Today, I drove out to central Illinois with three U of I research employees (who, when I asked, said they preferred to remain nameless in this post). I went to interview soil scientist Bill Becker, they to take samples from fields he has been treating. I ended up helping to take the samples, and as I’m now a […]
Category: Student Voices
Craig Cox: “We need to get the right practices in the right places”
Craig Cox knows what he’s talking about. He has worked as a biologist consulting with the US government on sustainability for over thirty years, and has worked on farm bills for nearly twenty. Since 2008, he has been with the Environmental Working Group, an environment and health advocacy group. He shared his disillusionment with the […]
GMO’s: Labels, or no Labels?
As the world’s population expands, we require more and more food, which necessitates ever more effective technology and robust yields. In this country, one of the ways we have come to deal with this problem is through Genetically Modified Organisms, or GMO’s. But, as with any new “technology” (feels weird to call food “technology”, doesn’t […]
Student Sustainability Committee Funds Permaculture Study
This past spring, ASAP helped setup and partially fund the new Woody Perennial Polyculture research site here on the Urbana-Champaign campus (see article with more information here). This site, with its 3,200 young but quickly growing plants, aims to quantify the agricultural and ecological characteristics of this novel and diverse system. Despite one of the […]
Local agriculture experiences welcome growth at Hendrick House
Alisa DeMarco’s first year at Hendrick House has been marked with huge strides towards more sustainable food options and integration more local foods on campus. Hendrick House has been a privately owned residence hall on the University of Illinois’ Urbana-Champaign campus since 1948, with a strong family tradition behind the management team. The efforts to […]
New Urban Gardening Research And More – Get Up to Speed!
Article by Laura Witzling The first community gardening literature review has been published, a massive quantitative research study on urban soil in New York community gardens is underway, Mother Jones just featured a powerful spread of photographs from a Chicago urban garden, and an inspirational TED Talk about growing food with students has more than […]
What’s in a Word?
For the consumer who shops for food with an emphasis on questions like “who grew this?” and “how was this grown?” life can sometimes be difficult. Let’s face it, oftentimes it takes a degree in chemistry to recognize all the ingredients in the food we eat, and with our modern-age super-corporations owning any number of umbrella […]
Farm Bill: Drought Puts Pressure on GOP
One in a continuing series of posts concerning the 2012 Farm Bill Up to this point, the strategy of the GOP House leadership concerning the proposed 2012 Farm Bill has been one of apathy; afraid of showing splits in their party’s unity running up the crucial 2012 election, and still seeking more cuts to an […]
Restoration Agriculture Project. Check out the video!
Article and video by Heather Faivre This spring students at the University of Illinois initiated a study of permaculture design at the Sustainable Student Farm on the South Farms of the Urbana, Illinois Campus. The study is called Restoration Agriculture, and the goal of the project is to compare the production of traditional corn and […]
Farm Bill Senate Amendments
Hey everybody, hope your day is going well. I thought it might be helpful to include some of the amendments the Senate approved in its version of the Farm Bill this past week that concern organic and sustainable agriculture. Please note that this list comes from the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF), and as such […]