Browse Sustainable Stories - Page 6

It all started with a movie many people haven’t seen. About 10 years ago, Ruqayah Bhuiyan sat down to watch “Sunshine,” a movie about astronauts flying to the sun. Amid all of the high drama, fission bombs and personal conflict aboard the ship, there was a garden.

The University of Georgia has been awarded a $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture to develop organic methods of controlling the Spotted Wing Drosophila (SWD). 

With the advent of CRISPR technologies and other precise genome editing methods, it has become faster and easier for crop scientists to breed new varieties. But there are still a few technical roadblocks that need to be overcome.

Whether it’s an argument for slow food or technologically advanced agriculture, most people oversimplify the narratives surrounding the modern food system.

One of the steepest barriers to profitable controlled-environment agriculture is the energy cost associated with providing the plants enough light, but new research being pioneered by University of Georgia could cut those costs by 50 percent.

For the past 19 years, Julia Gaskin has worked to prove that conservation tillage and cover crops don’t have to be dirty words when it comes to conventional farming. 

When the public thinks of NASA, the first images that come to mind are often rockets or satellites. In the future, images of greenhouses might also make the list.

Cheered on by the more than 1,000 attendees at the 20th Anniversary Georgia Organics Conference, four fledgling Georgia farmers celebrated their graduation from Georgia’s Journeyman Farmer Certificate Program — an innovative training program for beginning farmers.

For decades, farmers who have embraced conservation production have seen increased soil health, reduced irrigation demands and lowered economic risk. For the past 17 years, Georgia farmers interested in adopting new conservation practices for their farms – including those looking to swap best practices with other conservation tillers – have gathered at Georgia’s annual Conservation Production Systems Training Conference.

Relatively unknown outside of health food stores in the United States, millet has served as a staple food for families in Eastern Africa and Asia for thousands of years.