35 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2023
    1. it is technically impossible to feed the entire population of the planet with organic produce.
      • for: never say never, scaling organic production
      • comment
        • claims true at one time in history, may not be true for a later time as progress develops new solutions that make yesterday's impossible, today's possible.
  2. Oct 2022
  3. Mar 2022
    1. Many of these tools move around the axis as I use them in different ways

      I think that this is an important aspect to realise as well - there is no right or wrong way, there is merely, a way - a way that is yours, a way that is mine and through networking and sharing we create new knowledge and develop our individual ways.

  4. Oct 2021
    1. Pace Dilthey, Plessner's "Levels" is not about interpreting historical contingencies, nor about the more familiar evolutionary sedimentation of frozen accidents, but rather is about looking to establish transcendental conditions (or categories) of biotic possibility that he refers to as "modals of the organic." As with Hegel he challenges us with a proposed logic of life always mobilized by dialectical tensions, albeit not on the basis of any form of idealism and bereft of a Hollywood ending. For Plessner, that which is both the sine qua non of the living state and that generative 'principle' from which organic modals can be derived is the on-going performance of a self-positioning boundary, and it is highly unlikely that anybody has ever thought as deeply about the implications of what this means.

      "Modals of the organic" are the levels at which emergent qualities at the higher level cannot be explained from the lower level, and give rise to the highest constitutive level, human consciousness.

  5. May 2021
    1. Eat locally and organically grown food as much as possible

      This depends on the existence of flourishing local food networks that make such organic food available and affordable. Such networks also need protection from predatory food producers and suppliers that can undercut local food systems in all sorts of way (eg. giant supermarket chains pushing down the prices they pay for local produce through their superior buying power).

  6. Feb 2021
  7. Dec 2020
    1. Our team is building open source community tools and Svelte fits our identity as an independent labor of love with an organic community.
    2. With some frameworks, you may find your needs at odds with the enterprise-level goals of a megacorp owner, and you may both benefit and sometimes suffer from their web-scale engineering. Svelte’s future does not depend on the continued delivery of business value to one company, and its direction is shaped in public by volunteers.
  8. Oct 2020
    1. Still, organic farming makes up a small share of U.S. farmland overall. There were 5 million certified organic acres of farmland in 2016, representing less than 1% of the 911 million acres of total farmland nationwide. Some states, however, had relatively large shares of organic farmland. Vermont’s 134,000 certified organic acres accounted for 11% of its total 1.25 million farm acres. California, Maine and New York followed in largest shares of organic acreage – in each, certified organic acres made up 4% of total farmland.
    1. Festa argues that this is why organic farming in the U.S. saw a 56 percent increase between 2011 and 2016.

      A useful statistic but it needs more context. What is the percentage of organic farming to the overall total of farming?

      Fortunately the linked article provides some additional data: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/10/organic-farming-is-on-the-rise-in-the-u-s/

  9. Mar 2020
    1. Certified organic food, according to the Agriculture Department’s definition, must be produced without the use of conventional pesticides, petroleum- or sewage-based fertilizers, herbicides, genetic engineering, antibiotics, growth hormones or irradiation. Certified organic farms must also adhere to certain animal health and welfare standards, not treat land with any prohibited substances for at least three years prior to harvest, and reach a certain threshold for gross annual organic sales. U.S. organic farms that are not certified organic are not included in this analysis.
  10. Oct 2019
    1. Indian soils are poor in organic matter content. About 59% of soils are low in available nitrogen; about 49% are low in available phosphorus; and about 48% are low or medium in available potassium. Indian soils are also varyingly deficient in micronutrients, such as zinc, iron, manganese, copper, molybdenum and boron
  11. Aug 2019
    1. Use as a direct quotation. "The present study showed that the same cultivars of leafy vegetables obtained by organic cultivation had lower microbial counts than those obtained by conventional cultivation" (Merlini et al. 5).

    1. "respondents positively associate health, safety, and the environment with organic farmers compared to conventional and GMO farmers" (Sax and Doran 636). Direct quote in support of MP #3, organic farming is better

    1. direct quote:"...respondents positively associate health, safety, and the environment with organic farmers compared to conventional and GMO farmers" (Sax and Doran 636). In support of MP#3, Organic farming is better

  12. Jun 2019
    1. The value of organic imports during Jan.-Aug. was up 25 percent compared to the same period in 2016, the trade data showed, while the value of organic exports during the first eight months was up 14 percent. Last year, the U.S. organic products trade deficit hit nearly $1.2 billion, its highest level ever, with U.S. organic imports reaching $1.7 billion, while U.S. organic exports came in at $547.6 million. Check out the Top 10 U.S. organic imported and exported commodities for 2016.
    1. , demand for organic food is growing so fast that consumer demand is outstripping some domestic supplies. Once a net exporter of organic products, the United States now spends more than $1 billion a year to import organic food, according to the USDA, and the ratio of imported to exported products is now about 8-to-1.
  13. Feb 2019
    1. Work with what you have, to support the people around you and together you'll create a community that has a defined shape and form only in hindsight. Instead of worrying about having enough onboarding ramps, I say we make a future space that is so exciting, so fun, that is such a cool party with lights so bright that everyone wants to build their own methods to get here and join in. And I thought: what's the coolest, most party thing in the world? Reading.
  14. Jan 2019
  15. Mar 2018
    1. Rather, people of conscience must recommit themselves to examining and exposing the material operations of power — the control of information, the use of violence, the allocation of wealth — that tangibly shape our social lives. This renewed social critique, furthermore, must not be driven solely by the college-educated class with its own agendas and predilections, but must include all people who work and struggle in our unequal world.

      Gramsci: the organic intellectual

  16. Feb 2018
    1. Order online for fresh cow milk from Pride of Cows. Not to worry about delivery of our organic cow milk, just select your area from our delivery area within Mumbai, Pune and Surat. Milk arrives at your doorstep within hours of milking.

  17. May 2017
  18. Mar 2017
    1. I bid them well with their renovation work of their crumbling edifice. I am on the beach listening to the waves
    2. He continues to fight against the architectural forces that value the modular over the adaptive, the global over the local. His project, the Eishin School, continues to be under fire by the powers-that-be in Japan. He continues to fight back. He is still the consummate outside. He believes in design from the folk up. I will use that yardstick to measure everything I will be trying from this course and in my courses. Is everything I do designed from the folk up? Is everything you do designed from the folk up? Is it humane and regenerative and sustaining, and alive? Or does it just serve the status quo ante bellum?

      This is a pretty good yard-stick.

      This is a pretty good starting point for research and production.

      Very good question concerning Sensemaker.

      Start with lenses which are local and sustainable immediately.

    3. I am an outsider as many of you are. I came to teaching late after fifteen years of farming and running a couple of businesses (taxes and chimney sweeping). I came to teaching through substitute teaching. WTF.

      Wandering Rhizomatic Chaotic Organic

    4. I have a lot of questions about whether any of the web-based tools we are using actually fit the mold of System A. I don’t often feel those spaces as convivial and natural. Behind the artifice of interface lay the reality of code. Is that structure humane? Is it open, sustainable, and regenerative? Does it feel good? Does the whole idea behind code generate System A or System B? I really don’t know.

      This is a really good key question..

    5. System A is all about integrity and health and the folk not as nodes in a machine, but as a growing, adapting, distributed and living whole. It is the difference between a neighborhood and a housing development.
  19. Jun 2016
    1. Title: The dying breed of craftsmen behind the tools that make scientific research possible - LA Times

      Keywords: government-funded research opened, snake glass coils, fuse glass beakers, organic chemistry, research hubs, world war, experienced glassblowers, glassblowers remain, church laboratory, befallen glassblowing, glass manufacturer, glass technicians, cost-cutting world, jobs tend, entry-level jobs

      Summary: Hunkered down in the sub-basement of the Norman W. Church Laboratory for Chemical Biology, underneath a campus humming with quantum teleportation devices, gravity wave detectors and neural prosthetics, Rick Gerhart chipped away at a broken flask.<br>Peering into the dancing flames, he examined his work for wrinkles — imperfections invisible to the untrained eye.<br>“It not only should be functional,” he said, smoothing the rim with a carbon rod, “it has to look good.”<br>Here in Caltech’s one-man glass shop, where Gerhart transforms a researcher’s doodles into intricate laboratory equipment, craftsmanship is king.<br>In a cost-cutting world of machines and assembly plants, few glassblowers remain with the level of mastery needed at research hubs like Caltech.<br>“He’s a somewhat dying breed,” said Sarah Reisman, who relied on Gerhart to create 20 maze-like contraptions for her synthetic organic chemistry lab.<br>Rick Gerhart, scientific glass blower at Caltech, has been helping to make scientific research possible at the campus since 1992.<br>(Dillon Deaton/Los Angeles Times)<br>Similar fates have befallen glassblowing at UCLA and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.<br>Across the U.S., those who land such jobs tend to stay until retirement.<br>He chuckled: “Looks like we have to steal somebody.”<br>To master scientific glassblowing, proper training and apprenticeships are key.<br>In addition to the hands-on training, which requires a knack for precision as well as coordination, students must take courses in organic chemistry, math and computer drawing.<br>So it really takes a long time to get to a position like Rick’s.”<br>Gerhart enrolled in the Salem program in 1965, after dropping out of college to give his father’s profession a try.<br>The craft, which dates back to alchemy in the 2nd century, took hold in America by the 1930s and 1940s, after World War I cut off glassware supply from Germany.<br>The profession peaked after World War II, when booms in oil and government-funded research opened up numerous glassblowing jobs in many a lab.<br>At first, Gerhart hopped around a number of firms and worked alongside more experienced glassblowers at TRW Inc. and UCLA.<br>When he settled at Caltech in 1992, the glassblower before him handed over the key to the shop and said, “Good luck.” On his own, Gerhart pieced together his patchwork of experience to twist and fuse glass beakers and snake glass coils over vacuum chambers.<br>“That’s when I really started learning.”<br>Social media videos have sparked new interest in the craft, Briening said.<br>But while his students have no trouble getting entry-level jobs at companies like Chemglass Life Sciences, a glass manufacturer, and General Electric Global Research, rarely are universities willing to budget the overhead costs for more than one glassblower, if any.<br>“Years ago, all the universities had two or three people,” Briening said.<br>One of the few resources left for the next generation is the American Scientific Glassblowers Society, a close-knit group that hosts national workshops and swaps ideas when a researcher’s custom order stumps one of its members.<br>Its members also serve as Caltech’s best — and possibly only — options once Gerhart leaves.<br>“Rick’s one of those glass technicians that I put in the top 5%,” Ponton said.<br>

  20. Apr 2016
    1. And yet, in the past five years, the 15 acres of open space have seen plenty of activity. In that time, more than half a dozen farmers have put their hands to a plow in an ill-fated attempt at organic farming. Only one of them is still standing. The same fate of those failed farmers has been repeated all across the county under an agricultural program meant to encourage and support organic farming by providing nearly $1 million in capital expenditures, temporary lease rate reductions, organic certification assistance, weed maintenance and farmer education courses.
    2. According to surveys from the United States Department of Agriculture, organic acreage declined nationally by 10.8 percent from 2008 (4.1 million acres) to 2014 (3.7 million acres). Colorado saw larger declines of 34 percent during that same time, from 153,981 acres in 2008 to 115,116 acres in 2014. A number of reasons have been cited by different experts and farmers, including the recession and a change in USDA methodology that counts fewer growers as organic since many small operations do not pursue certification. The most commonly cited reason is cost: The resource-intense nature of production eats away at profit margins and makes organic less attractive during a time of high conventional profits. "The incentive to grow organically wasn't enough as conventional grown commodities were priced at very profitable levels" during that time, said Bill Meyer, director of the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service mountain region.