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…
Touch the Soil News #1977 (Photo – Farm Produce – Sarah Stierch (CC BY 4.0)) As one becomes familiar with the hundreds of business models that small and mid-size farms employ, there is a treasure-trove of ideas floating around. Almost by accident we found a listing of Farms in the United States as provided…
Touch the Soil News #1976 (Photo – Wheat Harvest – USDA – Public Domain) The USDA just released its Cropland Value Report. The USDA estimates that the volume of land in farms continues to inch downwards, coming in at 893 million acres. Of that amount actual cropland in the neighborhood of 300 million acres and…
Touch the Soil News #1959 (Photo – WFP Logo – Public Domain) The Word Food Program (WFP) is a division of the United Nations. They are the boots on the ground, bringing emergency food to nations in trouble. You’ve all seen the pictures of helicopters making food drops, trucks arriving full of food commodities and…
Touch the Soil News #1954 (Photo – Indoor Tomato Plants – Public Domain, Jolly Janner) Almanac News brings details about container vegetable gardening. This is a good place to start, before you get serious about starting a market garden or a large outdoor garden. These skills also apply when growing indoors in the city. You…
