Founders Of Gaia Gardens In Santa Fe Quit Urban Farming In Protest Of City Inaction

Poki Piottin, who founded and runs the gardens with Dominique Pozo, said the next three months of produce will be given away to people in need.

The decision followed a third meeting with city officials Monday asking him to close the property’s farm stand. “I have decided to stop farming in the city — in protest,” Piottin wrote in an email.

But the farm also has faced other problems.

Piottin said it has been seeking water rights to irrigate the crops, but the regulatory process wouldn’t be completed until next summer.

Also, the bank has filed a foreclosure action against the owner of the land, which Gaia Gardens has been renting, making it unclear how long they would be able to remain on the land.

Piottin said he had raised money through crowd-funding and foundations to make an offer to buy the land, but the owner declined to consider a purchase while he was still able to collect rents.

More http://b4in.info/todt



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Oslo Creates World’s First ‘Highway’ To Protect Endangered Bees

From flower-emblazoned cemeteries to rooftop gardens and balconies, Norway’s capital Oslo is creating a “bee highway” to protect endangered pollinators essential to food production.

“We are constantly reshaping our environment to meet our needs, forgetting that other species also live in it,” Agnes Lyche Melvaer, head of the Bybi, an environmental group supporting urban bees, which is leading the project.

“To correct that we need to return places to them to live and feed,” she explained, sitting on a bench in a lush city centre square bursting with early Nordic summer growth.

With its sunflowers, marigolds and other nectar-bearing flowers planted by bee-loving locals and school children, Abel’s Garden was until recently covered only in grass but is now a floral “feeding station” for bees.

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Michigan Agriculture Workgroup Recommends Legislation To Support Urban Livestock Operations

Of the 20 requests occurring after the new guidelines were issued, 6 of them were denied because the operations would have been too close to neighbors.

As explained by MDARD’s director of environmental stewardship, Jim Johnson, the denied sites “either had more than 13 homes within an eighth of a mile, or another residence within 250 feet.”

Although site inspectors generally try to help applicants determine if there is any possible way to create a permissible livestock operation on their property—such as by putting the animals near the back of the property—sometimes it is just not possible.

Even for those applicants who succeed in gaining site approval and Right to Farm protection, those in urban or suburban areas face the risk of their farms falling out of compliance as new houses go up.

After all, the Right to Farm protection was traditionally meant for rural farms, to shield them from encroaching residential development. As Johnson noted, it is uncertain what might happen to an approved farm in an already developed or still developing area.

More http://bit.ly/1LkyWBN



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GMO Corn – The Poison Plant Everyone Eats

Just about everyone loves corn, especially fresh corn-on-the-cob in summer. Well, maybe “corn-aholics” ought to research the effects of modern GMO corn before taking another bite. Don’t pop that corn yet!

Jerry Rosman was a pig and cattle farmer, who now is an ORGANIC farming consultant as a result of losing his animal-breeding farming business due to GMO corn feedstock interfering with animal husbandry and reproduction—baby piglets and calves.

 Rosman realized that the GM corn, actually bt-corn, he was feeding his hogs was responsible for sows experiencing false pregnancies. That led to his eventually losing the swine and cattle breeding and farming business. In his ah-ha moment, after realizing what was going on, he said, “If this is happening to our hogs, what’s happening to humans?”

If that’s what happened to Mr. Rosman, shouldn’t everyone be concerned about GMO bt-corn, which is an ingredient in just about every mass-produced food product sold in the USA?

More http://bit.ly/1enjScf



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Homestead Farms, An Oasis In The Midst Of Urban Development In City Of Fort Worth, Texas 

With housing developments and strip malls popping up all around them, and a Fort Worth road project poised to take a painful bite out of their land, the Farrises are working hard to preserve their little corner of country living — and share it with their urban community.

Tuesdays through Saturdays, they open up Homestead’s slice of simpler times to visitors. A small, rustic billboard on Keller Hicks Road invites passers-by to turn into the property’s pebbled drive for a visit to the tiny farm store. There, raw goat milk is available for purchase in glass bottles along with pasture-raised eggs, grass-fed beef, free-range chicken products and seasonal produce from their own field and those of other local growers.

While there, visitors are welcome to wander and visit the goats and pigs, look in on the laying hens, check out the fruit and veggie patch and greet Boo — a laid-back giant mix of Great Pyrenees and Anatolian Shepherd who is usually found sprawled out in the yard or on a wooden porch.

More http://bit.ly/1GWbI0P



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Doctors Want Glyphosate (Round Up) Banned 

If the millions of regular people who have asked Monsanto to stop selling their toxic chemicals is not enough, more than 30,000 doctors and health professionals are asking that glyphosate be banned.

The doctors are part of FESPROSA, Argentina’s Union of medical professionals. Citing the World Health Organization’s recent declaration that the glyphosate chemicals used in Monsanto’s best-selling herbicide Round Up (formulated to use on Round Up Ready crops) are “likely carcinogenic,” they add an additional disclaimer:

Glyphosate is also associated with:

Spontaneous abortions

Birth defects

Skin disease

Respiratory illness

Neurological disease

Where are the American doctors who can tell the WHO, and Monsanto the same thing? Instead of forcing Monsanto’s hand, other doctors have been retaliating against Dr. Oz who recently said that glyphosate was dangerous on world-wide television.

More http://bit.ly/1JyXtoE





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Dear Farmers: U.S. Is Now Importing Organic Corn To Satisfy Consumer Demand 

There are three things driving a surge in organic imports:

U.S. farmers have been systematically pushed into growing mostly GMO crops; grown primarily for fuel, animal feed and cheap processed foods.

Russia even used our food supply as an example for the EU to dump us and join them instead.

U.S. consumers are not only demanding fresh, organic produce as well as non-GMO convenience foods – but also want meat, dairy and eggs from animals that were fed non-GMO or organic feed.

Other countries primarily grow non-GE crops, and plenty of organic. They’ve got the goods and they reap the benefits of trade.

This is ridiculous, as the U.S. could not only use a valuable export, but could honestly use a supportive, in-house product. Yet again, we find ourselves outsourcing for staples. Shouldn’t our own farmers be benefiting from this rise in demand coming from their country? Yet again, farmers have been tricked and kicked by the very companies with which they sign agreements.

More http://bit.ly/1GgL8iJ



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EPA Publishes 20th Annual U.S. Greenhouse Gas Inventory 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its 20th Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks today, showing a two percent increase in greenhouse gas emissions in 2013 from 2012 levels, but a nine percent drop in emissions since 2005.

EPA

Total U.S. greenhouse emissions were 6,673 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2013. By sector, power plants were the largest source of emissions, accounting for 31 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas pollution. The transportation sector was the second largest source, at 27 percent. Industry and manufacturing were the third largest source, at 21 percent. The increase in total national greenhouse gas emissions between 2012 and 2013 was due to increased energy consumption across all sectors in the U.S. economy and greater use of coal for electricity generation.

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Organic Egg On Their Faces

Buying organic eggs is a good way to fight factory farming—but only if you buy eggs from organic farms that raise their hens on pasture.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of so-called “organic” eggs on grocery shelves that come from farms that operate more like factories, than farms—despite the pretty pictures on their labels.

Which national organic brands are the worst offenders? Egg-Land’s Best® and Land O’ Lakes® brands, along with many organic private-label store brands, according to a recent Cornucopia Institute investigation of the organic egg industry.

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