CHURCHVILLE, VA: The Chesapeake Bay is in eco-collapse. The once-clear waters are clouded with sediment, so the eel-grass cannot grow across the bottom for baby crabs to hide in. The oysters, which once filtered every bit of the bay’s water twice daily, have mostly succumbed to such viral diseases as MSX and Dermo.
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The bay [...]
CHURCHVILLE, VA—It was 1950. World War II, with its 40 million deaths, was over. Doctors were conquering smallpox with vaccines, protecting millions from malaria and typhus with new pesticides, and treating infections with the miraculous new antibiotics.
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Then we realized that humanity was still at massive risk—from hunger. With death rates falling radically, there was [...]
CHURCHVILLE, VA—Meat production has always been somewhat awkward, both for the farmer and the consumer as it always involves the death of the meat animals. Milk and eggs have meant “protective custody†for the dairy cows and laying hens.
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As a farm kid, I learned early that the cute little piglets of the spring would [...]
If a traveler on Continental Airlines pays an optional $5 surcharge to plant a tree as a “carbon offset†how much difference will it make to the planet? Traveling Americans are paying millions of dollars to plant hundreds of thousands of additional trees. Many of these new trees are being planted in the tropics; where [...]
CHURCHVILLE, VA—Rudolph Steiner, a founder of organic farming in the 1920s, started the “great organic nitrogen swindle†that threatens the world with hunger to this day. Steiner didn’t believe in nutrients, he believed in “vital forces.â€Â He said a cow has horns to send into itself “astral-ethereal formative powers.â€Â He claimed you could fertilize a [...]
