Good farming about real food, not products that resemble food
Kennebec Journal - 7/3/2009.By Denis Thoet – OK, OK, I have an agenda. Since this column began a year ago, some have told me that I am informing people about farming, not lecturing or advancing an agenda. That is not really true. Farming is far too wide and broad a topic for me to do that. |
|
Blight fear trumps spray rule
Kennebec Journal - 7/2/2009.By Meg Haskell, Bangor Daily News – Rainy weather has left Maine's 55,000 acres of potato fields sodden, creating a perfect environment for a virulent fungal disease known as potato late blight. At an emergency meeting Wednesday in Orono, members of the state's Board of Pesticides Control voted to temporarily override existing regulations and issue licenses quickly to out-of-state aerial pesticide applicators. ... Russell Libby, of Mount Vernon, director of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, raised concerns about the proposal. |
|
Crops in crisis
Bangor Daily News - 7/2/2009. By Sharon Kiley Mack – LINCOLN — Earl Ireland has been farming vegetables for 50 years and said Wednesday that he had never seen weather such as Maine is experiencing now. “Another 10 days of rain and we’ll be out of business,” he said. Ireland raises vegetables and berries on his Lincoln farm, and in a normal year, would have planted 70 acres this spring. “We got in 35. We couldn’t get on the rest of the fields,” he said. The lack of sun and continued rain are causing crops to rot in the fields. |
|
Will organic farming bring economic opportunities to Portland’s Somali population?
Exception Magazine - 7/2/2009.By Peter Linsley – Portland, Maine – 10 low-income Somali teens from Portland are taking part in a pilot training program in organic farm management. This past Monday they began their 3 month program through the Center for African Heritage by cleaning out an abandoned barn and house on Falmouth’s River Point property’s previously fertile farmland. |
|