Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

Great, Russia’s Crops Just Failed

November 8, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Obama-Collective-Farming-Plan

While everyone else was worrying about hurricanes, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization quietly published its own news of a disaster, the body's November "Food Outlook" report. It seems Russian wheat production has crashed by 30 percent, owing to freakishly severe droughts, the result of an epic heat wave last summer (remember the horrific Russian wildfires a few months ago?). Fine, 2013 will be a slightly bad year to be a baker, so what? The report explains that part of the problem with a tight market for amber waves of grain is that it also hits cereal production—which ... Read More

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Do Heritage Grains Hold Promise for the Gluten-Sensitive?

June 15, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Fresh-baked loaves of bread

There is a growing movement of farmers, scientists, and foodies working to bring back heritage grains—especially those ancient varietals of wheat that were around long before grains were widely hybridized to boost yield and resist disease. Among those who are growing and baking with these heirloom grains, there is a keen interest in einkorn, a nutty and nutritious species of ancient wheat that may be digestible by people with gluten allergies. Eli Rogosa, the director of the Heritage Wheat Conservancy, has dedicated herself to preserving rare old wheat species and establishing them in a ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Health
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U.S. Planting Seeds of Peace in Afghanistan

January 10, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Samuel Rance speaks with a twang and his favorite band is Tool. One morning last spring, he was sitting at a picnic table on Forward Operating Base Salerno in eastern Afghanistan, seven months into his deployment. His team had just finished Operation Thrasher, a training class in composting for farmers in the nearby city of Khost. Behind him were several acres of wheat and fruit trees, and a greenhouse. He and his team members — the Indiana National Guard’s 3-19th Agribusiness Development Team — had planted the grain and the trees, and built the greenhouse. Beyond the farm were the ... Read More

More like this: Environment, January-February 2012, News and Options
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Returning Warriors Go to Work, in the Fields

January 10, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

At age 25, Marine Sgt. Colin Archipley had completed three tours in Iraq. “My unit was redeploying,” he says. “A lot of the guys I served with were going back because they couldn’t find jobs; I worried it would be hard to find something after I separated from the military and thought about going with them.” His wife Karen convinced her husband to trade his tank for a tractor and turn a 5-acre plot they’d bought near San Diego into a small-scale organic farm. A year later, in 2007, Karen and Colin had launched Archi’s Acres, growing basil, avocados, lemons, kale, chard, and ... Read More

More like this: Environment, January-February 2012, News and Options
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The iPod Touch as a Crop Saver

November 7, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

On the heels of Cellscope, a device that clips onto a smartphone to analyze blood samples, comes Gene-Z, a device that can clip onto an iPod Touch and identify diseases in crops and plants. The traditional approach to identifying plant pathogens is to collect field samples, send them to a laboratory, and await the results. With Gene-Z, researchers said, they can take a swab of plant pathogens, transfer the sample to a kind of “lab-on-a-chip,” insert the chip into the device, and get results within 10 to 30 minutes via smartphone technology. Gene-Z was unveiled November 7 at a conference ... Read More

More like this: By The Way ..., Science
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New Zealand Imports Foreign Workers: Dung Beetles

October 21, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

New Zealand farmers Dean and Marjorie Blythen are poised for an unlikely spot in the history books — early next year their property, about 30 miles north of Auckland, will become home to the country's first officially imported dung beetles. In what will be the start of a nationwide rollout of the industrious little insects, Blythen expects his 200 Hereford cattle and between 500 and 600 sheep to be joined by perhaps 1,000 to 2,000 beetles at an initial release site on the farm. Those beetles, among 11 species being imported from South Africa, Australia, France, and Spain, are currently ... Read More

More like this: Environment
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Could Organic Farming Threaten Our Food Supply?

August 8, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Untold numbers of species are threatened by extinction due to people. Yet, a class of animals is thriving, despite humans' best efforts to wipe them out: agricultural insect pests. And these pests pose a serious threat to global food supplies. Insects like the desert locust and the Russian wheat aphid can very quickly destroy the farm production from vast areas. What is it about the biology of these animals that allows them to survive whatever people can throw at them? In this podcast, Dr. Scott Merrill discusses the often bizarre adaptations of insect pests, like the Russian wheat ... Read More

More like this: Curiouser
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Pollinating Local Is the New Buzz

February 1, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Scientists say if bees were better homebodies it might be better for them and for us. During a few weeks in February, some 1.5 million honeybee hives will be drawn from all over North America for a pilgrimage to California, in which they will descend on the state's almond groves at a critical moment in the trees' flowering cycle. More than three quarters of North America's honeybees will arrive in the Central Valley just in time to pollinate the $2.3 billion almond crop. And when their work there is done the beekeepers will fan out with their bees to provide the same service for nearly ... Read More

More like this: Environment
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10 Memorable Threads from 2010

December 28, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

The short days in the Northern Hemisphere produce a peculiar journalistic crop, the Top 10 list. At Miller-McCune.com, we’re not immune to the pull of that chestnut, but the wonk rays so prevalent here force a mutation. Instead of a Top 10 list, here’s 10 for 2010, stories that are popular and memorable but without the baggage of perfection as determined in a year-end frenzy of instantaneous deliberation. Of course, some of the best movies never get nominated for Oscars, and so it is here. We’ll make apologies to stalwarts like Jai Ranganathan (of Curiouser & Curiouser fame) or ... Read More

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Marijuana, Dark Horse Savior of California Agriculture

October 29, 2010 • By • 15 Comments

This story originally posted on April 1, 2010. With Californians asked to determine whether to legalize marijuana this Tuesday through the Proposition 19 ballot initiative, we offer it again. The three-hour Northern California drive from San Francisco to Nevada County passes through some of the cream of the state’s agriculture industry: dairy, alfalfa, rice, almonds, grapes. On both sides of the freeway stretch enormous crop rows, interrupted only by the state capital of Sacramento and a number of small towns. Last fall, I made the trip north to visit a medical marijuana farm in the ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, Legal Affairs
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