agriculture
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Absolut Advertising
If you are like us (and we bet you are) you were sipping your coffee and peacefully perusing your New York Times Tuesday morning when POW! you were smacked upside the head by a clever full-page ad from the Environmental Working Group previewing its release of a study on the effects of the herbicide atrazine. […]
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New Mexican gives new definition to ranch home
Ask any rancher — these days, desperation is a lot more plentiful than grass on the western range. Beset by a lousy beef market and increasing costs, it is virtually impossible to make a cattle ranch pay. Jim Winder in ranch dressing. Jim Winder knows this very well. So this fourth-generation New Mexico rancher has […]
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Ethnic Cleansing in the Chicken Coop
I didn’t plan it this way, but I have birds of three different sizes in my chicken coop, which is a bad idea. The coop has a floor-to-ceiling chicken-wire divider down the middle. On one side are 40 full-grown layers plus a handsome Buff Orpington rooster. All is peaceful there, except for a constant low […]
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There's Farming and Then There's Farming
A while ago, Beth Sawin and Phil Rice, researchers at the Sustainability Institute, put together a graph that I can’t get out of my mind. It shows Midwest corn yields doubling from about 60 bushels per acre in 1950 to 120 bushels on average today. Despite the doubled yield, gross earnings per acre have stayed […]
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Pollinators making a run for the border
When most of us hear of undocumented border crossings between Mexico and the western United States, we immediately think of devastating social problems: refugees fleeing poverty and political oppression, or drug runners laundering money and offering controlled substances to our children. I think that I shall never see, a poem lovely as a bee. And […]
