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Don't forget to check out our latest Organic Price Index.
Want to go directly to the New Farm home page? Click here

Hello. We’re looking for 20 good citizens from around the country who would be willing, starting soon, to record prices for around 24 standard products at weekly producer-only markets throughout the remainder of the 2003 season. There have been many requests from readers who are hungry to know what the going price is for a pound of slicing tomatoes, or a bag of baby lettuce. If you know you’re interested, why not email managing editor Greg Bowman right now. If you’d like more information, click here.

The staff of New Farm just got back recently from the Organic Trade Association show in Austin, where we met many creative and talented farmers, including the folks at Pure Luck Texas goat cheese, herb and flower farm, in the hot dry hills west of Austin. Hope to tell you more about them soon, as well as several dry land farmers in New Mexico. But, from our perspective, the big news at the conference was the fact that the OTA awarded the Rodale family with its annual Organic Leadership Award. In accepting the award, my boss and the head of the Rodale Institute, Anthony Rodale, challenged all of us to work toward insuring there are an additional 100,000 organic farmers in this country by 2013. If you’d like to read more about Anthony’s challenge, click here.

PLEASE TAKE OUR POLL: We’d like to up the response to our polls—makes it more interesting, and more valuable. We got several state level extension agents interested in the results of our last poll question, “Has your local extension agent been helpful to you as a farmer?” With the current question, we hope to get a sense of how our readers market: “Where do you primarily market your products?” If enough people respond, it will help us shape our editorial mix to meet your needs. Click here to go to the home page and take the poll.

Speaking of readers: We have some preliminary results from the reader survey we’ve been running on the web site. We know, for example, that 37% of the farmers who read our web site farm full time, while 63% hold down second jobs to make ends meet. If you’d like more details, click here to go to a summary page in the “press room” area of the web site.

Fresh today from The New Farm®


SPECIALTY CUT FLOWER CORNER:
For the beginning grower

After the bloom is ON . . .
Column 5: Thinking ahead to summer--it won't be long--some general and specific advice for cutting, handling, storing and transporting flowers.

Pictured here: Melanie keeps the flowers cool in her dining room after cutting.

  

Cut flowers
     
GREENHOUSE ABUNDANCE!
    


NUTS & BOLTS & DREAMS:
A beginner's guide to farming
The A to Z Greenhouse Growing Guide, Part I
Everything you need to know--except the experience--about planting, cultivating and harvesting salad and cooking greens year round.

FIELDHOUSE DETAILS: You asked for it, you got it
The early birds get the returns

PART 1: Getting a jump on the growing season brings more loyal customers, more flexibility and more cash -- so get yourself some simple-to-build fieldhouses and start growing early. Paul and Sandy Arnold describe in detail how they use these field houses ... and what they make off of them.

PART 2: Detailed instructions for building your very own fieldhouses--only $600 to $800 for a 96-foot house--duct tape required.

  

A to Z Guide

Fieldhouse: Part 1
Fieldhouse: Part 2

     

Jason’s Global Organic Odyssey:
Living and learning one farm at a time

In the Himalayas, the Western world has invaded,
but not yet conquered
Many families still survive happily on crops and livestock tended on steeply terraced plots at high elevations ... AND IT"S ALL ORGANIC, by default.

  

Himalayas
     

TALK DISCUSSION FORUMS

New on the New Farm Forums

In our talk section, you’ll find new discussions on the following:

  • Livestock/Poultry Forum: Advice on where to get organic chick starter.
  • Marketing/Community Supported Ag Forum: How to determine share size: by weight, volume, diversity of product? Some good ideas already, but jump in and share your own.
  • Crop & Soil Talk/General Crop Forum: Looking for advice on how to kill a rye cover crop.
  • Livestock/General Livestock Forum: Someone who’s had long-term success with Diatomaceous earth as a dewormer
 

Go to TALK
     

CERTIFICATION

Answers to your certification questions
Does the NOP and the "certified organic" label have any effect on companion labels? Can an organic farmer use sticky or pheromone traps? Would certified organic land be compromised if nonorganic seedlings were planted on it? What is an acceptable greenhouse growing medium? ... And a slew of questions about various soil amendments.

  

Certification
     

GLEANINGS

Government, land grants must wake up to address safety, sanity of U.S. food system
Paul D. Johnson from the Prairie Writers Circle challenges the U.S. government and land-grant universities to honestly address concerns about the public health, ecological and social impacts of an industrial, commodity-based food system, and gives a call-to-action for consumers to support a fair food system with their dollars.

The New Peasants Revolt
The plight of farmers world-wide has risen to crisis level but grass-roots organizations aren't giving up. A raw look at the state of farming world-wide, agribusiness' part in the degradation of poor farmers, 'free trade', and what groups such as Via Campesina are doing to halt the flood.

Mad Cow provides opportunity to improve system
A Saskatchewan farmer ponders the irrational overraction to the Mad Cow scare in Canada, the gross underreaction to more rampant meat packing contaminates such as E. coli and some common sense solutions to both problems.

  

Food safety

Peasant revolt

Mad cow
     

MISCELLANEOUS

  • A bumper crop of new news items
  • A new Final Word from Alan Guebert
  

The latest news

Final Word
     
 
     
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