Stronger Plants, Stronger Science, and Stronger Communication
Editor’s Note: There is so much information out there on Colony Collapse Disorder. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone summarized it in one place? Kyle Bailey, undergraduate in biology at Iowa State, has done just that. The following, posted with permission, is an up-to-date review of CCD research. It includes information from a variety of…
Read More “Honey Bee Colony Collapse Disorder: A Literature Review” »
The Rodale Institute, major proponent of organic agriculture, is offering a free online at-your-own-pace course that focuses on the transition from conventional to organic farming. They also have a calculator that farmers can use to find how much more (or less, I suppose) their farm can make if they transition to organic, given their specific…
Farmers have always been subject to ever changing weather, but this year seems especially bad. I wrote last week about the problems local farmers (and researchers) have been facing. The NY Times has an article showing that the weather hasn’t been much friendlier elsewhere. Farms in places as diverse as Australia and the Philippines aren’t…
Colony Collapse Disorder has been in and out of the media since 2006. With conspiracy theories and non-science abounding, it can be hard to separate truth from fiction. Dr. Diana Cox Foster of Penn State spoke at Iowa State about her work with CCD. She has been studying bees for 20 years and heads a…
One of the arguments against biofuels is that (like all agriculture, even organic) it is essentially soil mining. By removing plants that grow on the land, we also remove nutrients. This includes trace essential nutrients like iron and copper as well as the big ones like potassium. We can do our best to replace the…
I usually shy away from pessimism, but if you think food prices are high now, wait until the harvest in 2008. Flooding caused by unrelenting rain has been hard on Iowa’s corn and soy fields – and the summer is just beginning. After all this rain, late summer droughts are predicted (just when the grain…
Brownfield (Ag News for America) posts a lot of news that doesn’t make other media sources. One of my recent favorites pairs two of my life’s loves: the US Army and agriculture. Nebraska Army National Guard takes ag to Afghanistan Tuesday, May 13, 2008, 3:36 PM by Peter Shinn One of the keys to winning…
In order to make sound conclusions about different types of genetically engineered crops and to plan for the future, we’ll need to have sound data about any possible environmental effects of said crops. Researchers from a variety of institutions and disciplines* plan to collect that data. Harvesting Data from Genetically Engineered Crops**, published in the…
The NY Times has had some very good articles on the rice shortages. “A Drought in Australia, a Global Shortage of Rice” has some first hand information about conditions in Australia that are worsening the shortages in Southeast Asia. Asia has its own problems, including floods and food-unfriendly government policies, as I described in “Rising…
