agriculture definition

Prunus persica , the ordinary peach, is prized around the world as one of nature's sweetest treats. In America, only the apple exceeds the peach among commercially cultivated fruits. Peach-friendly places around the globe, however, fall within two narrow bands, one in each hemisphere. Extreme cold, though not enough to kill the trees themselves, can kill a season's new buds. And peaches ripen fully only in summer's heat. Most of all, though, peaches have a chilling requirement . In technical terms, peaches require a certain number of chill hours in order to undergo vernalization , or the competence to flower in spring after exposure to prolonged winter cold. Perhaps the best colloquial expression of this folk wisdom (albeit one tinged with longing and impatience) comes from the folk singer-songwriter, Gillian Welch : Peaches in the summertime, apples in the fall If I can�t have you all the time, I won�t have none at all A Song Dynasty painting of peach blossom...

My most recent Forbes.com article (coauthored with Henry Miller, M.D.), " Will Over-regulation  in Europe Stymie Synthetic Biology ," is available at http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2012/08/29/will-overregulation-in-europe-stymie-synthetic-biology

Among the agriculture and rural development issues I have become aware of during my time in Australia is the growing conflict over coal seam gas (CSG).  Coal seam gas, you ask?  That's what Aussies call the natural gas released by fracking, and Aussies are beginning to debate the practice as hotly as we are in the United States.  But the Australian context for this debate--which has evolved into outright conflict in several locales--is different in various regards to what it is in the U.S., including the legal schemes for regulating the practice and the extent to which farmers and others in rural areas can prevent it. This February 2012 piece by Bond University law professor Tina Hunter summarizes several of the issues, including who has the power to regulate or prevent the practice.  In short--it isn't the individual land owners.  Hunter's headline speaks volumes, "Food security v energy security:  land use conflict and the law. "  She writes: The d...

Book Exceprt      To a locavore, food in the future should be created pretty much like it was in the not-so-distant past: produce and animals raised lovingly in urban backyards, turning domestic waste into hearty dishes. Farmers� markets in every small town and city neighbourhood, where people rediscover the joys of real food and get reacquainted with one another. The rebuilding of small-scale slaughterhouses and canning factories to serve area producers and foster the preservation of local food items for consumption in the off-season.      Ideally, this local system would also be built on seeds saved from the previous harvest rather than purchased from giant corporate seed producers; ancient �heirloom� cultivars developed before synthetic fertilizers and pesticides became available and that, as a result, are better able to seek nutrients in the soil, don�t require any chemicals and are naturally resilient to drought and pests (�If it...

Farm stand establishment in Queensland's Lockyer Valley I have been in  Toowoomba, Queensland , for more than a week now as a guest of the University of Southern Queensland .  (Read an earlier post here ).  This perch atop the  Great Dividing Range  has given me ample opportunity to observe some things about "country" life in this part of Australia, including the extent to which that country life is dominated by agricultural pursuits. Toowoomba is Australia's largest inland city (after Canberra, the capital of the Commonwealth of Australia), and it has a population in excess of 100K.  As such, Toowoomba serves as a regional center for the  Darling Downs , which stretch west from here, but also to all points west and northwest.  As you leave Brisbane headed for Toowoomba, the road signs indicate not only the mileage to Toowoomba and other smaller towns, but also that to Darwin, Northern Territory --a distance in e...

? ? In my prior post about the farmers markets in Telluride and Mountain Village, Colorado, I promised to compare and contrast those markets with the one in Jasper, Arkansas , my home town.  Both places are similar in some ways, dramatically different in others.  First, both are rural/nonmetropolitan by most ecological measures, e.g., population density and size.  Indeed, both have similar total populations-- San Miguel County just over 7000, and Newton County just over 8000.  Both are also mountain towns (San Juans of the Rockies on one hand, Ozarks on the other), which benefit from ecotourism.  In fact, both are amenity rich in terms of outdoor activities, but Telluride has many more "built" amenities, and is quite cosmopolitan culturally.  This distinction and the crowd each county attracts is reflected in the annual accommodation and food service sales for 2007:  $77 million in San Miguel County, $3.2 million in Newton County.  That and th...

As some of my recent posts ( here  and  here ) suggest, I've been thinking for some time about the booming farmers' market phenomenon in relation to the slow/local food movement and, in particular, how local--and affordable--the food at farmers' markets really is. Stall of hole foods farm, La Sal, Utah, at Market on the Plaza As a ruralist, I'm also interested in what the farmers' market phenomenon says about our connection to rural places and the extent to which rural economies benefit from it. This week I had the opportunity to visit two markets in southwest Colorado, one in the posh town of  Telluride  and the other in the equally posh (but more obviously nouveau riche and glitzy and less old West cowboyish) neighboring town of  Mountain Village .  In a two post-series, I am going to compare these markets with a newly established one in my hometown,  Jasper, Arkansas .  This first post will be dedicated to the Colorado markets.  High ...