westinghouse torpedo factory facility. Starting operations…
Touch the Soil News #2014 (photo – Sheep – (USDA Public Domain ) Australian Food and Agriculture Co. LTD, with the passing of one of its founders, is now available for a new owner. GAI news brings us the story of this 550,000 acre ranch – heavily anchored in sheep – also has crop production…
