I highly recommend you take a ghost tour if you visit New Orleans. You’ll have ample opportunity to learn about ghosts, zombies, and all manner of horrors. Dead Zones in the Gulf, however, are less entertaining and made the news again recently.

Right now is the time to influence the Senate Agriculture Committee Farm Bill. The committee is moving forward at a rapid pace. As of this writing, they were about to complete their final hearing and move toward committee debate over the bill.

Columbia Daily Tribune (Columbia, Missouri) | By Marcia Vanderlip | March 27, 2012

Ryan Henriksen Leslie Touzeau, left, and Liberty Hunter look over seed packets Thursday at The Salad Garden.

A couple of years ago, Dan Kuebler was approaching 60 and feeling the effects of 20 years of farming in Ashland on a small farm known as The Salad Garden. Growing organic vegetables involved hands-on planting, cultivating, insect and deer control, and constant weeding, which he calls "the bane of the organic farmer."

In 1990, he decided to begin farming on 1½ acres of the 30 acres of land he bought in 1977. It was situated on a picturesque hill above a pond. The next year, Kuebler began selling his produce at the Columbia Farmers Market and later served on the market's board for nine years. Kuebler tended the plot daily and also worked as a physical therapist three days a week. "I came home from work and worked until dark and beyond. When you are younger, you can do that," he said last Tuesday.

At 61, he says he is ready to retire. Even so, he isn't resting that much. He spent Monday of last week with a chain saw, taking down cedar trees that were shading some of his garden.

Still, since last year, his role on the farm has changed a bit. He still cuts the grass and helps with farm maintenance — such as putting up the new deer fence — but the day-to-day managing, planning, planting and cultivating, as well as the organic certification work, website marketing and the weeding is handled by his partners, Leslie Touzeau, 26, and Liberty Hunter, 24. Last season, the pair became the fresh new faces at The Salad Garden's stall at the Columbia Farmers Market, offering an array of garden goods, from celeriac and plump fennel bulb to salad mix. They enjoyed a plentiful season, though, like a lot of farmers around here, they had to contend with voles, deer and insects. Last week, the pair tended to seedlings, planted seed ahead of the rain and prepared for the first outdoor market of the year, which took place Saturday.

Reuters | By Carey Gillam | February 6, 2012

(Reuters) - Dan Pugh wishes he had a bigger tractor and his wife Laura worries about their chickens in the winter weather. But as new farmers putting down roots in rural Missouri, the Pughs are counting on more rewards than regrets in trading their city lives for the country.

A better quality of food and life are among the factors that caused Dan, 47, to leave a career in sales last year and move Laura, 48, and their two young children to 50-acres of rolling pastureland they call Honey Creek Farm.

The Pughs will plant their first crop of organic spinach and lettuces in the next few weeks on ground they tilled behind the barn they converted into a two-bedroom home. They are shopping for sheep and hogs. And though their first hives of bees mysteriously died, Laura is determined to develop a successful honey operation as well.

"The whole food and farming system is so out of whack," Dan Pugh said. "We want better and we can do something to help other people eat better."

For those who remember the American TV series, call it the "Green Acres" effect. Fueled by an economic downturn that has curtailed the upward mobility of many corporate jobs, general dissatisfaction with suburban stresses and growing discontent with what they see as the ills of industrialized agriculture, thousands of families across the United States have left suburban cul de sacs and headed to the countryside - forging a new demographic of family farmer.

Increasingly, weeds resistant to glyphosate have created a perverse incentive for chemical companies to design new herbicide-resistant crops. Ironic, in that decreasing the use of 2,4-D and other herbicides was a common rationale for widespread use of glyphosate-resistant crops.

Rotationally Grazed Central Missouri Dairy

A central Missouri dairy seeks a beginning farmer to purchase their 79 acre rotational-grazed dairy operation. The farm features electric cross fencing and auto-watering to 12 paddocks and a partial line of machinery that could be used by a successor. The current landowner will serve as a mentor to a beginning farmer for the initial months of ownership and help ease the transition onto the new farm. Purchase of cattle to accompany the farm is negotiable.

Beginning Farmer Desires Small Plot to Grow Vegetables

A beginning vegetable farmer seeks 5-20 acres anywhere in the United States to start her own organic vegetable farm. The farmer will cultivate vegetables, berries, and possibly establish fruit trees. Organic practices including composting are planned, and she may use small animals in the operation to encourage on-farm nutrient cycling. This farmer plans to build a greenhouse and hoop houses on the property. Produce will be marketed through farmers markets and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA).

Interested in the dairy farm? Know of land for the vegetable farm? Call or email Virginia Wolking, 402.687.2100 or virginiaw@cfra.org.

Land Link is our program to revitalize rural America by matching new farmers with landowners.

The New York Times | By WIlliam Neuman | December 29, 2011

Peter DaSilva for The New York Times Tony Azevedo, an organic farmer, says pay for the milk has to increase or supply will remain low.

There is a shortage of organic milk across the country, and it has become so bad in areas like the Southeast that Publix stores from Florida to Tennessee have put up signs in dairy cases anticipating the shopper’s frustrated refrain: “Where’s my organic milk?”

The answer is that there is not enough to go around, and starting next month consumers can expect to see a sharp jump in price as well.

The main reason for the shortage is that the cost of organic grain and hay to feed cows has gone up sharply while the price that farmers receive for their milk has not. That means that farmers feed their cows less, resulting in lower milk production. At the same time, fewer farmers have been converting from conventional dairying to organic.

Through it all, the demand for organic milk has been growing.

“It’s a double whammy to have higher sales than you expect and less milk,” said George L. Siemon, chief executive of Cropp, the farmers co-op that produces Organic Valley milk and much of the milk sold as supermarket store brands. “We’re sweating bullets over it.”

Farmer and rancher linking programs connect new farmers with retiring landowners. When the new and retiring generation match up, they can work out mutually beneficial arrangements to transfer ownership while maintaining a small farm’s legacy and promoting good stewardship.

Find a Linking Program

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Learn More

Fast Company | By Michael J. Coren | December 20, 2011 

You might think that farmland means the death of biodiversity, but animals are quite adaptable, and they now need farms to survive. But farms are going extinct themselves, and endangered animals can’t survive industrial agriculture.

Over the last two millennia, as farms and pasture displaced forests and grasslands, agriculture has spread across more than 40% of the Earth’s terrestrial surface. Wildlife, when it didn’t go extinct, had to go somewhere. Some of it moved back to the farm, where it became semi-domesticated without anyone realizing it. Today, as the Earth undergoes yet another transition from subsistence growing to industrial mega-farms, there’s nowhere else for that wildlife to go. 

A study published this month in the journal Conservation Letters found that many threatened and endangered bird species in the developing world are dependent on human agriculture for their survival. At least 30 bird species, and it is theorized many more, came to rely almost completely on traditional farms for food, nesting, or resources as their original habitats have virtually disappeared.

"Conservation efforts in the developing world focus a lot of attention on forest species and pristine habitats--so people have usually been seen as a problem. But there are a number of threatened species--particularly birds but probably a whole range of wildlife--which heavily depend on the farmed environment," said lead author Hugh Wright of UEA’s School of Environmental Sciences in a statement. "We need to identify valuable farmland landscapes and support local people so that they can continue their traditional farming methods and help maintain this unique biodiversity." 

BBC | By Dave Lee | November 28, 2011

As global population continues to soar, the United Nations estimates that by 2050, farmers will need to increase food production levels by around 70%.

Simultaneously, pressures from other industries will see of larger and larger portions of agricultural land swept away by urbanisation. 

It leaves the world's farmers with a momentous challenge on their hands: produce more food, for more people, from less.

They're going to need a lot of help - and it is likely to come from technology.

In our ancient history, farming has been the catalyst for some of humankind's greatest technological advances.

But while the modern day farm is the realm of huge, expensive, sophisticated machinery - it seems simpler, day-to-day tasks are left untouched by an industry that seems more intent on producing technology to run make-believe farms rather than real ones.

"I think the farming sector is one that high-tech organisations probably haven't spent as much time on as they could," admitted Martin Stiven, vice-president for business at UK mobile network T-Mobile.

"The technology is there, it's about applying it. And it's about thinking about the particular issues that farmers have and building those specific applications that will help them."

As organizer of the Center for Rural Affairs Land Link program, which matches beginning farmers with landowners, I talk to beginning farmers every day. Their situations are diverse, but they all share a common dream of operating a farm or ranch.

A new bill could improve federal farm bill programs that support local and regional farm and food systems.

The Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act was introduced in early November by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME-1). Several other Senate and House co-sponsors joined them.

The New York Times | By Motoko Rich | November 11, 2011

Austin Lee, center, with other members of F.F.A., previously the Future Farmers of America, at their annual convention.More Photos »

INDIANAPOLIS — Gamaliel Rizzo grew up in a brownstone apartment in Brooklyn and is studying to become a doctor. Still, he spent his high school years learning how to raise chinchillas, goats and alpaca and growing radishes, sunflowers and cilantro. He even worked on a dairy farm in the summer, all as a member of the Future Farmers of America.

Although the nation has shifted ever further from its agrarian roots, the organization is thriving. Begun 83 years ago and now known simply as the F.F.A., it is the largest vocational student group in the country, with more than half a million members and still growing.

I spoke with President Obama and Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack last week at the Rural Economic Forum in Peosta, Iowa.

The president joined Secretary Vilsack and about 20 participants in a roundtable discussion on agriculture and innovation. I seized the opportunity to speak to the president about the importance of capping the big federal farm payments that subsidize mega farms to drive small and mid size farms out of business. I said capping those payments would strengthen family farms and create budget savings – savings which could be used to protect investments in the future of rural America through small business development, beginning farmer programs, rural community development and conservation.

The president recalled that in 2008 “A presidential candidate went around this state (Iowa) saying that very thing –Barack Obama.” He pointed out that Congress had not included the payment cap in the last farm bill and urged us to help by speaking out to Congress. I urged him to put a proposal on the table to move the issue onto the agenda in Washington.

For roughly 20 minutes, the president participated in that workshop. He also sat in on at least one other workshop on small business development.

Secretary Vilsack asked probing questions in the roughly 90 minute workshop. He asked for ideas to encourage sale of land to beginning farmers and ways to foster rural entrepreneurship. I shared proposals that would provide tax break breaks for selling land to beginning farmers and talked about the Rural Microenterprise Investment Tax Credit introduced last Congress by Representatives Ron Kind and Wally Herger. I also advocated for the Rural Microentrepreneur Assistance Program, which was created by the last farm bill. Secretary Vilsack helped win funding for the program, which provides loans, training and business planning assistance to small rural businesses.

Soil erosion is a growing concern in areas of the country where native sod and fragile lands are being busted up in response to high grain prices. In fact, the concern is coming from farmers themselves.