Eco-Goats in the Wall Street Journal

What's better than waking up at the crack of dawn in a camper, reaching the herd's food buckets while they are still yawning, and seeing the little sleepy heads stumble down a wooded hillside to get breakfast and snuggles?

Not much.

But waking up post-dawn, in a warm bed in an air conditioned house, and seeing/hearing them hop on and off the trailer and eat weeds (like it is going out of style) -  via the Wall Street Journal - is pretty awesome. Great to see the Isaac Walton League Ladies on film as well. They have been incredibly kind and welcoming to the herd and yours truly. Hope you enjoy the video as much as I enjoy this herd of hard-working goats.

New Apple!!

After 20 years of cross-pollinating, Swiss fruit grower and apple breeder and Markus Kobelt has developed a unique red-skinned, red-fleshed, tomato-lookin' apple called the Redlove. Spokesperson for the seed and sapling company, Suttons (who secured exclusive rights to the fruit trees in Britain), say their apple has "a delicious sweet and tangy taste with a hint of berries to it if eaten raw."

On top of claims that the apple flesh will not brown when sliced and left exposed, the Redlove is said to have a higher antioxidant content.

I guess we'll just have to wait until the Redlove hits American stores next year to find out if the flavor is as dazzling as its appearance. So far, two varieties of Redlove have been produced. The Era, which can be harvested from September and enjoyed until Christmas, and the Sirena, harvested in August and enjoyed until October.

A seed grows in Punjab

The Green Revolution, while it produced incredible yeilds or grain and rice, depended on mono-cropping and replaced local varieties with what ever American agribusiness dictated. Production soared and so did pests. Run-off from pesticides and chemical fertilizers poisoned the water and soil in regions of India causing cancer rates to shoot sky high.

Mira Kamdar for Slate writes
"The farmers... realized they were caught in a vicious cycle requiring them to buy more fertilizer and more pesticides, to invest more money in getting water while they watched pests become even more voracious and their soil fertility decline. Seeds were also becoming more expensive. The farmers paid dearly for new hybrids that promised ever-greater yields. They paid even more for the new genetically engineered seeds whose very DNA was copyrighted, making it illegal for farmers to do what farmers have done since the dawn of agriculture: save seeds from one year to plant the next."

Dubbed "India's new nonviolent revolution," Punjabi farmers embracing natural farming techniques and attending Umendra Dutt's workshop are taking back land, health, and freedom. Kamdar writes about the workshop that educates farmers on natural and effective solutions to the two main hurdles in Punjab agriculture: water scarcity and pesticide poisoning. Keep your eye on this revolution folks.

Mira Kamdar for Slate writes:
"Punjab is a microcosm of the success and the failure of industrial agriculture in the developing world. There is no doubt that, with enough water and enough chemicals, privileging production above all else can boost yields dramatically. But the damage to the land and the people that make that production possible is profound. It is a model that is not sustainable, as a report published this spring by the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development, a joint effort of the World Bank and various U.N. agencies, so strongly argued. Ultimately, it will fail. It is failing now, just as the world is desperate to find a way to feed a growing population in a time of climate uncertainty and resource scarcity.

After my trip to Punjab, I came to believe that Umendra Dutt is right: Farmers who switch to natural farming techniques are engaging in a truly revolutionary act. Instead of Bhagat Singh's pistol, they are wielding plowshares, with no less profound consequences for the future of India than the shaking off of British imperialism decades ago. India's new nonviolent revolution, against incredible odds, is in agriculture. It bears watching."

Read more from Kamdar here