#How many bags of beans can be harvested from an acre of land?

[farmerstrend]

Cost Analysis On French Beans Farming In Kenya

French beans (fine and extra-fine) are one of the major vegetable export crops for East Africa, which has propelled Kenya to the pinnacle of greatness as a horticulture nation. East African Growers is listed among the largest growers and exporters of these beans, exporting up to 75tonnes on a weekly basis. French Beans Farming In Kenya French beans are among the major horticultural crops…

[wineanddinosaur]

What Climate Change Means for the Future of Coffee

Starmaya. Centroamericano. H1. These are names those serious about their coffee should get to know, as hybrid varieties may be the coffees of the future.

Despite the abundance of specialty beans available today — familiar coffees include Arabica from Ethiopia, Colombia, Guatemala, and beyond — experts agree the coffee landscape is fundamentally changing.

Climate change threatens an existential disruption to the coffee industry with a veritable list of end-times plagues: heat, drought, floods, pests, and disease. As existing coffee breeds struggle in the extreme weather, prices will rise while Arabica varieties wane.

Farmers are now shifting their techniques. Many are adopting hardier hybrids like those mentioned above. But without a monumental reduction in global carbon emissions, shifts in America’s coffee supply could be a few bad harvests from collapsing.

The Fragility of the Coffee Supply Chain

Coffee is an agricultural product that depends on a vast and complex network of players to bring flawless beans to retail shelves each week. While around 64 percent of Americans drink coffee each day, few recognize the fragility of its supply chain. Between 70 and 80 percent of global production depends on 25 million smallholder farmers working five acres or less in Africa and Latin America. For the last decade, these farmers have struggled to make ends meet, many surviving at the threshold of poverty.

Climate change experts warn that global temperatures will continue to rise this century, increasing between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius (about 35 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit) in the hottest months. However, it is the resultant weather swings that pose the greatest present-day problems for coffee producers — and consumers.

“Most places growing coffee are already experiencing tremendous variability,” Hanna Neuschwander, communications director, World Coffee Research, says. “And that’s what pushes a farmer out. It’s not the 0.1-degree gradual rise, it’s the peaks and troughs, and those are already here.”

The World Coffee Research organization (WCR) was founded in 2012 as a non-profit to study the future of the industry’s agricultural sector with climate change as the backdrop.

WCR views climate change as the single biggest threat to the long-term sustainability of coffee. Without a reduction in carbon emissions, research and development must focus on mitigation like planting climate-appropriate varieties. Much like the hybrids in the wine industry, coffee varieties are created to account for environmental realities.

As Neuschwander explains, “Modern breeding is like a design process. What features do I want this chair to have? A straight back, a comfortable seat? We ask the same questions about [coffee] varieties.”

The goal is for “designer” hybrids to weather environmental extremes.

How Wild Weather Hurts Small Farmers

Thirty-year industry veteran roaster George Howell of the eponymous company in Massachusetts likens climate change to a spinning top. “The unpredictability is creating turbulence,” he says. “Imagine the disruption caused by sudden heavy storms during the harvest season or dry spells during the rainy season.”

East Africa is historically prone to weather extremes but is otherwise thought optimal for coffee farming. However, droughts and floods have intensified. In late 2019 and early 2020, Kenya, Rwanda, and Ethiopia faced a surge in rainfall attributed to the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) weather system. Like the Indian Ocean’s version of the Pacific’s El Niño, the IOD can lift ocean temperatures up to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius).

Ethiopia’s coffee farmers rely on seasonal arid weather in November to dry their cherries on raised beds. With the early, prolonged rains of 2019 in Jimma, farmers scrambled to shield crops with tarps, risking moisture and mold and mistakes.

When rain falls unexpectedly or with ferocity, it disrupts the entire value chain, from picking, processing, logistics to quality control. Classic supply and demand dictates less and more expensive coffee for American drinkers while hurting farmers.

More Heat, More Problems

In Central America, humid and wet conditions have pushed a devastating fungus called leaf rust, or roya, deep into new regions from Colombia up to Mexico.

El Savador is a stark example: “In 2010-2011, the country produced 1.7 million 60-kilogram bags of coffee. During the 2013-2014 harvest, farmers only produced 499,000 bags,” Matthew Swenson, chief product officer, Chameleon Cold Brew Coffee in Texas, says. Leaf rust is believed to be the culprit for much of the 70 percent decrease in production.

In 2011, heavy wind and rain from Tropical Storm Agatha carried spores into Guatemala’s mountains, bringing with it an explosion of fungus. “I remember driving around and seeing farms without a single leaf or cherry due to rust in 2012,” Howell says, recalling a buying trip to the country. “It was all gone. Leaves had fallen to the ground. Those farmers who lost that crop had no safety net, no subsidies, nothing.”

Much like wine grapes, higher temperatures impact the coffee plant negatively by accelerating ripening, shifting harvest dates forward, and reducing photosynthesis, which compromises flavor development and quality. Because Arabica grows best in cooler conditions, quality degrades as the thermometer reading rises.

Changes in climate invite new diseases and pests to thrive — for example, the life cycle of the coffee borer beetle has become faster, increasing its populations. The beetles bore into the coffee cherry to lay eggs that hatch days later, destroying the fruit from the inside out.

Farms at lower elevations in Brazil are now grappling with rising temperatures, yet they have nowhere to go. “It’s unrealistic to think producers can afford new land or move up the mountain to a cooler location, especially when they’re already struggling,” says Gabriel Agrelli Moreira of Daterra Coffee, a sustainable coffee farm in Brazil.

While farmers could pivot from quality Arabica production to sturdier, high-volume Robusta, the suggestion is akin to Burgundy’s Pinot Noir and Chardonnay growers switching to Gamay and Aligoté.

Hope for Hybrids

Much of the coffee industry’s hope lies at the feet of F1 hybrids. These varieties are stronger in the face of weather extremes and diseases. To save the industry, they must prove climate-change-proof and economically viable for the farmer while tasting delicious to consumers.

Though farmers and breeders have been taking advantage of hybrids (when two unique coffee varieties are bred together) for over 100 years, the use of first-generation (F1) hybrids, which tend to have significantly higher performance, is very new in coffee — they have only been planted commercially for less than 10 years.

The F1 generating excitement is Starmaya, a variety that can be shared among farmers in cheaper seed form. Australian roasting company Single O released a limited-edition Starmaya coffee to prove its consumer appeal, pitching it as “climate-resilient” and “future-friendly.”

Can Adaptive Farming, Soil Carbon Sequestration and Hybrids Save Coffee?

Unfortunately, a one-size-fits-all panacea to mitigating climate change doesn’t exist. Every farmer must adjust their practices based on knowledge, resources, and stamina.

Raul Perez is a fourth-generation coffee farmer in Acatenango, Guatemala. The beans from his farm, La Soledad, frequently end up in the hands of America’s best roasters, from George Howell Coffee to Intelligentsia.

Perez uses adaptive farming techniques to combat heat and drought. Shade trees keep coffee plants cool. Eschewing herbicides helps grass preserve soil moisture and prevent erosion. Grafting Arabica to Robusta roots, using a common technique in wine, helps with drought- and heat-resistance. He’s also experimenting with hybrids with promising results.

Daterra launched Bioterra Academy, a research lab used to study soil health and “carbon farming” as a tool to fight climate change. A healthy soil retains water, prevents plant disease, cycles nutrients, fixes nitrogen, and can sequester carbon.

“About 25 percent of the planet’s soil has already been degraded,” Moreira says. The UN FAO calculates the world has only 60 years of harvests left, and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) suggests half the world’s coffee-producing land will be unsuitable by 2050.

American Business Must Invest at the Source: Small Coffee Farmers

“Private enterprise needs to step up and lead the way. Businesses at the top of the supply chain have a moral and business continuity obligation to re-invest at origin because without those farmers, we don’t have a healthy long-term prospect for our businesses,” Swenson says.

Promising tools like farming strategies and hybrids are only as good as their reach. Most smallholder farmers can’t afford to renovate farms. Many live in remote areas without access to research. Country-specific coffee associations like ANACAFE in Guatemala and the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros (FNC) in Colombia provide varying degrees of assistance, along with non-governmental organizations and private donors, but business must be integral to the solution.

In Guatemala, Chameleon Coffee is funding educational centers focused around 12-acre plots. On these experimental farms, producers can learn about the best varieties for their areas, methods of re-planting, proper plant spacing, and other techniques like pruning. Swenson says the effort is worth it because the company can demonstrate best practices without farmers risking their crops, while simultaneously building trust.

Saving coffee will take strategy and time, but forget the future. Climate change is here now, and its effects are rippling through the industry, soon to reach your very cup.

The article What Climate Change Means for the Future of Coffee appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/climate-change-coffee-production/

[johnboothus]

What Climate Change Means for the Future of Coffee

Starmaya. Centroamericano. H1. These are names those serious about their coffee should get to know, as hybrid varieties may be the coffees of the future.

Despite the abundance of specialty beans available today — familiar coffees include Arabica from Ethiopia, Colombia, Guatemala, and beyond — experts agree the coffee landscape is fundamentally changing.

Climate change threatens an existential disruption to the coffee industry with a veritable list of end-times plagues: heat, drought, floods, pests, and disease. As existing coffee breeds struggle in the extreme weather, prices will rise while Arabica varieties wane.

Farmers are now shifting their techniques. Many are adopting hardier hybrids like those mentioned above. But without a monumental reduction in global carbon emissions, shifts in America’s coffee supply could be a few bad harvests from collapsing.

The Fragility of the Coffee Supply Chain

Coffee is an agricultural product that depends on a vast and complex network of players to bring flawless beans to retail shelves each week. While around 64 percent of Americans drink coffee each day, few recognize the fragility of its supply chain. Between 70 and 80 percent of global production depends on 25 million smallholder farmers working five acres or less in Africa and Latin America. For the last decade, these farmers have struggled to make ends meet, many surviving at the threshold of poverty.

Climate change experts warn that global temperatures will continue to rise this century, increasing between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius (about 35 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit) in the hottest months. However, it is the resultant weather swings that pose the greatest present-day problems for coffee producers — and consumers.

“Most places growing coffee are already experiencing tremendous variability,” Hanna Neuschwander, communications director, World Coffee Research, says. “And that’s what pushes a farmer out. It’s not the 0.1-degree gradual rise, it’s the peaks and troughs, and those are already here.”

The World Coffee Research organization (WCR) was founded in 2012 as a non-profit to study the future of the industry’s agricultural sector with climate change as the backdrop.

WCR views climate change as the single biggest threat to the long-term sustainability of coffee. Without a reduction in carbon emissions, research and development must focus on mitigation like planting climate-appropriate varieties. Much like the hybrids in the wine industry, coffee varieties are created to account for environmental realities.

As Neuschwander explains, “Modern breeding is like a design process. What features do I want this chair to have? A straight back, a comfortable seat? We ask the same questions about [coffee] varieties.”

The goal is for “designer” hybrids to weather environmental extremes.

How Wild Weather Hurts Small Farmers

Thirty-year industry veteran roaster George Howell of the eponymous company in Massachusetts likens climate change to a spinning top. “The unpredictability is creating turbulence,” he says. “Imagine the disruption caused by sudden heavy storms during the harvest season or dry spells during the rainy season.”

East Africa is historically prone to weather extremes but is otherwise thought optimal for coffee farming. However, droughts and floods have intensified. In late 2019 and early 2020, Kenya, Rwanda, and Ethiopia faced a surge in rainfall attributed to the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) weather system. Like the Indian Ocean’s version of the Pacific’s El Niño, the IOD can lift ocean temperatures up to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius).

Ethiopia’s coffee farmers rely on seasonal arid weather in November to dry their cherries on raised beds. With the early, prolonged rains of 2019 in Jimma, farmers scrambled to shield crops with tarps, risking moisture and mold and mistakes.

When rain falls unexpectedly or with ferocity, it disrupts the entire value chain, from picking, processing, logistics to quality control. Classic supply and demand dictates less and more expensive coffee for American drinkers while hurting farmers.

More Heat, More Problems

In Central America, humid and wet conditions have pushed a devastating fungus called leaf rust, or roya, deep into new regions from Colombia up to Mexico.

El Savador is a stark example: “In 2010-2011, the country produced 1.7 million 60-kilogram bags of coffee. During the 2013-2014 harvest, farmers only produced 499,000 bags,” Matthew Swenson, chief product officer, Chameleon Cold Brew Coffee in Texas, says. Leaf rust is believed to be the culprit for much of the 70 percent decrease in production.

In 2011, heavy wind and rain from Tropical Storm Agatha carried spores into Guatemala’s mountains, bringing with it an explosion of fungus. “I remember driving around and seeing farms without a single leaf or cherry due to rust in 2012,” Howell says, recalling a buying trip to the country. “It was all gone. Leaves had fallen to the ground. Those farmers who lost that crop had no safety net, no subsidies, nothing.”

Much like wine grapes, higher temperatures impact the coffee plant negatively by accelerating ripening, shifting harvest dates forward, and reducing photosynthesis, which compromises flavor development and quality. Because Arabica grows best in cooler conditions, quality degrades as the thermometer reading rises.

Changes in climate invite new diseases and pests to thrive — for example, the life cycle of the coffee borer beetle has become faster, increasing its populations. The beetles bore into the coffee cherry to lay eggs that hatch days later, destroying the fruit from the inside out.

Farms at lower elevations in Brazil are now grappling with rising temperatures, yet they have nowhere to go. “It’s unrealistic to think producers can afford new land or move up the mountain to a cooler location, especially when they’re already struggling,” says Gabriel Agrelli Moreira of Daterra Coffee, a sustainable coffee farm in Brazil.

While farmers could pivot from quality Arabica production to sturdier, high-volume Robusta, the suggestion is akin to Burgundy’s Pinot Noir and Chardonnay growers switching to Gamay and Aligoté.

Hope for Hybrids

Much of the coffee industry’s hope lies at the feet of F1 hybrids. These varieties are stronger in the face of weather extremes and diseases. To save the industry, they must prove climate-change-proof and economically viable for the farmer while tasting delicious to consumers.

Though farmers and breeders have been taking advantage of hybrids (when two unique coffee varieties are bred together) for over 100 years, the use of first-generation (F1) hybrids, which tend to have significantly higher performance, is very new in coffee — they have only been planted commercially for less than 10 years.

The F1 generating excitement is Starmaya, a variety that can be shared among farmers in cheaper seed form. Australian roasting company Single O released a limited-edition Starmaya coffee to prove its consumer appeal, pitching it as “climate-resilient” and “future-friendly.”

Can Adaptive Farming, Soil Carbon Sequestration and Hybrids Save Coffee?

Unfortunately, a one-size-fits-all panacea to mitigating climate change doesn’t exist. Every farmer must adjust their practices based on knowledge, resources, and stamina.

Raul Perez is a fourth-generation coffee farmer in Acatenango, Guatemala. The beans from his farm, La Soledad, frequently end up in the hands of America’s best roasters, from George Howell Coffee to Intelligentsia.

Perez uses adaptive farming techniques to combat heat and drought. Shade trees keep coffee plants cool. Eschewing herbicides helps grass preserve soil moisture and prevent erosion. Grafting Arabica to Robusta roots, using a common technique in wine, helps with drought- and heat-resistance. He’s also experimenting with hybrids with promising results.

Daterra launched Bioterra Academy, a research lab used to study soil health and “carbon farming” as a tool to fight climate change. A healthy soil retains water, prevents plant disease, cycles nutrients, fixes nitrogen, and can sequester carbon.

“About 25 percent of the planet’s soil has already been degraded,” Moreira says. The UN FAO calculates the world has only 60 years of harvests left, and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) suggests half the world’s coffee-producing land will be unsuitable by 2050.

American Business Must Invest at the Source: Small Coffee Farmers

“Private enterprise needs to step up and lead the way. Businesses at the top of the supply chain have a moral and business continuity obligation to re-invest at origin because without those farmers, we don’t have a healthy long-term prospect for our businesses,” Swenson says.

Promising tools like farming strategies and hybrids are only as good as their reach. Most smallholder farmers can’t afford to renovate farms. Many live in remote areas without access to research. Country-specific coffee associations like ANACAFE in Guatemala and the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros (FNC) in Colombia provide varying degrees of assistance, along with non-governmental organizations and private donors, but business must be integral to the solution.

In Guatemala, Chameleon Coffee is funding educational centers focused around 12-acre plots. On these experimental farms, producers can learn about the best varieties for their areas, methods of re-planting, proper plant spacing, and other techniques like pruning. Swenson says the effort is worth it because the company can demonstrate best practices without farmers risking their crops, while simultaneously building trust.

Saving coffee will take strategy and time, but forget the future. Climate change is here now, and its effects are rippling through the industry, soon to reach your very cup.

The article What Climate Change Means for the Future of Coffee appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/climate-change-coffee-production/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/what-climate-change-means-for-the-future-of-coffee

[isaiahrippinus]

What Climate Change Means for the Future of Coffee

Starmaya. Centroamericano. H1. These are names those serious about their coffee should get to know, as hybrid varieties may be the coffees of the future.

Despite the abundance of specialty beans available today — familiar coffees include Arabica from Ethiopia, Colombia, Guatemala, and beyond — experts agree the coffee landscape is fundamentally changing.

Climate change threatens an existential disruption to the coffee industry with a veritable list of end-times plagues: heat, drought, floods, pests, and disease. As existing coffee breeds struggle in the extreme weather, prices will rise while Arabica varieties wane.

Farmers are now shifting their techniques. Many are adopting hardier hybrids like those mentioned above. But without a monumental reduction in global carbon emissions, shifts in America’s coffee supply could be a few bad harvests from collapsing.

The Fragility of the Coffee Supply Chain

Coffee is an agricultural product that depends on a vast and complex network of players to bring flawless beans to retail shelves each week. While around 64 percent of Americans drink coffee each day, few recognize the fragility of its supply chain. Between 70 and 80 percent of global production depends on 25 million smallholder farmers working five acres or less in Africa and Latin America. For the last decade, these farmers have struggled to make ends meet, many surviving at the threshold of poverty.

Climate change experts warn that global temperatures will continue to rise this century, increasing between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius (about 35 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit) in the hottest months. However, it is the resultant weather swings that pose the greatest present-day problems for coffee producers — and consumers.

“Most places growing coffee are already experiencing tremendous variability,” Hanna Neuschwander, communications director, World Coffee Research, says. “And that’s what pushes a farmer out. It’s not the 0.1-degree gradual rise, it’s the peaks and troughs, and those are already here.”

The World Coffee Research organization (WCR) was founded in 2012 as a non-profit to study the future of the industry’s agricultural sector with climate change as the backdrop.

WCR views climate change as the single biggest threat to the long-term sustainability of coffee. Without a reduction in carbon emissions, research and development must focus on mitigation like planting climate-appropriate varieties. Much like the hybrids in the wine industry, coffee varieties are created to account for environmental realities.

As Neuschwander explains, “Modern breeding is like a design process. What features do I want this chair to have? A straight back, a comfortable seat? We ask the same questions about [coffee] varieties.”

The goal is for “designer” hybrids to weather environmental extremes.

How Wild Weather Hurts Small Farmers

Thirty-year industry veteran roaster George Howell of the eponymous company in Massachusetts likens climate change to a spinning top. “The unpredictability is creating turbulence,” he says. “Imagine the disruption caused by sudden heavy storms during the harvest season or dry spells during the rainy season.”

East Africa is historically prone to weather extremes but is otherwise thought optimal for coffee farming. However, droughts and floods have intensified. In late 2019 and early 2020, Kenya, Rwanda, and Ethiopia faced a surge in rainfall attributed to the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) weather system. Like the Indian Ocean’s version of the Pacific’s El Niño, the IOD can lift ocean temperatures up to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius).

Ethiopia’s coffee farmers rely on seasonal arid weather in November to dry their cherries on raised beds. With the early, prolonged rains of 2019 in Jimma, farmers scrambled to shield crops with tarps, risking moisture and mold and mistakes.

When rain falls unexpectedly or with ferocity, it disrupts the entire value chain, from picking, processing, logistics to quality control. Classic supply and demand dictates less and more expensive coffee for American drinkers while hurting farmers.

More Heat, More Problems

In Central America, humid and wet conditions have pushed a devastating fungus called leaf rust, or roya, deep into new regions from Colombia up to Mexico.

El Savador is a stark example: “In 2010-2011, the country produced 1.7 million 60-kilogram bags of coffee. During the 2013-2014 harvest, farmers only produced 499,000 bags,” Matthew Swenson, chief product officer, Chameleon Cold Brew Coffee in Texas, says. Leaf rust is believed to be the culprit for much of the 70 percent decrease in production.

In 2011, heavy wind and rain from Tropical Storm Agatha carried spores into Guatemala’s mountains, bringing with it an explosion of fungus. “I remember driving around and seeing farms without a single leaf or cherry due to rust in 2012,” Howell says, recalling a buying trip to the country. “It was all gone. Leaves had fallen to the ground. Those farmers who lost that crop had no safety net, no subsidies, nothing.”

Much like wine grapes, higher temperatures impact the coffee plant negatively by accelerating ripening, shifting harvest dates forward, and reducing photosynthesis, which compromises flavor development and quality. Because Arabica grows best in cooler conditions, quality degrades as the thermometer reading rises.

Changes in climate invite new diseases and pests to thrive — for example, the life cycle of the coffee borer beetle has become faster, increasing its populations. The beetles bore into the coffee cherry to lay eggs that hatch days later, destroying the fruit from the inside out.

Farms at lower elevations in Brazil are now grappling with rising temperatures, yet they have nowhere to go. “It’s unrealistic to think producers can afford new land or move up the mountain to a cooler location, especially when they’re already struggling,” says Gabriel Agrelli Moreira of Daterra Coffee, a sustainable coffee farm in Brazil.

While farmers could pivot from quality Arabica production to sturdier, high-volume Robusta, the suggestion is akin to Burgundy’s Pinot Noir and Chardonnay growers switching to Gamay and Aligoté.

Hope for Hybrids

Much of the coffee industry’s hope lies at the feet of F1 hybrids. These varieties are stronger in the face of weather extremes and diseases. To save the industry, they must prove climate-change-proof and economically viable for the farmer while tasting delicious to consumers.

Though farmers and breeders have been taking advantage of hybrids (when two unique coffee varieties are bred together) for over 100 years, the use of first-generation (F1) hybrids, which tend to have significantly higher performance, is very new in coffee — they have only been planted commercially for less than 10 years.

The F1 generating excitement is Starmaya, a variety that can be shared among farmers in cheaper seed form. Australian roasting company Single O released a limited-edition Starmaya coffee to prove its consumer appeal, pitching it as “climate-resilient” and “future-friendly.”

Can Adaptive Farming, Soil Carbon Sequestration and Hybrids Save Coffee?

Unfortunately, a one-size-fits-all panacea to mitigating climate change doesn’t exist. Every farmer must adjust their practices based on knowledge, resources, and stamina.

Raul Perez is a fourth-generation coffee farmer in Acatenango, Guatemala. The beans from his farm, La Soledad, frequently end up in the hands of America’s best roasters, from George Howell Coffee to Intelligentsia.

Perez uses adaptive farming techniques to combat heat and drought. Shade trees keep coffee plants cool. Eschewing herbicides helps grass preserve soil moisture and prevent erosion. Grafting Arabica to Robusta roots, using a common technique in wine, helps with drought- and heat-resistance. He’s also experimenting with hybrids with promising results.

Daterra launched Bioterra Academy, a research lab used to study soil health and “carbon farming” as a tool to fight climate change. A healthy soil retains water, prevents plant disease, cycles nutrients, fixes nitrogen, and can sequester carbon.

“About 25 percent of the planet’s soil has already been degraded,” Moreira says. The UN FAO calculates the world has only 60 years of harvests left, and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) suggests half the world’s coffee-producing land will be unsuitable by 2050.

American Business Must Invest at the Source: Small Coffee Farmers

“Private enterprise needs to step up and lead the way. Businesses at the top of the supply chain have a moral and business continuity obligation to re-invest at origin because without those farmers, we don’t have a healthy long-term prospect for our businesses,” Swenson says.

Promising tools like farming strategies and hybrids are only as good as their reach. Most smallholder farmers can’t afford to renovate farms. Many live in remote areas without access to research. Country-specific coffee associations like ANACAFE in Guatemala and the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros (FNC) in Colombia provide varying degrees of assistance, along with non-governmental organizations and private donors, but business must be integral to the solution.

In Guatemala, Chameleon Coffee is funding educational centers focused around 12-acre plots. On these experimental farms, producers can learn about the best varieties for their areas, methods of re-planting, proper plant spacing, and other techniques like pruning. Swenson says the effort is worth it because the company can demonstrate best practices without farmers risking their crops, while simultaneously building trust.

Saving coffee will take strategy and time, but forget the future. Climate change is here now, and its effects are rippling through the industry, soon to reach your very cup.

The article What Climate Change Means for the Future of Coffee appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/climate-change-coffee-production/ source https://vinology1.tumblr.com/post/616560831788990464

[coffeecup-news]

Handcrafted Coffee on another level

For a long time, coffee was simple…it was simply roasted, sold cheap and slurped down all day. And then…just like the beer industry, micro small batch took coffee’s creative side to a new industry level.  Every step of the process, coffee nerds pour their knowledge and insane amounts of care into the process.  They visit the families and farms that grow the coffee, build wonderful relationships with the farmers, and develop unique roasts that bring out that bean’s individual flavor profiles. Roasting in these small batches allows amazing attention to the detail.

Specialty coffee was first coined by Erna Knutsen who was a leader in the coffee world around 1974. Erna knew the potential and pushed forward for coffee’s full growth in the specialty industry. Thanks to that launch, specialty beans represent 55% of the coffee market share pie.

Why is small-batch coffee so extraordinary?

The flavor of a cup of coffee is the result of a long chain of alterations from the seed to the cup. Aromas come from inside the coffee beans as it grows and matures. The compounds and metabolites that accumulate during seed maturation contribute directly through roasting reactions to the broad spectrum of aromas and flavors in the final cup. There is a lot to understand between quality and coffee chemistry where small batch coffee can shine.

Roasting is The Magic

Small-batch allows a little legroom to innovate these roasting techniques and to experiment freely with taste. Starting here, coffee roasting happens by applying heat to the beans so that a chemical reaction develops into the complex aromatic and flavor components of that bean. Now, the goal is to get a delicate balance of flavor, acidity, aroma, and body.

Roasting for the Specialty Distinction

The language lingo in the specialty coffee world is just as complex as the process itself. Graders are similar to sommeliers but in the coffee world, highly trained to sniff out the most imperceptible defects and differences in specialty beans. A coffee is given the rank as a specialty when it scores up into 80 points or higher on a 100 point scale according to the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA). This is determined by cupping, or the way coffee professionals rank and compare coffees. When compared to wine, coffee has a higher number of flavors and aromatics. This is why the cuppers rely on the SCA’s Flavor Wheel which is a detailed road map of vocab used to describe and rank coffees.

The art and science of roasting

Specialty roasters transform green coffee beans into the aromatic brown beans that followers purchase with delight in favorite local stores and cafés. Becoming an expert roaster takes years of training just as with any other industry, they are masters of their craft.  Reading the beans in order to make decisions with split-second timing is the difference between perfectly roasted and a ruined batch of beans, which can happen in a matter of seconds. Beans need to reach an internal temperature of about 400 degrees Fahrenheit, to begin turning brown. The caffeol which is a fragrant oil trapped inside the beans starts to emerge. This process called pyrolysis is at the key to roasting in that it produces the flavor and aroma of the coffee we know and love. After roasting the beans, they are then cooled by either air or water.  The importing country usually roasts the beans since it’s a timely nature to get freshly roasted beans to the consumer as quick as possible. Ref: NCAUSA

Customers love to get involved by wanting to know where their beans are coming from, techniques on how they’re roasted, and the specialty flavor profiles to expect in the bag of beans. The smaller roasting guys are often a bit more transparent about their suppliers, so customers can fully enjoy knowing each cup of coffee is guilt-free. More companies are taking the effort to code their small batches so the consumer can follow and find out exact details such as information on roasting, sources where it came from and the farming family relationship the roaster has with their community.

Look for Fairtrade

Fairtrade is an important relationship.  The quality and care of the coffee depend on the skill of the families farming it. They are the ones digging in the ground, growing small seeds and nurturing the farms. Hard work goes into getting the laborious beans to the end consumer. Most of the world’s coffee is done by 25 million small-scale farmers. These are farms and farmers working 5 acres or less with the average Fair-trade farmer working just 3.4 acres of land. Many farms depend on growing coffee to support their families along with entire communities relying on the yearly harvest.

Coffee tastes better when it’s fresh which makes small-batch important. As soon as the roasted bean comes into contact with oxygen it begins the slow process of becoming stale. After three weeks it loses its optimum flavor and attributes, which is why we recommend buying coffee in small batches, so you’ll never have to drink it when it’s not the best.

[coffeeandy]

Handcrafted Small Batch Coffee

For a long time, coffee was simple…it was roasted dark, sold cheap and chugged throughout the day. However, like the beer industry, micro took coffee’s creative side to a new industry high.  Coffee nerds take insane amounts of care in every step of the process, from visiting the farms that grow the coffee, building relationships with the farmers, and developing unique roast profiles that bring out each bean’s individual flavor qualities. Roasting in these small batches allows unparalleled attention to the details.

Erna Knutsen, who was a luminary in the coffee world, first coined the term ‘specialty coffee’ around 1974. Erna knew the appreciation and pushed forward for coffee’s full potential. And since then, specialty beans represent 55% of the coffee market share.

What makes small-batch coffee so special?

The flavor of a cup of coffee is the result of a long chain of alterations from the seed to the cup. Aromas come from inside the coffee beans as it grows and matures. The compounds and metabolites that accumulate during seed maturation contribute directly through roasting reactions to the broad spectrum of aromas and flavors in the final cup. There is a lot to understand between quality and coffee chemistry where small batch coffee can shine.

Roasting is Where The Magic Happens

Starting here, coffee roasting is the application of heat to coffee beans in order to create chemical reactions that develop the complex aromatic and flavor components of the bean. The goal is to achieve a delicate balance of flavor, acidity, body, and aroma that is both harmonious and intriguing. Small-batch producers have the legroom to innovate on these roasting techniques and to experiment at will with taste.

The language around specialty coffee is as complex as the beverage. Graders are the sommeliers of the coffee world, trained to detect the most imperceptible defects and differences in beans. A coffee is ranked as specialty when it scores 80 points or higher on a 100-point scale according to the Specialty Coffee Association. This is determined by cupping, the way coffee professionals evaluate and compare coffees. Coffee far outshines wine in the number of aromatics and flavors, which is why cuppers rely on the SCA’s Flavor Wheel (at right), a detailed mapping of vocabulary to use when describing and ranking coffee.

Becoming an expert roaster takes years of training with the ability to “read” the beans and make decisions with split-second timing. The difference between perfectly roasted coffee and a ruined batch can be a matter of seconds. The art and science of roasting transforms green coffee into the aromatic brown beans that we purchase in our favorite stores or cafés. When they reach an internal temperature of about 400 degrees Fahrenheit, they begin to turn brown and the caffeol, a fragrant oil barred inside the beans, begins to emerge. This process called pyrolysis is at the heart of roasting — it produces the flavor and aroma of the coffee we drink. After roasting, the beans are immediately cooled either by air or water. Roasting is generally performed in the importing countries because freshly roasted beans must reach the consumer as quickly as possible. Ref: NCAUSA

Customers are curious and want to know where their beans are sourced, how they’re roasted, and the nuanced flavor profiles to expect in the bag of beans. The smaller guys are often more transparent about the suppliers they work with, so each cup of coffee can be enjoyed guilt-free by their customers. More companies are especially coding their small batches so the consumer can find out exactly when it was roasted, where it came from and the farming relationship the roaster has to their community.

Fairtrade is an important relationship as the coffee depends on the skill and care of  its farmers – hands in the ground, nurturing life from a small seed – and a lot of hard work goes into just getting those beans to the consumer. The majority of the world’s coffee is produced by 25 million small-scale farmers – meaning farmers working 5 acres or less (the average Fair-trade farmer works just 3.4 acres of land). Many of these farmers are dependent on coffee to support their families and entire communities rely on the once-a-year harvest.

Coffee tastes better when it’s fresh which makes small-batch important. As soon as the roasted bean comes into contact with oxygen it begins the slow process of becoming stale. After three weeks it loses its optimum flavor and attributes, which is why we recommend buying coffee in small batches, so you’ll never have to drink it when it’s not the best.

source https://www.coffeeandy.com/handcrafted-small-batch-coffee/

[robertpatrick8]

6 Easy Gardening Tips for Tiny Home Dwellers

Living in a tiny home doesn’t mean you have to give up your passion for gardening. Tiny house living and tiny house gardening both require creativity, flexibility, and planning. Many plants can grow in small spaces when creative and smart designs are used. Whether you want to grow vegetables or flowers, use these tips for tiny home gardening.

The tiny house movement is picking up steam, and creators make tiny homes in all shapes, sizes, and forms. It is becoming easier to live in a tiny home because of efficient space. Most people join this movement because of environmental concerns, financial worries, or the desire for more freedom.

Living in a tiny home costs significantly less than an average American home with 2,000 square feet. These adventurous souls are less likely to have a mortgage and find themselves saving more money. Living in a tiny house doesn’t mean you need to forego beloved activities like gardening. Some tiny house owners place their home on an acre of land, so you have plenty of space to garden. Even with a small plot, gardening can still be your favorite pastime.

Start Small

The most important tip is to start small. You live in a tiny house, and you don’t want to try to recreate the garden of Eden outside in our summer. Pick a few vegetables you want to grow and just a few flowers. Otherwise, your reality may not live up to your expectations. You can always add later in the season, but maintaining a garden is hard, even for tiny homeowners.

Here are some suggestions on how to start small:

Build one or two raised beds with easy vegetables, such as cucumbers, zucchini, lettuce, and green beans.

Make a small flower bed in front of your home with flowers and easy herbs. Marigolds, petunias, zinnias, and impatiens are easy flowers to maintain.

Place a pot with flowers on each side of your front door.

Use Vertical Space

Tiny homes may not have a lot of floor space, but you do have plenty of vertical space. You can attach a trellis to the exterior of your tiny home and add different pole vegetables, such as cucumbers, peas, and green beans. Certain flowers climb up fences as well!

Instead of a trellis, hang a pallet on the exterior of the home, acting as a shelf for flowers or an herb garden. Hang a row or two of rain gutters horizontally along the side of the tiny home. You can grow lettuce, greens, radishes, and an abundance of flowers and herbs in these shallow containers.

Certain plants grow better in vertical gardens than others. Try these plants if you decide to use the vertical space available.

Blue Star Fern

Sword

Bromeliads

Begonias

Hostas

Ivies

Rosary Vine

Tillandsias

Aechmea

If you want to grow vegetables vertically, it is a great way to save space and still get a great harvest. These plants are easy to train to grow up a trellis and climb quickly.

Pole Beans

Cucumbers

Kiwis

Grapes

Melons

Peas

Strawberries

Zucchini

Tomatoes

Winter Squash

Container Gardening

Containers are perfect for tiny homes–shrubs even grow well in containers, letting you take your garden with you if you decide to move your home.

A lot of plants do well and are easily movable when planted in a container. If you have a small porch, place a few pots on the steps. Add shrubs in a container along the sides of the porch to add height and depth. Make sure to put a few smaller containers in front with brightly colored flowers to make a statement.

Growing a container garden is a good first step for beginners as well. Gardening feels intimidating at first, so a few pots of plants eases you in slowly. Pots also can be placed on a sunny windowsill or hung inside of your home. Tiny home living requires you to use all of your space creatively.

If you’ve never grown plants in a container, here are some simple tips to try:

Make sure there are drainage holes in the bottom of the pot. Plants die if they sit in too much water.

Before you pick a spot for your container, time how long that spot receives sun by checking throughout the day. You want six hours or more of direct sunlight.

Add fertilizer to your potting soil. A slow-release fertilizer will last for several weeks.

Hanging Pots

Place several hooks around your tiny home, giving you an area to hang containers. Hooks are inexpensive and are placed right into the ground, but you might have hooks in the roof of your porch or be able to screw a few into the exterior of the home.

Growing plants in hanging pots are just like a container garden, but you are utilizing vertical space with containers. That is smart thinking. Place a few hanging pots inside and outside of your tiny home.

Start a Compost

Composting is eco-friendly and reduces the amount of waste you toss out each week. Gardeners can make a bin or purchase one from a gardening store. Compost adds vital nutrients to your plants. Mix the compost into your potting soil or use as a soil amendment for established garden beds.

You can add many things to a compost bin, such as:

Fruits and veggies scraps

Eggshells

Coffee grounds

Tea bags

Newspapers

Lint

Grass clippings

Leaves

Make sure you don’t add any meat or dairy products. Also, cat and dog feces are a no, but you can add manure from rabbits or chickens.

Join the Right Community

The right tiny home community encourages gardening and sustainability! These are some of the top choices we love.

Spur Freedom is a community located in Spur, Texas. It is one of the first towns in the United States to welcome tiny homes. Right now, job opportunities aren’t plentiful, so it is better for individuals who work remotely online. Space is worth it. You have access to the Texas prairie, which means great gardening opportunities.

Sprouts Tiny Home opened another community in Salida, Colorado, offering 200 tiny homes ranging in size. Each home has access to a fitness center, shared amenities, and green space. There will be plenty of space for you to add landscaping or an edible garden.

Green Bridge Farm, located near Savannah, Georgia, offers one-acre lots for tiny home dwellers. That is a lot of space for you to create a garden and enjoy outdoor living. All residents also have access to a four-acre community garden, where you can practice your skills.

Just because you live in a tiny home doesn’t mean you can’t garden. Remember that being creative and planning gives the best results. Whether you use a variety of containers or have a lot of space to create a garden, tiny home dwellers can have a garden and landscaping anywhere.

Need help creating landscaping for your tiny home or community? Visit our lawn care page for more information!

Feature image source: Treehugger

The post 6 Easy Gardening Tips for Tiny Home Dwellers appeared first on Lawnstarter.

from Gardening Resource https://www.lawnstarter.com/blog/gardening-2/gardening-tips-for-tiny-home-dwellers/

[thecoroutfitters]

Written by R. Ann Parris on The Prepper Journal.

Editors Note: Another contribution from R. Ann Parris to The Prepper Journal. As always, if you have information for Preppers that you would like to share and possibly receive a $25 cash award, as well as being entered into the Prepper Writing Contest AND have a chance to win one of three Amazon Gift Cards  with the top prize being a $300 card to purchase your own prepping supplies, then enter today!

Boy oh boy, to have come back for more … you have earned your biscuits and I wish you productive hens and no little red eggs or white butterflies in your gardens.

So, last time we created a pretty big “short” list of factors that combine to determine not only how much seed we need, but also how much land space. You got an example of how something like sustainability goals, or lack thereof, can affect how many seeds you’d want to stock because it changes what you’re planting. We also mentioned developing baselines, to see how things perform in your specific patch o’ dirt.

That “performance” aspect is the biggest variable.

That particular variable is why I don’t present any lists of “plant this many of this” – not even when I’m speaking to regional or local groups.

All I do, is make some guidelines available, and give people a few things to consider with each list – and with “all-in-one” kits of various kinds. I’ll give you the same.

Corn is just one of many staples that comes in huge variety. I’ll need different amounts of seed (and land) to produce equal amounts with different crops.

Seeds for the Future

The amount of seed we need to stockpile for planting changes based on seed size and coverage densities, by variety as well as general crop type.

Then our seed handling – mechanical v. manual planting, pre-soak or sprouting v. direct-sow – further affects how many seeds we set out, and how much land we need to prepare for those seeds.

Mechanical planters increase the risk of damaged seeds. Broadcasting usually has higher planting rates. Precipitation, soil nutrients and soil structure determine if I need extra spacing to avoid stunting, or would need more amendments or irrigation at the conventional densities for the yield I want.

Chickpeas and lentils average 2-4 seeds per pod, while common bean types can average 5-16 seeds per pod. Tomatoes have a finicky process to save seeds. Some crops need 3-7 seeds sown per desired adult plant due to low germination and survival rates.

All those listed factors really do play in together as a system, and the system determines how much seed and land we’d need to meet our goals.

Then there’s which seeds.

I could save just one melon, and plant a fair bit of land the next time, but I’ve just severely “bottle necked” my gene pool, which can lead to serious problems down the road.

Plain soil, NPK additive, and biochar+NPK comparison of crop health & yield with a single variety of corn. Environmental factors matter in crop performance.

 Other People Post Guides

Bless them for it. I don’t plan to.

Something that thrives and does well in the greater CSRA may be a low-yielding hothouse bunny for the DelMarVa. Apples do not ship from Arizona for a reason. Sheep in Seattle are going to be less-needy and higher-yielding than in Shreveport – changing the amounts of plant-based Vitamin D, calcium, and protein we need to produce.

In his foraging books, His Highness the Great Samuel Thayer (I’m a fan) offers a latitude and altitude conversion guide. Because, just blocks or miles or states apart, what grows and when changes by ‘tude.

Age, ability, and acreage also lead to very different suggestions. Our amendments and growing styles factor in.

Some guides are handy, either as general starting points for planting (which we will test) or for “extras” they offer. Still, they must be liberally seasoned with salt.

The canning jar article http://www.theprepperjournal.com/2016/07/21/how-many-canning-jars-do-you-need/ includes a chart that gives yield, seeds/starts per area, and space suggestions. She doesn’t tell you what varieties she’s sticking in those rows specifically, or how long it takes to grow them, so it’s only a starting point.

Pole beans v. bush beans

There’s a whopping yield difference between a pole bean or melon vine that’s 3-6’ and one that’s 8-15’. Ditto for bush beans v. pole beans, favas v. lentils, pintos v. kidneys. Short-season and drought-tolerant regional heirlooms tend to yield lower. Diseases and pests in warm, rainy areas may mitigate the yield advantage of a more productive regional heirloom.

It’s what makes me shake my head when I see numbers sometimes. See, sometimes the planting ranges make sense due to possible variations.

Sometimes, though, it’s stuff like “5-10 broccoli plants per person, 10-40 carrots per person” (http://www.wellfedhomestead.com/how-much-should-you-plant-in-your-garden-to-provide-a-years-worth-of-food), or ��10 squash and zucchini per person, 75 sweet potatoes per person” (Back to Basics via https://www.newlifeonahomestead.com/how-much-should-i-plant/).

Those are huge ranges.

Even so, the high-end is still not enough broccoli or carrots for each of my family. Flip side, 10 squash and 75 sweets per person could be overwhelming harvests – respectively, 50-200# and 150-250# each, on moderate years (Georgia Jet to Beauregard’s).

Then, there’s TWO (2) autumn-winter squash recommended in the first link.

Ever grow Hubbard, butternut, kuri, and Jester squash? Two plants could yield anywhere from 6 to 24 squash – 5-90 pounds – depending on variety, pests and care. That’s an enormous and ridiculous range to give somebody without more specifics.

That’s why I don’t give blanket guidelines. Because, it depends.

It depends on the year (luck), skill, and method as much as the variety and location.

Try to find the seeding rates for the style you want to duplicate in your area. For some generic starting points, there’s a list here among other goodies https://smallfarmersjournal.com/weights-measures/. Mississippi State Extension does a nice job of thumb-nailing some of the relationships between style and seeding rate due to plant density and survival, https://extension.msstate.edu/sites/default/files/publications/publications/p2401.pdf. Penn State’s extension service provided a nice gauge of when to increase seeding rates, https://www.no-tillfarmer.com/articles/5081-determining-seeding-rates-for-small-grains.

Remember, your extension office’s suggestions will be better for your garden and plots.

Even so, I actually like the VA Tech veggie guide https://pubs.ext.vt.edu/content/dam/pubs_ext_vt_edu/426/426-331/426-331_pdf.pdf. It gives seed-starts per row along with yield estimates and suggested amounts per person, and it’s nice enough to break plants down by a lot of types.  Plus, it goes hand in hand with the planting date guide that’s page one of the pub – just switch your location’s frost dates around for the 0-date given the chart.

And speaking of charts…

A compilation of expected shelf life of seeds, in dry, generally constant 55-75 degree F storage – nothing fancy, paper bags & packets in a basket on a shelf. The listed years are the time you have to use seed before the germination rate starts dropping. – – – I no longer remember where I found this chart; it’s not my original work. If you know who made or posted it originally, let us know so it can be properly credited.

Seed Vaults & Kits

“Over 25K seeds!” “10-year shelf life!” “Plants an acre!” “Feeds a family of four!”

This is actually another one that really rates its own article. I’m not after naming names here, but please be aware of a few things when you consider these.

For starters, that family of four had better be rabbits if it’s is all they’re eating. Most “survival” seed vaults and kits are lacking in the same ways:

– Overall potential calories, proteins, & fats

– Regionally- or climate-specific varieties, to include short-season staples

Caveat: There are admittedly “survival garden” kits out there specifically for proteins, grains, oil seeds, and staples in general. There’s also companies that do make regional kits.

  Three sets of black beans. Differences? One’s Zorro, specifically bred for uniform maturity in Michigan’s semi-rainy but shorter summers, regionally high-yielding and highly disease resistant. One’s the original Black Magic, developed in the U.K. – a bigger bean, lousy “green bean”, mediocre productivity anywhere humid & hot, great for a Seattle-type climate but too long-growing for Montana & North Dakota. And one? Well, I have no idea who produced it, how long it takes, where it yields best, or its spacing-nutrient-disease-pesticide needs. It’s whatever is in somebody’s survival seed vault.

– Inflated seed numbers (how much basil & borage are you really going to plant?)

– Further inflate numbers with perennials that won’t bear much in the first year

– Use a weight measure for seeds (which, divided out, can end up being 12-30 bean, melon & corn seeds … Pssst. That’s not gonna feed you all that much.)

– Declare the storage life using the longest-lived individual or upper 25-50% of the seeds in the best of storage conditions

Amazon question-answer – From the seller: “Some of the seeds won’t store for long term no matter how they’re stored…” (Full disclosure: When this one is $75-90 instead of $180-230, it’s actually a good deal as a starter or booster kit, and you can download the guide before buying to see what applies to your zone, although there’s 300 borage and similar inflation’s to be aware of … and corn isn’t as delicate as the supplier thinks.)

Now, referencing that chart above (which I’ll confirm – except spinach; spinach seeds never last long for me), a bedroom closet keeps my seeds for 3-5 years. I have a daily quart-plus of green beans and quarter-cup of dry beans coming off 30 abused 6-year-old black bean seeds that became 20 neglected and abused 10-15’ vines.

Then there’s this kit/vault, good for 5-15 years, maybe some seeds will last 20 in ideal storage – usually called 50-65 degrees or a freezer. Who knows how well those seeds are going to yield, or for how long.

So … why am I spending money on that packaging?

Without having a true Svalbard (which just flooded, by the way), the difference between storage in a Mylar bag and a tin can, versus Ziploc and an empty coffee tub is … pretty slim. Really.

Just make sure you’re paying for quality seeds applicable to your zone from a trusted grower, not fear-sales advertising or packaging that won’t appreciably extend the life of your chives.

Also, if a product is claiming 10-20 years, make sure they’ve been around long enough to have done independent testing on that claim – and get the by-variety shelf-life results.

Those results are somewhere. If they hedge and won’t deliver them … this calls for an extra grain of salt.

How Much Seed To Stockpile

Man, I really wish there was an easy golden bullet for this one, I do. But there’s not.

On one hand, I’m tempted to say “the world is never enough” but it makes no sense for people to stock things they don’t know how to use. Seeds fall into that category. Other hand, even if you don’t have space or knowledge, this isn’t the parts to a computer or a pony here – there’s a chance you can find help or extra space. But that leaves all the other factors up in the air.

What it comes down to is the only one-size-fits-all garden rule, the one constant we repeat, early and often:

Get Started. Now.

The more you do now, the more of the learning curve you’ve already passed.

“Foods That Will Win The War” calorie guide, 1918 – This was long before we got fat, and is not based on Cold Dark Northland winter needs.

Figure out the calories you need, and then the calorie yields of foods you can produce in your area. Then figure out what those foods need in turn.

Here’s one rule of thumb I will give you: Grains tend to average about 1500-1600 calories per pound (dry). Beans tend to be more variable, but 1500/dry pound is close.

A half-pound of dry beans and a half-pound of dry grains is a whopping pile once cooked, but it can provide a baseline for calculations. You multiply by days to see how many pounds you need –  harvest to harvest plus next year’s seeding – and divide by your average yield using your baseline seeding rates.

That’s how much seed you need – ideally with some leeway for bad years.

You can start with published yield averages or suggested plants per person, but start now. See if your yields would multiple outward and match those averages. Adjust accordingly.

Anything you add into your garden or crops, you’re going to have to stock for the duration you expect to be growing, or learn to produce yourself for sustainability. So that will require additional space and labor, one way or another.

I wish there was an easier answer, but unfortunately, in this case … it still depends.

    The post The Saga of Seed Stockpiles (Continued) appeared first on The Prepper Journal.

from The Prepper Journal Don't forget to visit the store and pick up some gear at The COR Outfitters. How prepared are you for emergencies? #SurvivalFirestarter #SurvivalBugOutBackpack #PrepperSurvivalPack #SHTFGear #SHTFBag

[hopeharmonyfarms-blog]

Let me introduce myself. I am a forty something gal who was born and raised in the big town of South Hill, Virginia (population 4,541). I grew up far from agriculture with my dad being a civil engineer/land surveyor and my mom being a great domestic engineer (a.k.a stay at home mom). I grew up prissy and not appreciating hard work and being dirty. Being the sassy teenager that I was, I was determined to move to the big city lights and lead a more sophisticated life. There were three things that I said that I would never, ever do. (1) marry a farmer (how dreadful would that be)? (2) get married in December (why would you want poinsettias at your wedding). (3) live in a place smaller than South Hill, VA. Well, never say never, right? Fast forward to 1991 when girl meets boy and girl falls in love, with who? You guessed it, a farmer! Well, the son of a farmer. Let me just say, when we first met he was an agricultural economics major with no desire to go to his home town of Drewryville (population 727). Fast forward to 1993 and two weeks before graduation he says, hey, I want to go home and farm. Huh??? What do you think??? Huh??? Did I ever tell you, I do not like to sweat or get dirty? So, he graduates and moves home to do the farming thing and after six years of dating he finally says, hey, let’s get married! You know what they say, love is blind. So, I happily packed my bags and moved to the “big” town of Drewryville to start our next adventure in life. It was summer time when I moved to the big “D” and lots of work to do on the farm in the summer. Jeffrey decided that he was going to grow butter beans and that we would freeze them for winter. High on love, this sounded fun and domestic. Not! Let me say that we had been to a friend’s wedding the night before and we had a GRANDE time. Jeffrey says, honey we need to get up early before it is too hot to pick the butter beans, ok. Did you know you must pick those boogers by hand? Did you know that there are a lot of flying bugs in the hot humid summer? Did you know you sit on a five-gallon bucket bent over picking butter beans for a very long time? Well, I was not feeling the best from our evening out and when the sun began to really beat down, well, let’s just say it was not one of my finest moments. Nor, was it his best light bulb moment inviting me to assist with the butter bean picking. I was able to compose myself and return to my duties of picking. After, listening to me sing “Green Acres is NOT the place for me” over and over. He gladly sent me packing to the house and has never requested my help in picking again! 22 years and counting…. Thank goodness! So, those 3 things that I said I would never, ever do. Yes, I married a farmer, moved to a much smaller town and got married in December. And, no I did NOT have poinsettias at my wedding! I must say, marrying this farmer was by far one of my finest moments. It was not long after getting married and having kids that he had a major light bulb moment. Hey Steph, why don’t you cook and sell the peanuts we grow direct to the customer. Huh??? Are you crazy??? We have a 3½ year old and a 1½ year old…..and so our gourmet peanut business was created in 2002. I would cook and package and ship peanuts all with the help of mommies’ little helpers and a lot of help from my mother in law. As the years have passed, I must say, that I still do not like to sweat or get dirty, but very much appreciate hard work, but hey, you do what you gotta do! With hard work comes many rewards! So just like that, I became the CEO of my family’s business, and the cook, packer, janitor, secretary, accountant, the Jack (or Jill) of all trades. Now, I cannot take all of the credit. The Pope boys have been growing the finest Virginia peanuts since the late 1800's on our 5,500-acre farm in Southampton County, Virginia long before I entered the picture. Our peanuts are truly the cream of the crop. We grow only the world-famous Virginia jumbo peanut, prized by gourmets everywhere for its impressive size and even more incredible flavor. As generational farmers, the love of the land has been instilled in many ways. Waking up early and looking upon the fields as the fog hangs just above your crops and the sun begins to shine and the dew begins to evaporate and that earthy smell meets your nose. It’s harvest season and the picking has begun and the delicious aroma of peanuts is in the air for miles. Sitting on the porch and watching the sensational sunsets over the fields, listening to the birds and crickets and farm equipment being parked for the evening. My favorite, watching the billions of stars light up the sky. There are not many professions where you get a do over. Farming allows us just that. Planting season is a do over year after year. It is a season of great optimism and angst. Certain growing conditions are needed to succeed, soil temperature and moisture are vital to success and it never goes according to plan. We have just completed planting season and now we hold our breath hoping and praying that god will provide the necessary temperatures and moisture needed. I truly believe that farming is like being in Vegas, it is one big gamble! It is not for the faint of hearts. Knowing that all your eggs are in one basket can be too much for some to bear. It does not take but just a couple of bad years to put you out of business! Most family farms today are generational because of the immense appreciation for the land and its unique lifestyle. It is a lifestyle of back breaking work at times, but with that hard work, comes tremendous rewards. The overwhelming feeling of accomplishment that comes from putting a seed into the dirt, and with water, sun and a lot of hard work, you are able to produce something that is greater than you. Quality time with the kids, teaching them how to drive a tractor or showing them how to take soil samples or teaching them how to drive on the farm path. Date night may be riding around the farm checking on crops or riding in the tractor during harvest or planting. This may sound horrid to some, but it is the simple things and quality of time that brings pleasure. There is nothing 9 to 5 about farming. Being able to witness the bounties of nature daily is something that we never take for granted. Sustainability is crucial for the survival of our farm. Not only are we helping to feed the world, but we are feeding our precious family from this same land. We are thankful for new technologies that help us in the field and allow us to be more efficient with innovations such as GPS or technologies that help us conserve water. Protection of our natural resources is critical for growing a healthy crop. Did you know that peanuts are the most water efficient nuts grown? Peanuts are naturally sustainable and efficient. As parents of two teenage daughters it is very important to us as parents, to pass our legacy to our girls in a state of healthy prosperity, so they too, can continue to grow healthy peanuts and excel for the next generation. Quality control is our trademark throughout every step of the process - from growing, harvesting and cooking our crop of delicious peanuts to shipping them to any destination you may choose. Our cooking process deserves special mention. Each batch of our Virginia peanuts is cooked according to a time-honored family recipe in pure 100% peanut oil. Our artisan product is made to order in small batches, so you get the freshest product possible. With 30 essential vitamins & nutrients they are a superfood and peanuts have 7 grams of protein, more than any nut. We believe with 7 grams of protein peanuts provide you energy for a good life, and with our hectic lives who doesn’t need more energy. Our peanuts reflect our passion, heritage and love of the land and we hope that you will agree, our Virginia peanuts are the absolute best! Happy eating from this small-town gal, who went smaller and got big! Country girls do survive! #smalltowngalgoescountry All the best, Stephanie Love the land • Respect your roots • Give your best www.hopeandharmonyfarms.com