This video from the political advocacy group Greenpeace, provides an overview of the contentious issues of biotechnology (genetic engineering) as it applies to food production. In some ways, biotechnology is the equivalent of the abortion rights issue of the agriculture world. Both sides of the debate hold entrenched views; those in opposition to its use [...]

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This is the second installment of my three-part series on manual pollination in Japan from the upcoming feature, ?WWOOF! The Movie?. It reveals the way in which pollen is extracted from the anthers of the apple (or any other fruit) flower through a special grinding mechanism. This video features Mari (our host?s niece-in-law) and [...]

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How the Federal Government came to regulate the organic industry My previous column on the history of organic agriculture wrapped up with a look at the burgeoning national market that emerged during the 1980?s. Counterculture back-to-the-landers and die-hard traditionalist farmers were raising crops and livestock without agro-chemicals and growing numbers of consumers were eager to [...]

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Fall is in full swing and Winter isn?t far beyond, I?ve been enjoying local apples, squash and weekly pots of soup. While this time of year usually encourages folks to slow down a bit I hardly have a moment to myself but was thrilled when I was able to recently carve out a little time [...]

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My wife and I have traveled around the globe for the last 5 months and filmed our experiences within the WWOOF! organizations of France, Japan, Italy, and India, and are working on a feature film documenting this journey. “WWOOF! The Movie” is about a collective of organizations that go by the acronym WWOOF: World-Wide [...]

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A Farmer’s View from the Field a href=”http://massaorganics.blogspot.com/”>Greg Massa, of Massa Organics, spends around 3 weeks of time harvesting his rice fields. A lot of that time is spent in the cab of a John Deere 9770 STS, affixed with a stripper header. It is well equipped inside with a control panel (a button pusher’s [...]

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