Farming
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One Nation, Organically Grown
How the National Organic Program affects organic foods and farming, today and tomorrow.
Doing Well by Doing Good
Organic Valley's milk, butter, cottage cheese and soy milk are on the shelves of more than 10,000 stores from coast to coast. But its chief executive officer, George Siemon, doesn't talk like a corporate chieftain: "We wouldn't mind if the growth slowed down," he says. "The most important thing to us is to keep our mission. Organic Valley's not looking to conquer the world. We do things our own way, because we care about things other than business success."
Organic Agriculture and the global food supply (pdf)
Organic agriculture has the potential to contribute quite substantially to the global food supply, while reducing the detrimental environmental impacts of conventional agriculture.
Sign of the Times in dairyfield.com (pdf)
The Organic Valley team says organics are the future, and their booming business suggests they may be right.
The incremental growth over the past two decades for the La Farge, Wis.-based cooperative is proof that organic can work on a national scale, a reach that's key to spreading the company's mission.
"Running a successful business model allows us to spread the mission," says Mike Bedessem, Organic Valley's chief financial officer. "We want to be innovative, practical and thrifty. If we have a successful business model, people will listen."
My Empire of Dirt
The "locavore" movement says we should only eat what is grown within a few miles of where we live. How about a few feet? An experiment in Brooklyn-style subsistence farming, starring smelly chickens, an angry rabbit, a freak tornado, a vegetable garden to die for, two psyched kids, and a marriage in the weeds.
Impacts of Organic Farming on the Efficiency of Energy Use in Agriculture (pdf)
The energy required to bring an agricultural crop to market is a key indicator of a farming system's environmental health, resiliency, and sustainability. Energy use is intimately linked to the health of soils and the internal efficiency of on-farm nutrient cycles. Energy dependence is also a sign of a farm's economic vulnerability in this era of rapidly rising energy prices. Both diesel fuel and natural gas prices are projected to rise up to 50 percent in 2006, and have already about tripled since late 1999.
