fertilizer
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Farmers in Nepal double their crops through the magic of pee
It’s not just good for the crops -- it also reduces waste.
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Bhutan wants to be the world’s first 100 percent organic country
To be fair, the country's already most of the way there.
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Increasing Pollution, Dwindling Options
The Food and Environmental Reporting Network released a striking report this week (Sept. 18) describing how industrial agriculture and climate change are fueling massive blooms of toxic algae: Blooms have closed lake beaches or led to swimming advisories from Vermont’s Lake Champlain to Dorena Reservoir in Oregon and from Florida’s Caloosahatchee River to Wisconsin’s Lake Menomin. In addition to […]
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Want a better organic garden? Call out the soil-critter army
The helpful Jerusalem cricket.Photo: Franco FoliniCross-posted from Cool Green Science. There are 1 billion bacteria in a single gram of soil. (Give or take a few million.) But how can you get that army — and its insect friends, like the two-inch Jerusalem cricket pictured to the right — to help you grow bigger veggies […]
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California schemin’: How a fake organic fertilizer bamboozled farmers and watchdogs alike
What’s the difference?: What seemed like organic fertilizer to farmers could have been spiked with the synthetic kind.Truck photo (left): Iris Shreve Garrott It’s no secret that the organic food industry has seen explosive growth, taking only a mild drubbing through the recession and then continuing its ascent. At the heart of that growth has […]
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Big Ag is pissing away our nation’s rich topsoil
Midwest farmland is more scarred and eroded then previous reports suggested.Photo: Environmental Working GroupBad federal policy and intensifying storms are washing away the rich dark soils in the Midwest that made this country an agricultural powerhouse and that remain the essential foundation of a healthy and sustainable food system in the future. That’s the alarming […]
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Big Ag demands right to pollute California’s Central Valley
A Central Valley field.Photo: calwestThe Los Angeles Times details a brewing skirmish over agricultural runoff being fought in California’s Central Valley. At issue are proposed regulations that would for the first time force farmers to address fertilizer and pesticide runoff from their fields. A group of environmental organizations is pushing for the regulations, as the […]
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New eco-friendly fertilizer: Plant farts
While those lousy cows are pooting out greenhouse gases, some hardworking plants – anaerobic digestors, which are crucial to the production of biogas – are making waste that can be used as cheap, natural fertilizer. Digestate, the byproduct of anaerobic digestion, could replace manufactured nitrogen fertilizers that are energy-intensive and expensive to produce.
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Fertilizer prices putting manure in the limelight
I never thought I'd see the day when shit -- the bodily kind -- would make headlines the way it is right now. But with phosphorous and potash prices rising, farmers are starting to get a lot more interested in the older sources for fertilizer.