Create natural balance and resilience on your farm.
Biodiversity strengthens your soil foundation by reducing pest pressure and creating new income streams. Strategies like flowering borders, intercropping, and edge habitat management can reduce pesticide use by 20–50% and even qualify you for conservation payments.
Learn how to work with nature to boost pollination, increase yields, and build long-term ecological and financial stability.
Industrial agriculture is a form of food production that treats a farm like a factory that produces animal products. The primary objective of factory farming is to maximize yield and profit. Economic rewards generally supersede environmental, health, and animal welfare concerns. To enjoy the benefits of economies of scale, factory farming must be large-scale…
Biotechnology is the manipulation of biological processes. In the context of agriculture, biotechnology is often synonymous with genetic engineering used to produce Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). GMOs are organisms that have a set of genes altered by said engineering. There are three components required in order to make a genetically modified organism: The desired gene…
Loss of Turgor Pressure (decrease in water pressure within plant cell walls) Causes: abiotic factors, bacteria, fungi, nematodes, insects Examples: Ralstonia solanacearum, Verticillium dahliae, Bursaphelenchus xylophilus Enations (scaly leaflike structures that lack a vascular system) Causes: viruses Examples: Cherry raspberry leaf virus, Pea enation mosaic virus Stunting (dwarfing or loss of vigor) Causes:…
Plant tolerance and plant resistance are ways that plants deal with stressors in their environment. Resistance and tolerance are plants’ best defense mechanisms. At the most basic level, the difference between tolerance and resistance is related to how the plant defends itself. In the case of tolerance, the plant has strategies that helps it to…
A disease, as it relates to plants, is a disturbance from plant pathogens or environmental factors that interfere with plant physiology. When a disease is present, plants will express symptoms. Symptoms are the detectable expression of a disease, pest or environmental factor. These symptoms are usually the result of complex physiological disturbances. They result in changes…
Entomopathogenic viruses are those that infect and kill insects. They are superior to regular pesticides because they are not harmful to humans or other vertebrates. Furthermore, each viral strain attacks only a limited number of insect species which helps to mitigate unpredicted damage. There are two types of entomopathogenic viruses: Baculoviridae (ds DNA) Nucleopolyhedrovirus Granulovirus…
Integrated pest management (IPM) is a long-term pest prevention program that focuses on ecosystem-based strategies for the control of pest-related issues. This is accomplished through a combination of techniques including biological control, habitat manipulation, modification of cultural practices and the use of resistant cultivars. The use of chemical pesticides is then restricted to applications only after…
The family Poaceae is considered the most economically important plant family due to the fact that they produce the world’s food staples including domesticated cereal crops such as maize [corn], wheat, rice, barley, and millet. Poaceae plants also provide forage, building materials [bamboo, thatch, straw] and fuel [ethanol]. Agricultural grasses grown for their edible…
Nature has been doing her thing for billions of years. It is only since about 200,000 years ago that humans entered the picture and it is only since about 15,000 years that humans have figured out agricultural production. It is safe to say that nature may have a few tricks up her sleeves that we Homo…
Agriculture is the foundation of society as we know it and without the domestication of plants, agriculture would not be possible. Plant domestication, which is the process of adapting wild plants for the use of humans, is arguably more successful when practiced in conjunction with crop breeding. Crop breeding occurs when closely or distantly related plant…
