Free Republic

President Obama came to Michigan recently to sign the $1 trillion farm bill and in a press release touting the bill, Sen. Debbie Stabenow called agriculture the state's "second-largest industry after manufacturing." That is false. A quick look at the data shows there is no possible way to justify calling agriculture Michigan's second-largest industry. Yet the claim has been repeated for years. This is especially distressing because Sen. Stabenow, D-Lansing, is the chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee and should know the size and scale of the industry. The myth also is repeated by the Michigan Farm Bureau and the...

im Crawford was rushing to load crates of freshly picked organic tomatoes onto trucks heading for an urban farmers market when he noticed the federal agent. A tense conversation followed as the visitor to his farm — an inspector from the Food and Drug Administration — warned him that some organic-growing techniques he had honed over four decades could soon be outlawed. "This is my badge. These are the fines. This is what is hanging over your head, and we want you to know that," Crawford says the official told him. Crawford's popular farm may seem a curious place for...

From 1900 to 2000, the U.S. population quadrupled while the economy expanded 26-fold. As a result, U.S. per capita consumption of materials rose from 1.9 tons in 1900 to 5.6 tons in 1950 to 12 tons in 2000. In Making the Modern World, the University of Manitoba natural scientist Vaclav Smil cites data suggesting that global annual output now comprises about 10 billion different products. Nevertheless, the majority of people on the planet have not yet achieved the material abundance enjoyed by Americans, Europeans, and the Japanese. Can humanity find, transform, and deploy enough resources to lift those people into...

Every Spring, farmers plant; every Fall, they harvest. In so doing, they make their land productive and feed the nation. So important is the bedrock role of farming in our culture that even Congress, when it established the onerous wetland permitting requirements of the federal Clean Water Act, expressly and clearly exempted farming. The reason is clear: a nation that would require its farmers to spend, on average, two years and $270,000 to get a federal permit to plant and harvest crops would not long be able to feed itself. But despite that clear exemption, and without a hearing, the...

This past fall I nearly made that clichéd mistake of getting in between a mother bear and her cubs. My husband, Eric and I have a farm and maple syrup operation situated on 1,000 acres of mostly wooded land in northern Vermont. I had walked a quarter mile through the forest to our house to retrieve our truck and upon my return, a medium-sized black bear ambled out of the woods and strode across the driveway right in front of me. I was stunned and enthralled since I had just five minutes previously passed by on foot. As I sat...

An attorney who spoke at the 50th Colorado Farm Show in Greeley said the complex requirements of the Health Care Reform Act are here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future, so farmers who have fewer than 50 employees should prepare to comply by 2015. Kevin Paul, an attorney with Heizer Paul LLP in Denver, said even with more than 20 years of experience in the legal profession, he's finding the thousands of pages in the law to be difficult to interpret. "I spent a day this past weekend trying to figure out two sentences in one regulation and...

It’s no coincidence that sage grouse habitat also happens to intersect both the largest untapped coal deposits in the country as well as large parts of the Bakken oil field. It’s clear the primary motivation to focus on sage grouse for ESA listing is to provide yet another tool for special interest groups to block energy development. And in this obstructionist toolbox, there’s no heavier sledgehammer than the Endangered Species Act. What an interesting irony, then, that so much effort is going into “protecting” one bird from energy development, when the Obama administration is turning a blind eye to hundreds...

Surviving the Coming Crises - Property Purchase Check List - 5 Acre Abundance on a Budget - Urban Permaculture - Absolute in Abundance - Feed Chickens without Grain - Food Forest Suburb - Reforesting with Goats - Cold Climate Permaculture - Rooftop Farm - Power of Bamboo - Perennial Abundance - Permaculture Fishponds

A proposed Maryland bill would restore the right of the states’ citizens to participate in cow shares, or cow boarding, to obtain raw milk. Maryland citizens lost the right to raw milk via cow shares in 2006, when the appointed director of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene redefined the word “sale” to include agistments. A hearing on the bill is scheduled for January 28 at 1:00pm at the Lowe House Office Building in Annapolis. Cow shares or cow boarding refers to a practice in which people buy shares in individual animals for a portion of the milk...

I’ll be honest: for years, I never considered the survivalist/prepper crowds as target audiences. I mean, we’re on totally different ideological wavelengths, right? I’m not into shooting things, and they likely think I’m a touchy-feely hippie who wouldn’t survive a week after SHTF. What could we possibly have in common? Quite a bit, it turns out – apparently, ideology ain’t everything. As we’ve started doing more DIY/upcycling/self-sufficiency content, we’ve seen a steady rise in readership from sites like The Homestead Survival and Knowledge Weighs Nothing. And, as you might expect, I’ve spent more time checking out these sites and those...

Farming comprises less than three percent of an American labor force that feeds 307 million Americans and many other millions around the world yet government regulations are making it harder and harder for small farms to operate and bring wholesome foods to the market. Why should farmers be subjected to “annual property monitoring visits and inspections” by environmental groups, environmental councils, and local supervisors beholden to international agencies, groups that have no idea how their food gets to the table nor do they care? Virginians have fought back the NGO environmentalist assaults on their land, private property rights, and the...

You hear the squeals of the pigs long before reaching a set of long buildings set in rolling hills in southern China. Feeding time produces a frenzy as the animals strain against the railings around their pens. But this is no ordinary farm. Run by a fast-growing company called BGI, this facility has become the world's largest centre for the cloning of pigs. The technology involved is not particularly novel - but what is new is the application of mass production. The first shed contains 90 animals in two long rows. They look perfectly normal, as one would expect, but...

Salvage logging on lands burned by last summer's Douglas Complex wildfire in southwestern Oregon is in full swing on privately owned forests, but not on public lands. ... On BLM lands, federal environmental laws require a lengthy planning process that includes the public. The Douglas Complex fires burned through 76 square miles on a patchwork of public and private lands.

'National emergency' declared in Costa Rica, one of the biggest suppliers Country produces 1.2 million tons of bananas each year - one in five could be ruined by plagues of mealybugs and scale insects Elsewhere, banana-eating fungus from Asia and Australia is spreading Plagues of insects and a spreading fungus are threatening the world's supply of bananas, researchers have warned. A state of 'national emergency' has been declared in Costa Rica, one of the world's biggest suppliers, while separately a banana-eating fungus from Asia is believed to be spreading. Officials in the Central American country of Costa Rica fear that...

Past experience in Idaho, northeastern Oregon and Washington state illustrate that it's time to take gray wolves completely off the federal list of endangered species. The West’s wolf problem started in 1995 and 1996. That’s when 66 wolves from Canada were reintroduced in Idaho and Yellowstone National Park. Those wolves multiplied and spread into Wyoming, Utah and Oregon. They also took up residence in Washington state and Montana, where other wolves from Canada already lived. Today at least 1,674 wolves live in 321 packs within the region, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That’s in addition to the...

Nasa has announced plans to grow plants on the moon by 2015 in a project designed to further humanity’s chances of successfully colonising space. Plant growth will be an important part of space exploration in the future as NASA plans for long-duration missions to the moon. NASA scientists anticipate that astronauts may be able to grow plants on the moon, and the plants could be used to supplement meals. If successful, the Lunar Plant Growth Habitat team will make history by seeding life from Earth on another celestial body for the first time, paving the way for humans to set...

An example of the tension between Western Democrats and the Obama administration surfaced Monday when Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper told a rural audience that Washington bureaucrats are pushing a “slanted version” of the sage-grouse issue to political decision-makers. Mr. Hickenlooper, a Democrat who’s running for re-election in 2014, said Interior Secretary Sally Jewell is receiving one-sided advice from staff at the Fish and Wildlife Service over the issue of whether to place the Gunnison sage grouse on the endangered-species list. “She has an open mind, right, she’s not well-versed in this issue, and she recognizes that,” said Mr. Hickenlooper in...

Wildlife lovers clamoring to bring gray wolves to Colorado may want to pay attention to those wooden outhouse-style structures in rural Catron County, New Mexico. They’re called “kid cages,” and they’re built to protect children waiting at school bus stops–from wolves. “The wolf issue is an example, especially with the kid cages, about how you’re putting the interest of wildlife over the interests of human beings,” said filmmaker David Spady. “Every American should be concerned about seeing kids in cages and wolves out wandering around freely.” Spady’s remarks came during a Tuesday screening of his film, “Wolves in Government Clothing,”...

Organic farmer Don Kretschmann walked around his picturesque but ancient barn and stepped up to a rustic barrel root crop washer. It's a simple machine, he said, consisting of long, wooden planks that form a cylinder, which he uses to clean freshly harvested produce on his Beaver County farm. Soil-covered carrots and potatoes go in one end, the cylinder rotates, water sprays in and clean vegetables emerge. “But who knows if I'll be allowed to keep using it?” said Kretschmann, who has farmed about 15 acres since he and his wife, Becky, bought the land in 1978. “Or this barn,...

Tennessee’s second poorest county will suffer even more if the federal government buys 120,000 acres of land in that area, near Memphis, all for the stated purpose of wildlife preservation, said that county’s mayor. Lauderdale County Mayor Rod Schuh told Tennessee Watchdog Friday that his county, while poor, relies on farming and agriculture as the primary drivers of its economy. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s plan to expand the Lower Hatchie National Wildlife Refuge, assuming it buys out as many properties as it can, will rob the county of its most valuable commodity, Schuh said. Primarily, almost 60 percent of...