By:Tufts Health and Nutrition Letter
Those berries on your cereal and that orange in your lunch might help prevent hardening of the arteries. A new Norwegian study reports that increased intake of foods such as fruits and berries is associated with reduced thickening of the carotid artery. Thickening of that key artery is a sign of atherosclerosis-so-called
Tufts University Health & Nutrition Letter
Researchers admit they can't say which is cause and which might be effect, but a new study of neighbors in one Texas county reports that areas with a high density of fast-food restaurants also have higher rates of stroke. It could be that the fast food actually boots stroke risk. Or fast-food restaurants may cluster in neighborhoods prone to less-healthy lifestyles.
BY: Citrus & Vegetable Magazine
Although chilli thrips have been found on ornamental nursery plants for a few years, they weren't found in strawberries until January 2008, when they were discovered and controlled in two Plant City farms.
Since then, they've been found in numerous central and west-central Florida blueberry farms. They've also been found in strawberries at the Gulf Coast Research and Education Center in Wimauma.
BY: Matt Milkovich Vegetable Growers News (VGN)
A recent court ruling could have a major impact on the way pesticides are applied on U.S. farms.
On Jan. 7, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit overruled an EPA regulation that exempted
BY: Matt Milkovich - Vegetable Growers News
I read a book a few months ago called
BY: Gene McAvory - Florida Grower
Identification-
The two major species of leafminer that cause problems in vegetables in Florida are the vegetable leafmier (Liriomyza sativae) and L. trifolii, which has no approved common name.
The adults are small yellow and black flies about the size of gnats. The female punctures or stipples the leaves with her ovipositor to lay eggs in the leaf tissue or to feed on sap.
Leafminer damage is easily recognized by the irregular serpentine mines in leaves. The maggots feed on tissue between upper and lower leaf surfaces, leaving a winding trail or pattern through the leaf.
Survival And Spread-
To determine whether leafminer larvae are dead or alive, leaflets can be held up to the sun and examined with a hand lens. Living larvae are a pale yellow and flush with the end of the mine. The back and forth feeding movements are readily visible, although movement may case when larvae are disturbed or molting. Dead larvae do not show movement and are usually discolored and removed from the ends of mines.
By: Ken McLaughlin - San Jose Mercury News
Gustine - Farmer Lax Iyer is standing on the side of a country road that splits his almond orchard into two worlds - one abloom, the other in danger of choking in a cloud of dust.
The trees on his left appear sickly because they depend on water from the Central Valley Project - increasingly scarce
By: Matt Mikovich - VegetableGrowersNews.com
According to the 2007 Census of Agriculture, the number of farms in the United States grew 4 percent from 2002 to 2007, while the number of acres declined.
The 2007 Census counted 2,204,792 farms in the United States, a net increase of 75,810 farms from 2002. It listed the number of acres at 922,095,840, down more than 16 million acres from 2002. The average farm shrank from 441 acres to 418 acres.
Those trends have been driven by the growth of small farms in the last five years. According to the Census, the number of farms with sales of less than $1,000 increased by 118,000 from 2002 to 2007.
Extremely large farms had a high growth rate in the same period, however. The number of farms with sales of more than $500,000 increased by 46,000, according to the Census.
New farms - those that began operation between 2003 and 2007 - tended to be smaller and have lower sales than all farms nationwide. On average, new farms had 201 acres of land and $71,000 in sales. By comparison, the average for all farms in the United States was 418 acres and $135,000 in sales, according to the Census.
Operators of new farms were more likely to be engaged in occupations other than farming and to derive income from non-farm sources. The percentage of principal operators who reported farming as their primary occupation was 33 percent for new farm operators, while the average for all principal farm operators was 45 percent, according to the Census.
The Census laid out other demographic statistics:
There is growing ethnic and racial diversity among U.S. farm operators, and the percentage of women is up. There were 306,209 female principal operators counted in 2007, up from 237,819 in 2002 - an increase of almost 30 percent.
The average age of farmers continues to raise, from 55.3 in 2002 to 57.1 in 2007. The number of operators 75 years and older grew by 20 percent, while the number of operators under 25 years of age decreased by 30 percent.
Of the 2.2 million farmers nationwide, only 1 million show positive cash income from the farm operation. The remaining 1.2 million farms depend on non-farm income to cover the farm expenses.
BY: Sherry Jacobson - The Dallas News
You can't taste it or smell it. It is undetectable to the human eye. Nonetheless, a hearty menu of food-borne pathogens is appearing on the plates of unsuspecting Americans, leaving behind illness, and in some cases, death.
The latest sampling for the U.S. palates is an unusual strain of salmonella found normally in the intestinal tracts of cows, pigs, and chickens. Somehow, this bacteria strain has contaminated peanuts in two processing plants - one in Texas and another in Georgia - before they were added to thousands of tasty products such as cookies, brownies, and ice cream.
As the federal government scrambles to contain this widening salmonella outbreak, health experts believe this could be a turning point in:
- Renewing the debate over irradiating foods to eliminate deadly pathogens.
- Encouraging scientists to work more closely with the government to assure the safety of food supply.
- Awakening the public to the dangers of eating tainted food.
Since September, the salmonella outbreak involving peanuts has sickened nearly 700 people in 46 states, possibly caused nine deaths and triggered a nationwide food recall.
The marketing and research firm ,the TABS Group, says that organic food sales may have peaked. The study has found that organic food sales are currently enduring low purchase levels as the global economic slowdown hits consumers.
In the study,Tabs, found that less than 40% of the adults in the U.S. had purchased anything from the major organic categories in the last six months, while non organic products enjoyed household penetration levels well above 70%, according to Food Navigator USA.