Although it seems that every manufacturer and every store out there is starting to sell “organic” food, clothes, bedding, makeup, etc, what does organic mean? In 2002, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) became the agency in charge of organics in the United States with the National Organic Program, which regulates the standards for [...]
Dear EarthTalk: I see more and more organic wines on store shelves these days, but what options are out there today for organic beer? Some 80 million Americans drink beer, yet organic beer represents still only a sliver of the $7 billion U.S. craft beer market. But this sliver is quickly turning into a slice: [...]
Dear EarthTalk: I always thought cotton was eco-friendly, but I recently heard otherwise. What’s so bad about cotton? And where can I find organic cotton clothing? There’s a lot “bad” about conventionally grown cotton – cotton grown with the aid of synthetic chemicals, that is. The Organic Trade Association (OTA), a nonprofit trade group representing [...]
Today’s post is by my friend John Hamilton Farr, who blogs at FarrFeed and shows the real New Mexico at FotoFeed How To Deal With Bugs… Organically, Of Course! Otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading, right? The year was 1970. I was off to help some friends in central New Hampshire build a couple of log [...]
Dear EarthTalk: I want to start an organic vegetable garden in my yard and I would like to know how to combine crops to make better use of time and space. Most commercial farms concentrate on growing a few select crops to supply a wide variety of customers, but gardening at home is a different [...]
Using the term “organic” to market everything from food to personal products to clothing is a relatively new use of the word. According to Wikipedia, “In 1939, Lord Northbourne coined the term organic farming in his book Look to the Land (written in 1939, but published in 1940), out of his conception of “the farm [...]
The people at Aroha Organics were nice enough to send me a bar of their Rosemary Mint organic soap to try out, and I have to say that I liked it a lot. A few weeks ago I wrote a “Do One Thing” post about buying local, handmade soaps, and if you happen to live [...]
