Touch the Soil News #2052 (photo – Vegetables – Courtesy of USDA) The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is a division of the United Nations. The FAO tracks the international prices of five food commodity groups each month and ascribes a number starting with 100 which is the base for the 2014-2016 time frame. The…
Touch the Soil News #2045 (photo – Royal Food Mart) (Courtesy of Royal Food Mart and Cornerstone Community Wellness https://www.ccwell.org/) The Washington Post brings an inspiring story of how a small town, about to lose its only grocery store, was saved by the community and turned into a grocery store whose primary goal is the…
Touch the Soil News #2031 (photo – South Chicago farm) (Courtesy of Urban Growers Collective, https://www.urbangrowerscollective.org/our-farms) The Daily Journal, an Illinois news Portal bring us the story of urban farm tours in Chicago. These tours have become so popular that even rural farmer come to get ideas and network. While it is not a new…
Touch the Soil News #2030 (photo – Lettuce Greens) ( CCA SA 2.0 Generic, Oregon State University) At almost 8 acres of indoor space, this vertical farm is capable of producing almost 6,000 lbs. of fresh leafy greens a day. Now that is a lot of salad, when calculating about 5 servings of salad for…
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 #2010 (photo – Kernza Wheat Harvest at the Land Institute- (CCA 3.0 Unported, Dehaan ) Agricultural crop inputs giant Wilbur-Ellis just awarded a Kansas State University team with $25,000 on their work with perennial grains. While yields are less, not having to plant every year, and getting big soil benefits the…
Touch the Soil News #1997 (photo – United Nations Food Garden (CCA SA 2.0 Generic, United Nations / John Gillespie) DW News Portal offers a video on the Green Business College that teaches folks, for a modest fee, how to grow, preserve and prepare fresh foods. This is certainly not the first of its kind…
Touch the Soil News #1991 – Forests – (Malene Thyssen – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Malene) The Times of India recently put out an interesting story. It’s about an emerging trend where hospitals are beginning to grow their own organic vegetables for patients and staff. The story comes from the city of Kochi with a population of 700,000 within…
Touch the Soil News #1986 (Photo – No-Till Farming – (Maggilautaro, CCA 3.0 Unported) While we don’t often cover conventional farming practices, we did find an interesting story about No-Till farming and the surprising financial benefits in lowering costs. From using far less fuel, arresting top soil loss, and being able to use smaller equipment…
Touch the Soil News #1981 (Photo – Loading Grain for Export at Seattle – ( Daniel Ramirez CCA 2.0 Generic Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic) Successful Farming news portal brings the story that U.S. food imports for 2024 are forecast at $199.5 billion while U.S. food exports are forecast to be $172 billion. The reason for…
