Rodale Institute has been running a side-by-side comparison of organic
and chemical agriculture since 1981.
They
report:
After an initial decline in yields during the first few years of
transition, the organic system soon rebounded to match or surpass the
conventional system. Over time, FST became a comparison between the long
term potential of the two systems.
Year after year, Rodale found:
Organic yields match conventional yields.
As Tom Philpott reported for Mother Jones 17 November 2011,
Yet Again, Organic Ag Proves Just as Productive as Chemical Ag,
And now comes evidence from the very heart of Big Ag: rural Iowa, where
Iowa State University's Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture runs
the Long-Term Agroecological Research Experiment (LTAR), which began in
1998, which has just released its latest results.
At the LTAR fields in Adair County, the (LTAR) runs four fields: one
managed with the Midwest-standard two-year corn-soy rotation featuring
the full range of agrochemicals; and the other ones organically managed
with three different crop-rotation systems. The chart below records the
yield averages of all the systems, comparing them to the average yields
achieved by actual conventional growers in Adair County:
Norman Borlaug, instigator of the "green revolution"
of no-till and pesticides, when asked in 2000
whether organic agriculture could feed the world, said:
Continue reading "Organic farming as productive as pesticiding (proven yet again)" »
Chuck Darwin was right!
Glysophate is losing to mutant weeds.
Gus Lubin wrote in Business Insider 9 June 2011,
Dramatic Proliferation Of Herbicide-Resistant Weeds Threatens U.S. Crops
Researchers at Iowa State University warn that herbicide-resistant weeds
are proliferating and may jeopardize U.S. food supply.
In an article published in Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry,
weed scientist Michael Owen said the proliferation of superweed "has
been fairly dramatic in the last two to three years."
Weeds are developing resistance to glyphosate, the active ingredient in
Roundup, which has been used extensively since 1996.
U.S. soybean, cotton and corn production could suffer from further
proliferation, according to
Science News:
"Today, 98 percent of U.S. soybeans, 88 percent or so of U.S. cotton
and more than 70 percent of U.S. corn come from cultivars resistant
to glyphosate," Owen reports. Reliance on these crops — and an
accompanying weed-control strategy that employs glyphosate to the
exclusion of other herbicides — "created the 'perfect storm' for
weeds to evolve resistance," Owen and Jerry Green of Pioneer Hi-Bred
International in Newark, Del., argue in their new analysis.
Oh, you mean like this
pigweed-infested cotton from last year?
The Palmer amaranth is already just as bad this year.
It's not like this is news.
We've been going on about it
Continue reading "Weeds winning against Glysophate " »
Increase your income and your yields with traditional farming methods?
That's what's happening in India.
Nishika Patel blogged 11 May 2011 in The Guardian,
Organic farming – India's future perfect?
India's struggling farmers are starting to profit from a budding interest
in organic living. Not only are the incomes of organic farmers soaring
– by 30% to 200%, according to organic experts – but their yields
are rising as the pesticide-poisoned land is repaired through natural
farming methods.
How did this happen?
Organic farming only took off in the country about seven years
ago. Farmers are turning back to traditional farming methods for a number
of reasons.
First, there's a 10% to 20% premium
Continue reading "More profit and higher yields through organic farming in India" »

Tom Philpott asks in Grist about
Why Monsanto is paying farmers to spray its rivals’ herbicides
...Monsanto has been forced into the unenviable position of having to
pay farmers to spray the herbicides of rival companies.
If you tend large plantings of Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" soy or cotton,
genetically engineered to withstand application of the company's Roundup
herbicide (which will kill the weeds -- supposedly -- but not the crops),
Monsanto will cut you a $6 check for every acre on which you apply at
least two other herbicides. One imagines farmers counting their cash as
literally millions of acres across the South and Midwest get doused with
Monsanto-subsidized poison cocktails.
The move is the latest step in the abject reversal of Monsanto's longtime
claim: that Roundup Ready technology solved the age-old problem of weeds
in an ecologically benign way.
Roundup, trade name for glysophate, doesn't work anymore because
the weeds mutated:
Continue reading "Monsanto Spraying Itself" »
Andrew Pollack writes in the New York Times that
After Growth, Fortunes Turn for Monsanto:
As recently as late December, Monsanto was named “company of the
year” by Forbes magazine. Last week, the company earned a different
accolade from Jim Cramer, the television stock market commentator. “This
may be the worst stock of 2010,” he proclaimed.
I remember that!

The month after
Forbes did that,
Covalence did a survey that ranked Monsanto
the least ethical company in the world.
Worse than Philip Morris, Chevron, or Halliburton!
About that time we discovered
Monsanto Corn Causes Liver and Kidney Damage in Rats,
and that
Monsanto's GM soy causes sterility and five times higher infant mortality in hamsters.
Meanwhile, the
U.S. Department of Justice was
investigating Monsanto's seed business. At least
seven U.S. states started their own
investigations, and later the U.S. EPA fined
Monsanto $2.5 million for selling seeds illegally in Texas counties where
they were banned.
Since then we've learned that
Pesticides Linked to ADHD.
Specifically organophosphate pesticides.
Like Glysophate (RoundUp).
And that indicators of pesticides, including organophosphates,
are found in the urine of 95% of school children.
We already knew that
Glysophoate causes birth defects in humans.
Anyway, could all this bad news have some effect on Monsanto's share price?
Continue reading "Monsanto Downturn" »
Roundup has bred quite a few mutant weeds,
such as marestail and ragweed that haven't yet made it to Georgia.
But the king of mutant superweeds everywhere is Palmer Amaranth: pigweed.
About pigweed,
Georgia Extension weed scientist Dr. Stanley Culpepper says:
Economic survival will depend on managing the seedbank!!!!
That's on page 30 of a 46 page presentation at the
2010 Beltwide – Consultants Conference,
after discussing how rapidly Roundup-Ready seeds have been adopted:
And how the value of advice on weed control during that period
rapidly decreased as a direct correlation:
Continue reading "Managing the Seedbank by Plowing" »

So is it just a few people's opinion that
plowing works much better than herbicides to control mutant pigweed?
Henry Gantz writes in
Don't Give Pigweed The Light Of Day,
If it doesn't come up, you don't have to kill it
that farmers were depending mostly on Roundup, but that no longer works,
due to multiple mutant weeds, including pigweed and marestail.
He quotes Dr. Larry Steckle, Extension weed specialist at the University of Tennessee:
Steckle said we’ve now reached the point where we have to begin thinking in terms of controlling “resistant weeds” instead of “resistant marestail” or “resistant Palmer pigweed” because they are both beginning to show up in the same field.
“We have to manage them both,” he said. “There’s a new product from BASF called Sharpen that I’ve been looking at for five years and I’ve been very impressed with the marestail control. I still like dicamba, Roundup and Gramoxone.
“But if you have Palmer pigweed, too, then you’re going to have to overlap with residuals ― Cotoran, Caparol, Prowl ― to have any chance to do a good job of controlling them.”
So, what's the solution:
Continue reading "Pigweed: don't let it come up" »

Roy Roberson writes in Farm Press about
http://southeastfarmpress.com/cotton/herbicide-resistance-0525/:
Deep tilling of crop land pocked and rutted by heavy equipment used on rain and snow soaked, often frozen farm land may not only clean up the land, but may have a significant positive effect on managing herbicide resistant weeds, especially
Palmer pigweed.
Back to the future!
"Deep tilling" is the current buzzword for plowing.
That's how my father farmed, with a bottom plow, a subsoiler, a harrow,
and a
cultivator.
The same article continues to defend no-till:
There is no doubt about the many benefits of minimum or no-till cropping systems. Reduced-tillage saves farmers money in equipment, improves soil quality, improves the environment by making the soil more porous and produces better drainage. The list of benefits goes on and on.
Promotes more erosion, is my observation.
And how does no-till save farmers money if they have to pay for increasing
amounts of pesticides to try to deal with mutant weeds like pigweed?
Continue reading "Deep-Till: Back to the Future of Plowing" »

Richard Harris reports on NPR, 21 Oct 2009, about
Prairie Pioneer Seeks To Reinvent The Way We Farm.
Wes Jackson wants to solve
the 10,000 year old problem of agriculture:
The problem, Jackson explains, is that agriculture in most places is based on practices that use up limited resources. The major grains, like wheat and corn, are planted afresh each year. When the fields are later plowed, they lose soil. The soil that remains in these fields loses nitrogen and carbon.
This worries Jackson because vast quantities of soil are washed out of the fields and down the rivers, and the soil that's left is gradually losing its nutrients.
Trying to figure out how to solve this problem, Jackson realized the answer was right in front of him. It was the patch of native prairie on his own farm — full of grasses from ankle to shoulder height, peppered with white and purple flowers, and surrounded by shrubs and cottonwood trees.
"Here is a steep, sloping bank with a lot of species diversity, featuring perennials," Jackson says. "This is what I call nature's wisdom."
Perennials are plants that put down strong roots 10 feet or more into the ground and hold the soil in place. Perennials live year-round, unlike annual crops that get planted every year. In Kansas, perennials survive the harsh winters and the blazing hot summers.
The solution will have to be somewhat different for each region,
Continue reading "Solving the 10,000 Year Old Problem of Agriculture" »
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