Genres : How To

Over the past 50 years, a dangerous set of technologies has crept into beef and dairy farms and ranches. Technologists have succeeded in pushing the pounds of milk that can be extracted from a cow higher and higher and throwing pounds of weight on beef cattle faster. But these advances came with a price. The average age of dairy cow "burnout" has dropped for almost a decade. Infections are rampant. New diseases and health maladies have appeared. Drug use and...

Fertility Farming explores an approach to farming that makes minimal use of plowing, eschews chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and encourages cover cropping and manure application. Newman Turner holds that the foundation of the effectiveness of a fertile soil - and the measure of a fertile soil - is its content of organic matter, ultimately, its humus. Upon a basis of humus, nature builds a complete structure of healthy life - without need for disease control of any kind. In fact,...

The chemical-based conventional agriculture industry claims that the synthesized concoctions they sell as pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides are safe when used as directed, but does the scientific evidence truly support their assertions? Organic agriculturist and lecturer André Leu delves into a wealth of respected scientific journals to present the peer-reviewed evidence that proves the claims of chemical companies and pesticide regulators are not all they seem. Leu translates technical jargon into layman's terms to break down the five most repeated...

This book is the culmination of Acres U.S.A. founder Charles Walters’ lifetime of experience, written in his honest, straight-ahead style, outlining how the small farmer-entrepreneur can find his way to a profitable bottom line. A Farmer's Guide to the Bottom Line provides how-to information on each step from planning to implementation of business practices for the eco-friendly farm and includes examples of people who are making a living, and a profit, by demanding a fair price for their labor. Whether...

What happens when trailblazing urban agro-ecologists Rob and Michelle Avis of Verge Permaculture host superstar “lunatic farmer” Joel Salatin for a three-day, three-workshop weekend…then expand and enhance that recorded wisdom in a three-month online intensive? You get an encyclopedic compendium of small-farming entrepreneurial know-how! And now we’ve gathered up and distilled every mind-bending morsel of Joel’s mob-stocking sagacity from those online events, and captured it all in one encyclopedic extravaganza of integrated agro-education… …to inspire, inform, and incite you to...