Organic News

Italy to invest 3 billion euros to transition 25% of farmland to organic by 2027

Italy plans to invest 3 billion euros (3.06 billion U.S. dollars) to transition 25% of the country’s agricultural land to organic by 2027. The decision to transition the land to organic was spurred by a new study on sustainable strategies to limit the spread of pests and disease in Italy. The study found that organic […]

Two academic leaders in organic agriculture receive recognition and a key position

Erin Silva, who holds the Clif Bar Endowed Chair in Organic Agriculture and Outreach at University of Wisconsin-Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, has been named director of the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems (CIAS) for a three-year term. Silva, a plant pathologist, will set priorities for research, outreach, and funding efforts. CIAS’s goal […]

Organic cotton seed varieties available in India for first time 

Good organic seeds for cotton in India were hard to find. Not anymore: over ten years of breeding resulted in success. Two new organic cotton varieties have recently been made available to India’s cotton farmers. These are the first ever cotton varieties of India bred under organic conditions. The varieties were developed through a decentralized […]

Illinois organic farmers file lawsuit against hog confinement

An Illinois organic farming couple, Randy and Crystal Clair, have joined one of two lawsuits filed by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency against Carroll Family Farms, LLC, which owns a 5,000-hog confinement called County Line Swine in northern Adams County. The lawsuits claim Carroll Family Farms is operating the hog confinement with improper methods that […]

Flame weeding: a sustainable, cost-effective approach for weed management in organic corn

Conventional corn and soy rotation farmers have relied on herbicides and GM seed varieties to kill weeds. Organic production uses soil tilling to achieve mastery over weeds—though that method hampers carbon sequestration. Is there an alternative to these practices? Sustainability has published a study introducing flame weeding as a suitable option. The report compared using […]