Category: Agriculture
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Truly Living Well
On Earth Day I had the opportunity to visit and volunteer at the Truly Living Well Center for Natural Urban Agriculture in Atlanta, Georgia. The center has three goals: (1) producing natural food, (2) educating others on how to grow food, and (3) creating a welcoming space where people can gather and find harmony with…
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Enchanted with Chanterelle
Something I love about Georgia is that tens of mushrooms emerge from the mossy soil below the trees in shaded backyards like gumdrops in Candyland. Within a few days of swelling to an enormous size, they shrivel up and disappear into the earth, leaving each passerby the unique chance to harvest, photograph, or simply just…
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Food Sovereignty
Food sovereignty is the right to have a means of obtaining healthy and sustainable food along with the ability to control the production and distribution of such foods. The following meal and the ingredients it contains are important to the food sovereignty and culture of Indigenous peoples.
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Gone Crawfishin’
The domestication of Pacific whiteleg shrimp from the eastern Pacific Ocean by the United States Marine Shrimp Farming Program in the 1980’s had the reverse effect of domesticated plants such as corn, maygrass, pea, huckleberry, and others. The latter domesticated plants made life simpler, while shrimping appears to have only made it more complex. Although…
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Water Buffalo For Coastal Conservation
Reactive nitrogen in the atmosphere lasts approximately 110 years and has an impact on ozone production, acid rain, particle formation and growth, and deposition to soil and water which can damage agricultural productivity and harm ecosystem balances. While research on wet and dry deposition of nitrate (NO3) from fossil fuel combustion emissions of nitrous oxides…
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Swampland
Today marks the SIXTH YEAR ANNIVERSARY of definearth! Thank you so much for reading and participating in my posts about science in the world around us. In honor of the blog’s birthday, today I am posting a short review of a study on two Kenyan communities that came together to improve their local swamps. Manguo…
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Paludiculture in Indonesia
Paludiculture in its true, eco-friendly form is a rare practice. I suspect this is because it requires traditional environmental knowledge about local ecosystems and is limited by regulations or competition surrounding resource use. First, let’s go over the different types of environmentally conscious agriculture. Sustainable agriculture is farming in a way that doesn’t destroy the…
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Modern Day Deforestation
Deforestation is a daunting issue that seems to be a consequence of human existence. Not only are trees harvested for timber and fuel, but also clearing trees allows us to build shelter and create infrastructure that will improve our quality of life. Many people see reforestation as the solution to all environmental problems. Trees are…
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Journey to the Central Sands and Beyond
Beautiful vistas clog up my phone memory at the moment. I don’t want them to clutter up this post, so I’m only sharing the best from my orientation trip for grad school. We visited many agricultural sites including a potato farm, cranberry bog, dairy farm and free range cattle operation. We also stopped at Frank’s…
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Kernza
50 years pass before intermediate wheatgrass typically experiences die-off. 3 years into its lifespan, the plant infamously stops seeding but continues to grow. 25 years or more could pass before geneticists discover a natural variation of the plant with enough yield to be competitive. These were the numbers spinning around in my head as I…
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