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Tag: "agriculture"

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PRESIDENTIAL CHEMO-PHOBIA?, BY: DENNIS T. AVERY

“I believe it is time for a new human experiment. The old experiment is that we have sprayed pesticides which are inherent poisons . . . throughout our shared environment. They’re in our amniotic fluid . . . They’re in our mothers’ milk. What is the burden of cancer that we can attribute to these poisons in our agricultural system? We won’t really know the answer until we do the other experiment, which is to take the poisons out of our food chain, embrace a different kind of agriculture, and see what happens.”

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HAITI’S DESPERATE FOOD CROP OUTLOOK, BY: DENNIS T. AVERY

CHURCHVILLE, VA—In a normal year, Haiti must start now preparing for the spring planting season, which ends in May.  The spring crop usually produces 60 percent of the country’s food.  Unfortunately, many families have had to eat or share the seeds they were saving for the next crop. Any improved seed varieties brought in now [...]

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BORLAUG: FEEDING THE HUNGRY, SAVING THE WILDLIFE, BY: DENNIS T. AVERY

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.
 
Then we realized that humanity was still at massive risk—from hunger. With death rates falling radically, there was [...]

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THE FATAL ERROR IN ORGANIC: FERTILIZER, BY: DENNIS T. AVERY

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.”  He said a cow has horns to send into itself “astral-ethereal formative powers.”  He claimed you could fertilize a [...]

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New Year’s Goals For The Ag Community Focused On A Strong, Prosperous 2008

by Dan Murphy
   1/7/2008 1:50:00 PM

 As 2008 begins a critical year for all of agriculture, AgNetwork.com reviews the goals and priorities from a select group of advocacy groups and trade associations. Some of those are entirely predictable – such as lobbying for the most favorable version of the farm bill. Others center on policy, marketing [...]

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Has America Already Lost High-Yield Agriculture?

Dennis T. Avery
America has had a proud two centuries of world leadership in high-yield agricultural research and technology. It stretches back to George Washington’s farming experiments and Abraham Lincoln signing the Morrill Act to create the land-grant colleges and agricultural experiment stations. It includes the hybrid seeds, mechanization, and pesticides that produce ample American ample food-while [...]

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Engineering A Sustainable–and Sustaining–World Food Supply

Dennis T. Avery
This speech was given before the American Society of Agricultural Engineers in Chicago, IL
The Declaration for High-Yield Agriculture
On April 30, 2002, a new “Declaration in Support of Protecting Nature With High-Yield Farming and Forestry” was signed in Washington, D.C. The founding signers included two Nobel Peace Prize winners, a co-founder of Greenpeace, [...]

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The World Really Needs High-Yield Ag: It Just Doesn’t Know it Yet!

Alex A. Avery
The Rev. Thomas Malthus’ famous question about whether humanity can continue to feed all the people was posed exactly 200 years ago.
It has taken us nearly all of that 200 years to be sure of an affirmative answer. Only recently have we been certain that the opening of the 21st century should see [...]

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The Future of American Agriculture: Rocky Road to Prosperity

Alex A. Avery
The Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times,” certainly applies to us today. We’re in the middle of a farm crisis. For those not hurt by flooding or drought, prices are at record or near record lows. Politicians are proposing various bailout strategies and calls for a cancellation of the 1996 reforms [...]