The mealworm beetle was once known only as a pest that ruined stored grains, but the lowly mealworm is currently having its moment in the positive spotlight as a high-protein sustainable food source. Not only are mealworms fed to backyard chickens, wild birds and pets, such as reptiles and captive birds, but they are also a protein source fed to commercially raised swine, poultry and farmed fish. Humans eat farmed fish, and the parts that we don’t eat, the fish byproduct, are dried and crushed into fishmeal and fed to swine and poultry as well as back to farmed fish. Fishmeal is also used as a ..read more

Sweet corn is a heavy feeder on soil nitrogen (N). A full-season sweet corn variety may uptake about 125 lbs. N per acre in the stover, and about 50 lbs. N is removed by harvest of marketable ears. Thus, before organic growers crop a field to sweet corn, they should build up the capacity of the soil to supply N. Because there are no cheap and readily available approved N sources for supplying supplemental N during the early growing season, it is important to design an organic farm plan that will minimize the need to apply sidedress N fertilizer for production of organic sweet corn. Crop rotati ..read more

The little-known recent Berkeley Urban Ag Ordinance zoning changes cultivate growing food together by allowing adaptive city farm production and programming in backyard, community garden and vertical farm settings, setting precedent for other cities, thanks to the Berkeley Food Policy Council, the Berkeley Community Garden Collaborative and Slow Food East Bay. The Oakland Food Policy Council before them had successfully advocated for the “Right to Grow Food” citywide in 2014. In fact, urban and peri-urban food policy councils have been organizing food system changes for more equitable food acc ..read more

Hemp is one of the oldest crops farmed by man. It’s been grown since 8,000 BCE, the very beginning of human agriculture. Archeologists found traces of hemp in what is now Taiwan and China. As for hemp history in the U.S., the plant is as American as apple pie. It was first grown in the U.S. in Jamestown, Va. and was a crop the colonists were required to grow. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both grew hemp. Pioneers used hemp to make wagon coverings. Hemp uses less water, chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides than many other crops. It’s efficient at sequestering carbon dioxide ..read more

Chicken and tomatoes are a tasty duo beloved by many in popular dishes like chicken tikka masala and chicken cacciatore. This combination, delightful in the culinary sense, is also the subject of a recent integrated farming experiment. This fall, researchers at UC Davis harvested the first crop of tomatoes from a 1-acre experimental field and successfully processed the second flock of 130 broiler chickens. This acre is part of a tri-state experiment also taking place at University of Kentucky and Iowa State University, where the experiment was originally spearheaded by horticulture professor A ..read more

Botrytis fruit rot or gray mold caused by Botrytis cinerea is a common fungal disease of strawberry and other crops damaging flowers and fruits. This pathogen has more than 200 plant species as hosts producing several cell-wall-degrading enzymes, toxins and other compounds and causing the host to induced programmed cell death (Williamson et al. 2007). As a result, soft rot of aerial plant parts in live plants and postharvest decay of fruits, flowers and vegetables occurs. Pathogen survives in the plant debris and soil and can be present in the plant tissues before flowers form ..read more

Sara Creech, an Air Force veteran, has been farming in Indiana since 2012, and says she knew from the beginning that she wanted her farm to be certified organic. She’s one of more than 350,000 veteran or active-duty service members involved in farming in the U.S. (2017 USDA Ag Census). She’s also one of the hundreds of farmer veterans who have completed the Armed to Farm training program developed by the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT).   NCAT’s Armed to Farm Armed to Farm is a sustainable agriculture training program for military veterans. NCAT, a national nonprofit org ..read more

Chicken and tomatoes are a tasty duo beloved by many in popular dishes like chicken tikka masala and chicken cacciatore. This combination, delightful in the culinary sense, is also the subject of a recent integrated farming experiment. This fall, researchers at UC Davis harvested the first crop of tomatoes from a 1-acre experimental field and successfully processed the second flock of 130 broiler chickens. This acre is part of a tri-state experiment also taking place at University of Kentucky and Iowa State University, where the experiment was originally spearheaded by horticulture professor ..read more

Soil compaction can be a far greater limitation, even on organic farms and gardens, than many growers tend to suspect. To optimize production capabilities on any type of land, building up needed nutrients and eliminating compaction must both be considered as essential with the effectiveness of each being dependent upon the other. Though many who are concerned with compaction never associate that the nutrient levels matter, this article will help focus on why such should be the case. Reasons for Compaction An old rule of thumb is that when there is 300 pounds of pressure per square inch of soi ..read more

Organic and conventional vegetable crops have similar pests. Common pest species of vegetables include coleoptera (e.g. click beetle, Colorado potato beetle); diptera (e.g. cabbage maggot, leafminers); hemiptera (e.g. aphids, psyllids); lepidoptera (e.g. Diamondback moth, leafrollers); thysanoptera (e.g. thrips); and acarina (e.g. spider mites, bulb mites) as well as symphylans and spotted snake millipedes. These pests have different methods of damaging vegetable plants, including but not limited to chewing, boring, rasping/scraping and piercing and sucking. They prefer to feed on surfaces or ..read more