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Soil and Agriculture

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Local Harvest / Farmers Markets / Family Farms / CSA / Organic Food. Silver Lake Farms « A Silverlake CSA Silver Lake Farms. Local Author and Gardener Encourages the Neighborhood to Grow - Top News - Echo Park-Silver Lake, CA Patch. Father and son gardeners Jimmy and Logan Williams grow success with green thumbs and big hearts and hope you'll do the same. Jimmy Williams’ front yard is a botanical wonderland.

Organic, heirloom, exotic, vegetable, fruit and herb, you name it, Williams has it or something you’ll like even better. And don’t worry if you don’t have a green thumb. Williams has more than two. Gardeners On the Go “I’m non-stop. Williams and son Logan run Logan’s Garden, formerly known as HayGround Organic Gardening. “I think people are finally getting it,” Williams said of the recent rise in home gardens and interest in locally grown produce. Seed to Skillet Is A Classic Williams and longtime friend, gardener and writer Susan Hegger, co-authored the popular home gardening book Seed to Skillet, published in 2010. “I learned it all from my grandmother,” Williams said of his gardening know-how. Raised on Long Island with 11 siblings, Williams remembers always having a garden. From New York to Los Angeles. Local Author and Gardener Encourages the Neighborhood to Grow - Top News - Echo Park-Silver Lake, CA Patch. Education. K-12 Education | Sustainable Agriculture Education Association.

Home Page - Los Angeles County. LA Farm Girl. Its Pumpkin Time!!! Forneris Farms Home. Visit a Real Family Farm For Your Strawberries - Los Angeles Urban Agriculture. California. Home | Start2Farm.gov. Home | Sustainable Agriculture Education Association.

Bees

Roundup Weedkiller Found In 75% of Air and Rain Samples, Gov. Study. Farmed and Dangerous | Chipotle Original Series. Watch Farmed and Dangerous | Passing the Buck online. To make a burger, first you need 660 gallons of water ... California's severe drought has probably made a lot of us more aware of our water footprint, which is the amount of fresh water we use plus the amount used for the goods and services we consume every day. The obvious contributors to our water footprint are washing clothes and dishes, cooking and bathing. But the biggest contributor to our water footprint is our diet. On average, the water we use in our households is about 98 gallons a day, says a U.S. Geological Survey. The industrial goods we use -- paper, cotton, clothes -- that's about another 44 gallons a day. But it takes more than 1,000 gallons of water a day per person to produce the food (and drinks) in the average U.S. diet, according to several sources.

More than 53 gallons of water go into making 1 cup of orange juice, for example. Just to get a sense of how much water goes into growing and processing what we eat, here's a list of the water footprint for some common foods, via National Geographic: Self-cleaning dishware? California Drought Obama: Desalination Could Water Central Valley.

GMOs

Genetically Modified Salmon - Coming Soon? The Seeds of a New Generation. John D. Jackson lives in the heart of the Corn Belt, where most of the corn has nothing to do with sweet kernels on the cob. His farm in Southern Illinois typically grows field corn, the high-starch variety that is turned into ethanol and cattle feed. He also works as a logistics manager for Archer Daniels Midland, the agricultural giant that produces the other big artifact of this crop: high fructose corn syrup.

But on 10 of his 700 acres, Mr. Mr. Until recently, farmers in the nation’s heartland could only dream about such profits because there were so few ways to sell their produce locally. The success of this movement, still in its toddler stage, could affect more than just the farmers. By comparison, plantings of field corn surged to a record 97 million acres in 2012, from 79 million in 2002 — or roughly 20 times the amount of land given over to other vegetables and fruits.

This imbalance could be in for a modest change. To sell his apples, Mr. “It’s a good feeling,” he said.