Awesome Library Search   
   

Search Results
Terms: farming
Matches: 26    Displayed: 19
When you have more than 50 Matches, go to Categories to see the rest.

Categories

Specific Results

  1. Farming and Pollution of Water (Natural Resources Defense Council))
      Provides examples of farms where use of pesticides and fertilizers have been reduced. "Agriculture contributes more than half of the pollution entering the nation's rivers and lakes; recent studies have identified it as the greatest source of water pollution in the United States." 6-01

  2. No-Till Farming (Wikipedia.org)
      "No-till farming is considered a kind of conservation tillage system and is sometimes called zero tillage. It is a way of growing crops from year to year without disturbing the soil through tillage. Once called chemical farming, the terminology was changed[who?] in order to promote the idea of no-till farming being more natural. It is becoming more common as researchers study its effects and farmers uncover its economic benefits." 06-08

  3. No-Till Farming (Grist.org)
      "In essentially all cases where conservation tillage was found to sequester C[arbon], soils were only sampled to a depth of 30 cm or less, even though crop roots often extend much deeper. In the few studies where sampling extended deeper than 30 cm, conservation tillage has shown no consistent accrual of SOC [soil organic carbon], instead showing a difference in the distribution of SOC, with higher concentrations near the surface in conservation tillage and higher concentrations in deeper layers under conventional tillage ... Long-term, continuous gas exchange measurements have also been unable to detect C gain due to reduced tillage." 06-08

  4. No-Till Farming (Conservation Agriculture Systems Alliance)
      "Across North America voluntary producer organizations work hard to promote no-till systems and other practices that provide economic benefits as well as environmental benefits to their regions. These organizations share similar missions and goals, encounter similar challenges and struggle with all too common problems." 06-08

  5. No-Till Farming (ReducedTillage.ca)
      "The RTL Agronomy Library contains hundreds of articles from getting started in direct seeding to fine tuning no till systems. Topics include seeding equipment, residue management, weed control, crop rotations, soil quality and much more." 06-08

  6. Vertical Farming for Sustainability (New York Times)
      "IF climate change and population growth progress at their current pace, in roughly 50 years farming as we know it will no longer exist. This means that the majority of people could soon be without enough food or water. But there is a solution that is surprisingly within reach: Move most farming into cities, and grow crops in tall, specially constructed buildings. It’s called vertical farming." 08-09

  7. -06-26-08 Brazil Now a Farming Superpower (MSNBC News)
      "Today, the region grows some of the world's most precious commodities and has made Brazil a farming superpower, according to Robert Thompson, an agricultural economist who worked with the USDA and the World Bank." 06-08

  8. Winnebago (First Nations)
      "Their clothing was fringed buckskin, which the Winnebago frequently decorated with beautiful designs created from porcupine quills, feathers and beads..."

      "Winnebago clans served both ceremonial and social functions, but in distinctive Siouan characteristic, were grouped into two major divisions, or moieties: an Upper (Sky) with four clans; and a Lower (Earth) having eight."

      "Of course, they never surrendered their distinctive Siouan language, but it was not uncommon for a Winnebago to speak several languages besides his own (Algonquin, French, and English). Originally a farming people, the Winnebago lived in large semi-permanent villages." 12-03

  9. Saving Soil and Trees While Fighting Hunger (Washington Post)
      "Dr. Pedro Sanchez loves dirt. The prize-winning soil scientist says that poor quality soil is the cause of many of the evils that plague poor countries, from hunger and poverty to environmental devastation caused by slash-and-burn farming."

      "...Sanchez has helped teach 150,000 small-scale African farmers how to boost grain production by bettering their dirt — that is, by replenishing soil nutrients with nitrogen from native vegetation and phosphates from rocks."

      "As a result, those farmers can feed their families without having to burn more forests to get fertile land." 8-02

  10. 09-10-02 Tropical Forests 100 Times More Economic Than Alternatives (Ananova.com) star
      "A study has found wild ecosystems are around 100 times more economic than ones converted to human use." "The study by the American Association for the Advancement of Science also found half of an ecosystem's economic value is lost when it is converted to human use."

      "The case studies looked at included the logging of a Malaysian tropical forest and a tropical forest in Cameroon converted to agriculture and commercial plantations. They also looked at a mangrove system in Thailand converted for shrimp farming, a Canadian marsh drained for agriculture and a Philippine coral reef dynamited for fishing."

  11. 09-15-03 World Trade Organization Talks Fail (CBS News)
      "Talks designed to change the face of farming around the world collapsed Sunday amid differences between rich and poor nations, the second failure for the World Trade Organization in four years." 9-03

  12. 12-15-03 Saddam Hussein Profile (USA Today)
      "For Saddam Hussein, the end came close to his beginning. He was captured near Tikrit in Ad Dawr, a few miles from the farming village of Owja, where he was born 66 years ago." 12-03

  13. -Biodiesel Fuel for Vehicles (Wikipedia.org)
      Discusses the strengths and weaknesses of biodiesel fuels as a replacement for gasoline or diesel engines.

      "Biodiesel is non-flammable, and in contrast to petroleum diesel it is non-explosive, with a flash point of 150 °C for biodiesel as compared to 64 °C for petrodiesel. Unlike petrodiesel, it is biodegradable and non-toxic, and it significantly reduces toxic and other emissions when burned as a fuel."

      "Biodiesel reduces emissions of carbon monoxide (CO) by approximately 50% and carbon dioxide by 78.45% on a net basis because the carbon in biodiesel emissions is recycled from carbon that was already in the atmosphere, rather than being new carbon from petroleum that was sequestered in the earth's crust."

      "Biodiesel does produce more NOx emissions than petrodiesel, but these emissions can be reduced through the use of catalytic converters. Petrodiesel vehicles have generally not included catalytic converters because the sulfur content in that fuel destroys the devices, but biodiesel does not contain sulfur."

      "It is one of the most realistic candidates to replace fossil fuels as the world's primary transportation energy source, because it is a renewable fuel that can replace petrodiesel in current engines and can be transported and sold using today's infrastructure."

      "Current worldwide production of vegetable oil and animal fat is not enough to replace liquid fossil fuel use. Some environmental groups, notably NRDC object to the vast amount of farming and the resulting over-fertilization, pesticide use, and land use conversion that would be needed to produce the additional vegetable oil."

      "The estimated transportation fuel and home heating oil use in the United States is about 230,000 million gallons. (Briggs, 2004) Waste vegetable oil and animal fats would not be enough to meet this demand. In the United States, estimated production of vegetable oil for all uses is about 33,000 million pounds (15,000,000 t) or 4,500 million US gallons." Although soybean oil is most commonly used for biodiesel in the U.S., algae may supply 200 times more oil per acre, according to the article. 10-05

  14. Desert Archaic Peoples - Spiritual Quest (DesertUSA.com)
      "If the Desert Archaic Indians left numerous tangible clues which indicate how they fed, clothed, housed and even adorned themselves over time, they left no more than some symbols – representational and abstract images painted or scribed on stone – that only suggest how they nurtured their souls and communicated their thoughts. We can, however, infer with reasonable confidence that the Desert Archaic Indians led a profound and complex spiritual life. That is a common thread woven through hunting, gathering and early farming traditions across the earth."

  15. Report: Fish Farms "Devastate" Wild Fish (BBC News)
      "Fish farms might seem a sensible alternative to over-fishing the world's oceans but a new report says they have a disastrous impact on both the environment and on stocks of wild fish."

      "To make fish farming more sustainable worldwide, the authors recommend that farmed fish should be fed vegetable protein instead of fishmeal." 05-06

  16. The Toxic Consequences of the Green Revolution (U.S. News)
      "Four decades after the so-called Green Revolution enabled this vast nation to feed itself, some farmers are turning their backs on modern agricultural methods—the use of modified seeds, fertilizer, and pesticides—in favor of organic farming." 07-08

  17. Arguments for Caution When Using Trees for Carbon Sequestration (Mongabay.com)
      "Overall, about 20 percent more of the water provided by precipitation was removed by current tree farming, the study estimated. And additional planting of trees for carbon mitigation will likely have large impacts on water resources of many nations that net less than 30 percent of what precipitation provides for their total annual supplies of fresh water, the authors predicted." 07-08

  18. Replacing Corn With Perennial Grasses Improves Carbon Footprint of Biofuels (eScienceNews.com)
      "Converting forests or fields to biofuel crops can increase or decrease greenhouse gas emissions, depending on where – and which – biofuel crops are used, University of Illinois researchers report this month. The researchers analyzed data from dozens of studies to determine how planting new biofuel crops can influence the carbon content of the soil. Their findings appear this month in the journal Global Change Biology Bioenergy."

      " 'From the time that John Deere invented the steel plow, which made it possible to break the prairie sod and begin farming this part of the world, the application of row crop agriculture to the Midwest has caused a reduction of soil carbon of about 50 percent,' said Evan DeLucia, a professor of plant biology at Illinois and corresponding author on the new study." 02-09

  19. -06-27-09 What the Climate Bill Means for CO2 Emissions (Time.com)
      "To keep conservative Democrats on board — especially those in the coal-heavy Midwest and Southeast — Waxman and Markey allowed the bill to be watered down considerably, loosening the overall carbon cap and scaling back the renewable-energy standard. When the powerful farm lobby balked at the bill, it was changed to allow farmers to sell offsets from agriculture, such as no-till farming, which leaves carbon in the soil. Worse, oversight of the agricultural offsets was taken away from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and given to the Department of Agriculture, which isn't exactly a neutral party."

      "As a result, the bill will achieve most of its stated carbon cuts through offsets and through improving energy efficiency, rather than encouraging the growth of low-carbon renewable electricity."

      "Instead of investment flowing to new solar and wind companies, to electric cars and public transit, that money is likely to go to foreign offsets and farmers." 06-09

Back to Top

Home Teachers Students Parents Librarians College Students
Send comments to [Dr. Jerry Adams at jadams@awesomelibrary.org.]