The Flower Farmer: An Organic Grower's Guide to Raising and Selling Cut Flowers

Acre-for-acre, flowers are the most profitable--as well as the most beautiful--crop on the farm. In "The Flower Farmer" expert flower grower Lynn Byczynski provides a complete introduction to raising a cornucopia of cut flowers for home use and for sale to retail customers, florists, and other markets. The book offers detailed, manageable plans for flower growing on a scale ranging from a backyard border to a half-acre commercial garden. It will appeal to a broad spectrum of readers, including: Home gardeners who want growing tips from professionals, so that they can enjoy an abundance of flowers year-round in fresh and dried bouquets Passionate gardeners and small-scale growers who want to raise and sell cut flowers in season for additional income Small commercial farmers who want to increase farm revenue or even make a living from selling field-grown, specialty cut flowers. "The Flower Farmer" provides a clear, realistic look at both the benefits and the challenges of growing flowers organically for local markets. Chapters include information on: The best varieties of cut flowers--an A-Z list of more than one hundred recommended annuals and perennials, spotlighting the cultivars that are grown by professional flower farmers How to cut, store, and preserve flowers for long-lasting beauty How to dry flowers for crafting or for a dried-flower business Flower-arranging basics from a designer's perspective Extending the season with woody shrubs and trees Marketing options for commercial growers, including sales at farmer's markets, supermarkets, florists, and wholesalers. Sprinkled throughout are profiles of successful flower farmers--from Vermontto California, Texas to Wisconsin--each of them providing a unique perspective proving that growing flowers can be as profitable as it is satisfying.

The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year-Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses

The Winter Harvest Handbook takes the local-food revolution to a new level. Eliot Coleman explains how to successfully—and profitably—harvest fresh vegetables all year-round in even the coldest climates using unheated or, in some cases, minimally heated, movable plastic greenhouses. Coleman offers clear, concise details on greenhouse construction and maintenance, planting schedules, crop management, harvesting practices, and even marketing methods, in this meticulous, illustrated guide. His painstaking research and experimentation with more than 30 different crops will prove invaluable to small farmers, homesteaders, and experienced home gardeners who seek to expand their production and harvest seasons.

Organic Farming: The Ecological Systems (Agronomy Monograph)

Worldwide sales of organic products have expanded 10 to 20% per year for the past decade, increasing interest in organic farming as a profitable and more environmentally benign alternative to conventional production. To participate in the current food system, it is imperative that agronomists and horticulturists master the practices, systems design, certification process, and details of the organic farming sector. Combining farmer experience and wisdom with the best that science has to offer can help us better understand organic systems and how to design them to meet human needs and preserve an environment where we would like to live. This book represents a current look at what we know about organic farming practices and systems, primarily from the U.S. and Canadian perspectives. The discussion begins with history and certification, ecological knowledge as the foundation for sustaining food systems, and biodiversity. The next chapters address crop-animal systems; forages, grain, oil seed, and specialty crops; organic cropping and soil nutrient needs; and vegetation and pest management. Readers will next learn about marketing organics, organic foods and food security, and education and research. The book concludes with a survey of the future of organic farming and a perspective on the agricultural industry and the future of the rural sector.The American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America are prominent international scientific societies headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin. The Societies specialize in peer-reviewed, high-quality science titles for a wide variety of audiences.Some of the many areas we publish in include:-Soils Methods and Management-Crop Development and Improvement-Agrosystem Management and the Global Food Crisis-Environmental Conservation and Climatology

Food to Live By: The Earthbound Farm Organic Cookbook

Organic food is the best food possible. It’s synonymous with premium quality, delicious flavor, conscientious farming, and optimum health. It’s what we need to feed our kids, it’s what we deserve to feed ourselves. And thanks in part to Myra Goodman, co-owner and cofounder of Earthbound Farm with her husband, Drew, organic food is now available just about anywhere fresh food is sold, becoming more mainstream every day. Not only has Myra been growing organic food for over twenty years, she has been cooking with it, too. In Food to Live By she combines her twin food passions, serving up hundreds of recipes, ideas, shopping and cooking tips, health notes, and more. Illustrating the book are full-color photographs throughout that bring readers right into the breathtaking California sunshine. This is perfect cooking for friends and family, packed with irresistible dishes for weeknight dinners and casual entertaining, festive breakfasts and fall picnics. Recipes are all about the ingredients and their intrinsic qualities, not fancy techniques or time-consuming steps. Marry chicken with three simple accompaniments— rosemary, lemons, and garlic—and it’s transformed. Heighten the flavor of a springtime fava bean and orzo salad with an unexpected fava bean “pesto.” Combine Meyer lemon juice and soy sauce to create a marinade, tenderizer, and sauce that results in a perfect grilled flank steak. Food to Live By also includes a wealth of information about organic farming and how to make the wisest food choices; there are full-color Field Guides—to gourmet greens, apples, heirloom tomatoes, winter squash—and Farm Fresh ingredient guides to sorrel, corn, melons, avocados, organic poultry, asparagus, artichokes, ginger, and more, featuring what to look for plus care and handling. The book is a boon to food lovers.

Farming Around the Country: An Organic Odyssey

For twelve consecutive months, author Brian Bender lived a nomadic life on small organic farms across the United States. Leaving behind a teaching career, he hopped from farm to farm through an organization called WWOOF: World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. Farming Around the Country reveals the humor and hardship of life dominated by a revolving door of farm animals, injuries, eccentric farmers, and unexpected wisdom. The heart of this story lies with the unusual people and tasks on each farm. Bender entered his year of transformation as a high school science teacher and came out educated in the ways of sustainable living and human happiness.

The World of Organic Agriculture: Statistics and Emerging Trends 2008

The new edition of this annual publication (previously published by the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) and Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL)) documents recent developments in global organic agriculture. It includes contributions from certification agencies, governments, academics and individuals representing the breadth of the organic sector from throughout the world. It provides comprehensive organic farming statistics that cover surface area under organic management, types and numbers of farms and specific information about commodities and land use in organic systems. The book also contains information on the global market of the burgeoning organic sector, the latest developments in organic certification, standards and regulations and insights into current status and emerging trends for organic agriculture by continent from the world's foremost experts.For this edition, all statistical data and regional review chapters have been thoroughly updated. Completely new chapters on organic agriculture in the Pacific and on organic aquaculture have been added.Published with IFOAM and FiBL.

Fair Food: Growing a Healthy, Sustainable Food System for All

A host of books and films in recent years have documented the dangers of our current food system, from chemical runoff to soaring rates of diet-related illness to inhumane treatment of workers and animals. But advice on what to do about it largely begins and ends with the admonition to "eat local or "eat organic." "Fair Food" is an enlightening and inspiring guide to changing not only what we eat, but how food is grown, packaged, delivered, marketed, and sold. Oran B. Hesterman shows how our system's dysfunctions are unintended consequences of our emphasis on efficiency, centralization, higher yields, profit, and convenience--and defines the new principles, as well as the concrete steps, necessary to restructuring it. Along the way, he introduces people and organizations across the country who are already doing this work in a number of creative ways, from bringing fresh food to inner cities to fighting for farm workers' rights to putting cows back on the pastures where they belong. He provides a wealth of practical information for readers who want to get more involved.

The Profitable Hobby Farm, How to Build a Sustainable Local Foods Business

Turn your hobby farm into a successful businessNo experience in farming? No problem! The Profitable Hobby Farm gives you all the tools you need to launch a thriving hobby farm business. Based on the author's expert guidance and the motivating experiences of other small farmers, it shows you how to blend strategy, marketing, and money management in order to prosper.The Profitable Hobby Farm provides sound, friendly start-up advice on a variety of topics essential to making an initial foray into a local foods venture.A must-read book for raising and selling local, sustainable foodsIncludes sample business plan, grant application, marketing and advertising plan, and other formsLengthy resources section directs you to additional readingAlso by Aubrey: Starting & Running Your Own Small Farm BusinessWhether it's growing heirloom tomatoes, raising free-range chickens for their eggs, or making organic wine or cheese, this book shows you how to turn your hobby into a profit.

Farming with Nature: The Science and Practice of Ecoagriculture

A growing body of evidence shows that agricultural landscapes can be managed not only to produce crops but also to support biodiversity and promote ecosystem health. Innovative farmers and scientists, as well as indigenous land managers, are developing diverse types of "ecoagriculture" landscapes to generate cobenefits for production, biodiversity, and local people. "Farming with Nature" offers a synthesis of the state of knowledge of key topics in ecoagriculture. The book is a unique collaboration among renowned agricultural and ecological scientists, leading field conservationists, and farm and community leaders to synthesize knowledge and experience across sectors. The book examines: the knowledge base for ecoagriculture as well as barriers, gaps, and opportunities for developing improved ecoagriculture systemswhat we have learned about managing landscapes to achieve multiple objectives at a landscape scaleexisting incentives for farmers, other land managers, and investors to develop and invest in ecoagriculture systemspathways to develop, implement, manage, and scale up successful ecoagricultureInsights are drawn from around the world, in tropical, Mediterranean, and temperate environments, from farming systems that range from highly commercialized to semi-subsistence. "Farming with Nature" is an important new work that can serve as a foundation document for planners, farm organizations, researchers, project developers, and policy makers to develop strategies for promoting and sustaining ecoagriculture landscapes. Replete with valuable best practice guidelines, it is a critical resource for both practitioners and researchers in the field.

Pesticide Drift and the Pursuit of Environmental Justice

The widespread but virtually invisible problem of pesticide drift--theairborne movement of agricultural pesticides into residential areas--has fueledgrassroots activism from Maine to Hawaii. Pesticide drift accidents have terrifiedand sickened many living in the country's most marginalized and vulnerablecommunities. In this book, Jill Lindsey Harrison considers political conflicts overpesticide drift in California, using them to illuminate the broader problem and itspotential solutions. The fact that pesticide pollution and illnesses associated withit disproportionately affect the poor and the powerless raises questions ofenvironmental justice (and political injustice). Despite California's impressiverecord of environmental protection, massive pesticide regulatory apparatus, andbooming organic farming industry, pesticide-related accidents and illnesses continueunabated. To unpack this conundrum, Harrison examines the conceptions of justicethat increasingly shape environmental politics and finds that California'sagricultural industry, regulators, and pesticide drift activists hold different, andconflicting, notions of what justice looks like. Drawing on her own extensiveethnographic research as well as in-depth interviews with regulators, activists, scientists, and public health practitioners, Harrison examines the ways industry, regulatory agencies, and different kinds of activists address pesticide drift, connecting their efforts to communitarian and libertarian conceptions of justice.The approach taken by pesticide drift activists, she finds, not only critiquestheories of justice undergirding mainstream sustainable-agriculture activism, butalso offers an entirely new notion of what justice means. To solve seeminglyintractable environmental problems such as pesticide drift, Harrison argues, we needa different kind of environmental justice. She proposes the precautionary principleas a framework for effectively and justly addressing environmental inequities in theeveryday work of environmental regulatory institutions.

The Seasons on Henry's Farm: A Year of Food and Life on a Sustainable Farm

Henry's Farm, run by Henry Brockman, is in central Illinois — some of the richest farming land in the world. There, he and his family — five generations of farmers, including sister Terra, the author — have bucked the traditional agribusiness conventional wisdom by farming in a way that's sensible, sustainable, and focused on producing healthy, nutritious food in ways that doesn't despoil the land. Terra Brockman tells the story of her family and their life on the farm in the form of a year-long memoir (with recipes) that takes readers through each season of life on the farm. Studded with vignettes, digressions, photographs, family stories, and illustrations of the farm's vivid plant life, the book is a one-of-a-kind treasure that will appeal to readers of Michael Pollan, E. B. White, Gretel Ehrlich, and Sandra Steingraber.

The Meat Crisis: Developing More Sustainable Production and Consumption

Meat and dairy production and consumption are in crisis. Globally 60 billion farm animals are used for food production every year. It is well accepted that methane emissions from cattle and other livestock are major contributors to greenhouse gas levels and to climate change. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) predicts a rough doubling of meat and milk consumption by 2050, with particularly rapid growth occurring in the developing economies of Asia. This could raise the number of farm animals used annually to nearer 120 billion. What will this mean for the health and wellbeing of those animals, of the people who consume ever larger quantities of animal products, and for the health of the planet itself?This powerful and challenging book explores these issues surrounding the global growth in the production and consumption of meat and dairy animals and products, including cultural and health factors, and the implications of the likely intensification of farming for both small-scale producers and for the animals. Several chapters explore the related environmental issues, from resource use of water, cereals and soya, to the impact of livestock production on global warming and issues concerning biodiversity, land use and the impacts of different farming systems on the environment. A final group of chapters addresses ethical and policy implications for the future of food and livestock production and consumption. The overall message is clearly that we must eat less meat to help secure a more sustainable and equitable world.

Organic Food And Farming (Introducing Issues with Opposing Viewpoints)

The Quarter-Acre Farm: How I Kept the Patio, Lost the Lawn, and Fed My Family for a Year

When Spring Warren told her husband and two teenage boys that she wanted to grow 75 percent of all the food they consumed for one year—and that she wanted to do it in their yard—they told her she was crazy.She did it anyway.The Quarter-Acre Farm is Warren’s account of deciding—despite all resistance—to take control of her family’s food choices, get her hands dirty, and create a garden in her suburban yard. It’s a story of bugs, worms, rot, and failure; of learning, replanting, harvesting, and eating. The road is long and riddled with mistakes, but by the end of her yearlong experiment, Warren’s sons and husband have become her biggest fans—in fact, they’re even eager to help harvest (and eat) the beautiful bounty she brings in.Full of tips and recipes to help anyone interested in growing and preparing at least a small part of their diet at home, The Quarter-Acre Farm is a warm, witty tale about family, food, and the incredible gratification that accompanies self-sufficiency.

Rodale's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening

Whether an experienced gardener is looking to go organic or a beginner wants to create a healthy, eco-friendly garden, the Rodale's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening contains the tips and techniques needed to produce beautiful flowers, top-quality herbs, and appetizing, wholesome fruits and vegetables. Explore the latest methods for cultivation without chemicals, discover the benefits of composting, and learn how to maintain an organic garden year-round.

Grass-Fed Cattle: How to Produce and Market Natural Beef

Julius Ruechel covers every aspect of raising grass-fed cattle, including herd selection, breeding, yearly cycles, cultivating and maintaining healthy soil and grass, fencing and pasture rotation, winter grazing, pests and diseases, and necessary equipment. He also provides everything you need to know about marketing your product, from niche market opportunities to scheduling the selling and buying of cattle for the greatest profit, finishing the beef and arranging for slaughter, labeling, marketing, and financial planning and record keeping. He even includes chapters for conventional farmers who are transitioning to natural production, farmers who are considering leasing or buying land, and farmers who want to pursue organic certification. Whether you're running a small backyard hobby farm or a large commercial ranch, this is the information you need to successfully raise and market grass-fed beef.

Factory Farming

Each anthology is composed of a wide spectrum of primary sources written by many of the foremost authorities in their respective fields. This unique approach provides students with a concise view of divergent opinions on each topic. Extensive book and periodical bibliographies and a list of organizations to contact are also included.

The Organic Farming Manual: A Comprehensive Guide to Starting and Running a Certified Organic Farm

As the organic food market continues to expand, so too do the opportunities for small farmers. For the farmer, the benefits of running an organic operation are great. Organic farms conserve nonrenewable resources, offer better conditions for farm animals, produce high-demand goods, and boost farm income. As the organic food market continues to expand, so do the opportunities for small farmers. The Organic Farming Manual is a comprehensive guide to growing, certifying, and marketing organic produce, grains, meat, and dairy. Beginning farmers committed to launching an organic operation and experienced farmers hoping to transition from traditional farming techniques will find all the information they need. The organic certification process is lengthy and demanding, but author Ann Larkin Hansen clarifies every USDA requirement and offers complete advice on selecting equipment, tending the land, caring for animals, and marketing farm products.Readers will also find profiles of successful organic farmers throughout the book. Their experiences provide inspiration and valuable tips for first-time farmers looking for real success stories. Hansen's thorough coverage of the subject and the positive words of established growers will set countless farmers on a healthful, organic path.