Free Republic

My Lady Jean and have a nice little ranch near Denver. On our tender little 35 acres, we have ten alpacas. They belong to the Camelid family, llamas, vicuña and the true humpty humpers. They're cute too, so Lady Jean is happy. We're expecting a baby "cria" in May. Our first breeding try. We have all females except one old gelded male, Andy. You don't keep the boys and girls together as the boys will go through a fence if he gets the right wink! We have two years of fleece, they get shorn once a year and yield around...

Humans have needs, but we need some things more than others. Back in the 1940s, American psychologist Abraham Maslow famously classified human needs into a hierarchy, often shown as a pyramid. At the foundation are our physiological needs: air, water, food, etc. Only when these needs are met can we reach upward to more and more refined stages of material, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual fulfillment. You could say, the very existence of civilization depends on the stability of the bottom layer. It’s thus no accident that a huge part of the economy exists to fill these basic needs. Even smart...

HARRISBURG (March 6, 2017) – Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said today Pennsylvania should strongly consider regulating and taxing marijuana to benefit from a booming industry expected to be worth $20 billion and employ more than 280,000 in the next decade. “The regulation and taxation of the marijuana train has rumbled out of the station, and it is time to add a stop in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” DePasquale said during a news conference at the state capitol. “I make this recommendation because it is a more sane policy to deal with a critical issue facing the state. Other states are...

Indoor farming is a popular subject in the media, and a booming industry with new farmers joining the game every day. In fact, there are growing conferences held solely for indoor farmers, their suppliers, influencers, and resources. But many are still left with questions about the indoor farm. •Just what makes an indoor farm an indoor farm? •What makes indoor farming so popular? •What potential does indoor farming really have in the future? •How will I interact with indoor farms? Dr. Nate has an overview for you. What is indoor farming all about?(VIDEO-AT-LINK) What is indoor farming? Indoor farms take...

It appears that one of the most visible achievements of Michelle Obama’s legacy as first lady will live on in the Trump White House: her garden. First lady Melania Trump announced last week that she would preserve the White House vegetable garden planted in 2009. It came as a surprise to many nutrition advocates and food policy experts, who had expressed fears that Michelle Obama’s garden and the health and nutrition initiatives it symbolized could be endangered under the Trump administration. Some advocates, including Michael Jacobson, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, are lauding the new...

According to ganjapreneur Rick Byrd, the future of farming is tall, dirtless and local. Byrd’s vision of skyscraper farms to feed city dwellers begins with a much different kind of crop: marijuana. The 45-year-old is chief executive officer and founder of Pure Agrobusiness Inc., a company that sells equipment to grow legal cannabis, a market worth $6 billion in 2016 and expected to reach $50 billion by 2026, according to Cowen & Co. Because cannabis has higher profit margins than food, and pot is mostly grown inside, Byrd said he hopes the innovations perfected by PureAgro, with the help of...

ALBANY - The lead state Senate sponsor of New York's medical marijuana law has written to President Trump asking that the feds allow such state programs to continue. Sen. Diane Savino (D-Staten Island) wrote to Trump on Dec. 9 when he was President-elect encouraging him to direct his Attorney General nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions "to respect the wishes of the citizens and elected officials of 29 states and allow carefully regulated and closely monitored medical cannabis programs to continue without undue interference from the federal government." Despite the growing number of states allowing some type of marijuana use, the drug...

A total of 133 organizations and companies from the food and agriculture sector, which supports more than 15 million jobs nationally, sent President Donald J. Trump a letter this week expressing their eagerness to work with his Administration to modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), while preserving and expanding the gains achieved to date. “U.S. food and agricultural exports have produced a trade surplus for nearly 50 years,” the letter notes. “Consistent growth over this period resulted in over $130 billion worth of exports, which created $423 billion in U.S. economic activity in 2015.” The letter also noted...

Marijuana legalization advocates and industry actors remain optimistic about the incoming Trump administration's attitude towards pot, despite some less-than-reassuring comments from the man who will soon be charged with enforcing drug laws in America. Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump's nominee for U.S. Attorney General, in a confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee this week said he could not commit to not enforcing federal marijuana laws when at the helm of the Department of Justice. He didn't say he would crack down on cannabis, either. "I won't commit to never enforcing federal law...but absolutely it's a problem...

Bunge North American is planning to build its first new U.S. processing plant in 15 years to meet growing demand for soy products. The company is considering locations in Ohio and Indiana for the plant, which is expected to go on line by the end of 2019. No cost estimates for the project were disclosed. Tim Gallagher, executive vice president, Oilseed Value Chain for Bunge, said the company saw a need to expand its footprint in the Eastern U.S. — a key market. "A state-of-the-art facility in the Eastern Corn Belt that incorporates the latest productivity, safety and sustainability features...

FRESNO — Days after Donald Trump won the White House vowing to deport millions of people in the country illegally and fortify the Mexican border, California farmer Kevin Herman ordered nearly $600,000 in new equipment, cutting the number of workers he’ll need starting with the next harvest. Herman, who grows figs, persimmons and almonds in the nation’s most productive farming state, said Trump’s comments pushed him to make the purchase, larger than he would have otherwise. “No doubt about it,” Herman said. “I probably wouldn’t have spent as much or bought as much machinery as I did.”(continued)

For Randy King, the argument for indoor farming in Canada is just common sense. For one, Canada is a northern country with long winters. Two, during those long winters almost all fruit and vegetables in Canadian grocery stores are imported from Central America, Mexico or California. Three, wouldn’t it be better if Canadians grew their own fruits and veggies? “I think this is the way of the future for growing produce in northern regions,” said King, co-owner of West Grow Farms, a company with plans to build an indoor farm near Edmonton. “In order to gain food sovereignty, we need...

People were poor by today's standards, so why do people remember the plantation life fondly? The answer is simple: community, purpose, sacrifice and meaning. Allow me to connect two apparently unconnected dots. Dot #1: The last sugar plantation in Hawaii is closing down, ending more than a century of plantation life in the 50th state. Dot #2: a new study found that Nearly 95% of all new jobs during Obama era were part-time, or contract. The research by economists Lawrence Katz of Harvard University and Alan Krueger at Princeton University shows that the proportion of workers throughout the U.S., during...

Consider it a wake-up call from nature. Asian crops were devastated by a severe drought this year, highlighting the urgent need to stabilise farm output and brace for the consequences of climate change. And with the region's population projected to continue growing over the long term, this is no easy task. The good news is that answers are starting to emerge. Agribusinesses are harnessing information technology. Organic farms and so-called plant factories are becoming hothouses for innovation. International investors are keen to water the seeds. This week, we head out into the fields — and some cutting-edge facilities — to...

Indoor Farms of America is pleased to announce today the delivery of the first vertical aeroponic farms to two different Native American Communities in the U.S. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161206/446104LOGO Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161206/446105LOGO "Our staff is very excited about these two farms, sold to Native American tribal interests and members, one in the western New York region of Salamanca, south of Buffalo, and one in Mayetta, Kansas, serving the people of the Prairie Band of the Potawatomi Nation," said Ron Evans, President of Indoor Farms of America. Evans noted, "We had the folks from the PB Nation visit our Las Vegas...

While the most of the country has voted to veer away from the transformation of America spearheaded by President Obama, California has vowed to stay the course, at least on the environmental front. In terms of air quality, the state has enacted new regulations to limit how much methane gas cows are allowed to emit while farting. California Air Resources Board science adviser Ryan McCarthy called the attempt “truly ambitious. No one really knows how we’re going to get this done. The State Assembly deserves credit for taking on a task that may well be impossible.” “The obvious first response...

My father did not spend a lot of time talking about the hard times in the Depression.  His father had been an avid hunter and trapper, and had passed those skills down to him.  Sometime in the 1930's he had obtained the Village Gun, my name for the old Springfield 84-C .22 bolt gun.  It had been nearly new, with a Weaver straight tube 2 3/4 power 3/4 inch scope when he purchased it for $7.50. Times were hard in the Depression.  Money was hard to come by. Wages for a boy picking rocks in farmer's fields were 50...

Thanksgiving week is here, so let’s talk turkey, and the price of Thursday’s meal. Nationally the cost of a Thanksgiving dinner for 10 people this year is just under $50, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation’s annual survey. Hoosiers will pay even less than that and significantly less than a year ago. The national survey is made up of individual state surveys, and Indiana Farm Bureau’s annual Thanksgiving market basket survey is now at the lowest level since 2010. AFBF economist Dr. John Newton says the decline confirms the quality of the U.S. food supply. “I think this year’s...

With mounting concerns about the farm - and the U.S. - economy, a new nationwide poll indicates how farmers and ranchers will vote in the 2016 presidential election. Agri-Pulse reports that 55 percent of those surveyed in its latest Farm and Ranch Poll say they'll support Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump while 18 percent are throwing their support behind Democratic Hillary Clinton. Only 2 percent plan to vote for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and just 1 percent for the Green Party's Jill Stein. However, in another sign of how fluid the race remains in farm country with less than two...

Environmentalists' desired result: Destruction of food production to the point that food is no longer affordable. How to lessen the "surplus population"...Make sustenance so expensive they die of starvation Increasingly, city-dwellers seeking view lots or large acreage have been fleeing the metropolitan areas to build larger and even luxurious homes in rural America, often opposite agricultural operations. Once they’d invested in constructing homes and settled into their new digs, they were awakened to the realities of country living, including the sights, smells and sounds of working farms… and they didn’t like it. The offshoot was a plethora of nuisance suits...