Showing results for: crop farming Articles
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Blending and Bagging at Sungro Production Facility
What’s In The Bag? A recent visit by FibreDust to the Sun Gro Horticulture blending facility, located just outside of Orlando, Florida, gave a glimpse into the business of soilless media and blending. The facility had a massive mixing and bagging line with 14 huge hoppers that added essential ingredients to soilless blends. Numerous tidy bunkers of various additives were scattered ...
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SMS Users: Tools You Won’t Want to Miss
Make sure you are squeezing every last drop of utility out of your data management system! Here’s a guide for new, and experienced SMS users to maximize the way you access and use your data. There’s something for everyone to learn as this list covers some underutilized features. Read on to find out what you’ve been missing! SMS Basic and SMS Advanced Software are ...
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Ecological vegetable growing – Is it needed?
Recent years ecological food is becoming more and more popular. Society wants to eat healthy products, of known origin and free of harmful chemicals that have an impact on our health. Where to get such food? The answer is simple – you should ask the source, which in this case are farmers. Despite the demand for ecological products is large, only a few producers decide to grow ecological ...
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A call to conserve crops’ wild cousins
Wild cousins aren’t always appreciated at family gatherings. But when it comes to crops, the opposite is often true: Plant breeding has historically relied on genes from plants growing in the wild as a source of diversity that can be introduced into crop plants to produce new crop varieties that are more resilient, nutritious and productive than those currently cultivated. As human ...
By Ensia
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How a Grower Used Granular to Uncover an 11% Profit Difference in Two Varieties
Learn how Granular helped a real farm discover that their variety choice was costing them $800 per acre The most effective farm organizations use data to organize their production plans and make financially-driven decisions. There are common variables to consider when making these decisions that often include land costs, seed variety, fertilizers, and chemicals. Does your data help you make ...
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The problems with the arguments against GM crops
New evidence shows that arguments against GM crops are unfounded, says Margaret Karembu. The year 2013 marked the 18th consecutive year of commercial cultivation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or now commonly referred to as biotech crops. And in just under two decades, the volume of land on which biotech crops are grown has increased from 1.7 million hectares in 1996 — the first ...
By SciDev.Net
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The impact of using GM insect resistant maize in Europe since 1998
Genetically Modified (GM) insect resistant (Bt) maize crops have been grown commercially in the European Union (EU) since 1998, and in 2006, there were plantings in seven EU member states. This paper reviews the specific economic impacts on yield and farm income as well as the environmental impact in respect of insecticide usage (where data exists). The analysis shows that there have been ...
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Influence of organic fertilizer production line equipment in present life
With the development of clothing industry, the nuclear products of clothing organic production line equipment are also entering a new stage of development. Organic production equipment plays an important role in the field of clothing industry. With the market demand, it is also pursuing deeper development. Most of the organic fertilizer materials produced by the organic fertilizer production ...
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Are you lighting for optimum yields?
How do you achieve the highest yields with your lighting system? As we know, increasing light intensity up to a certain species-specific point, results in a corresponding increase in yield. And when light levels are not optimized for production, or the type of crop you are growing, you are going to have slower flowering, poor root development and plant structure, as well as reduced yields. There ...
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An overview of preharvest factors influencing postharvest quality of horticultural products
Postharvest product quality develops during growing of the product and is maintained, not improved by postharvest technologies. Available genetic material allows discrimination of external and internal quality attributes that must satisfy consumer requirements and indulgences. Farmers face challenges in utilising technologies for producing high quality crops; meaningful manipulation of light, ...
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Science for Environment Policy
The economic impact of climate change on European agriculture A new study has estimated how changes to climate might affect the value of European farmland. Based on data for over 41 000 farms, the results suggest that their economic value could drop by up to 32%, depending on the climate scenario considered- Farms in southern Europe are particularly sensitive to climate change and could ...
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Getting seed to smallholders needs a business approach
A locally owned, alternative model of supplying affordable seed is working for Africa’s framers, says Joe DeVries. Smallholder farmers in Africa — mostly women — wage silent battles against the elements and other forces beyond their control to feed their families, their villages, their countries. They have historically taken the lead in feeding Africa and are destined to ...
By SciDev.Net
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Locust Swarms Emphasise the Need for Controlled Environment Agriculture
Outbreaks of locust swarms in Africa, Asia and the Middle East have epitomised the essential need for indoor farming. Unseasonal rains caused by global warming, have aided the spread of desert locusts which would normally have died out in the dry season. Ethiopia and Somalia are currently experiencing their worst outbreak in twenty-five years, while Kenya is experiencing its worst infestation in ...
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A Saline Duper Wheat that Tolerates Higher Salt Concentrations!
In the past few decades, agricultural land has been largely lost, and increased salinity in soils around the world has received much attention. Nowadays, nearly 8% of the world's arable land can no longer be used for crop cultivation due to salt pollution, and more than half of the world's countries are affected. Wheat is the second largest grain grown after corn and grows more on Earth than any ...
By Lifeasible
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Application of Agricultural Biotechnology for High Nutritious Food Products
Abstract Agricultural biotechnology has some controversy impacts on global economy and international regulations. But, it has enhanced the production of crops and foods with high nutritious. Some time, it has not secured human and environmental safety, intellectual property rights, consumer choice, ethics, food security, poverty reduction and environmental conservation. Even though, it has ...
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Advancements in chemistry are providing growers with flexibility when managing slug pressures in potato crops.
Flexibility in slug control The mild and wet weather and lack of ground frosts seen this winter, means that being vigilant to slug activity will be key as we move into the potato planting season. Andrew Sprunt, Agrii’s Northern region potato technical agronomist, explains what growers can expect from the season ahead, and how to manage the potential impact at farm level, particularly in ...
By Certis UK
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How `open source` seed producers from the U.S. to India are changing global food production
Around the world, plant breeders are resisting what they see as corporate control of the food supply by making seeds available for other breeders to use. Frank Morton has been breeding lettuce since the 1980s. His company offers 114 varieties, among them Outredgeous, which last year became the first plant that NASA astronauts grew and ate in space. For nearly 20 years, Morton’s work was ...
By Ensia
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A New Generation of GMOs
Is synthetic biology on its way to our farms, markets and tables? Thousands of researchers will descend on Boston this fall for an event billed as the world’s largest gathering of synthetic biologists. The field is evolving so rapidly that even scientists working in it don’t agree on a definition, but at its core synthetic biology involves bringing engineering principles to ...
By Ensia
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Urban farming is booming, but what does it really yield?
City-based agriculture produces 15 to 20 percent of food globally. In the U.S., its benefits go far beyond nutrition. This story was produced in collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, a non-profit investigative news organization. Midway through spring, the nearly bare planting beds of Carolyn Leadley’s Rising Pheasant Farms, in the Poletown neighborhood of ...
By Ensia
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Could food shortages bring down civilization?
One of the toughest things for people to do is to anticipate sudden change. Typically we project the future by extrapolating from trends in the past. Much of the time this approach works well. But sometimes it fails spectacularly, and people are simply blindsided by events such as today’s economic crisis. For most of us, the idea that civilization itself could disintegrate probably seems ...
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