Crops

Want to buy organic carrots? No problem. Organic strawberries? Widely available. Organic honey? Try your local grocery store. But organic medical marijuana? Doesn't exist — at least not in an official sense. Organic crops and products are certified by private agencies through the U.S. Department of Agriculture — a program developed after decades of advocacy by organic farmers and their allies. Pot — medicinal or otherwise — need not apply. "What the USDA doesn't recognize as a legal crop, we can't certify because we're certifying to their standards," said Jane Wade, development specialist at Santa Cruz-based California Certified Organic Farmers, the largest organic certification agency in the country.

DECATUR, Ill. — Wearing a black fleece pullover and blue cargo pants, Howard Buffett loaded his jumpy Slovakian-born German shepherd Bolek into his Ford F-250 Super Duty and radioed his crew that he was on his way. "Beans don't do well in the cold and wet, but I'm going to plant anyway," Buffett said before climbing into the cabin of his John Deere tractor. There he pressed the "resume" button and began planting small, red soybean seeds, 180,000 to the acre. He drove hands-free thanks to a sophisticated onboard global positioning system, which alone cost $20,000.

It is ironic that the original attraction of certified farmers markets, buying direct from the grower, has been so diluted by success that it's hard to find an actual farmer at many markets these days. But if you walk through the Hollywood or Santa Monica Main Street markets and take one look at Rocky Canyon Farms' Greg Nauta — stocky, suntanned, big hands — you can tell he's the real deal. He's the one who spent the previous day harvesting melons and laying irrigation tape at his farm on the Central Coast, then got up at 3:30 a.m. to drive 200 miles to sell to you. Nauta is defiantly old school.

WASHINGTON - It's a deal that most businesses would relish: Buy an insurance policy to cover losses or falling prices, and the government will foot most of the bill. Such an arrangement has been enjoyed for more than a decade by the farmers who grow crops such as corn and soybeans, and the companies that insure them. And it's about to get even better. The farm bill now before Congress includes a provision - estimated to cost about $3 billion a year - that would help cover the losses farmers suffer before their crop insurance policies kick in. Those losses, termed deductibles, can run in the tens of thousands of dollars for a typical mid-size farm.

Bouncing down a dirt road a couple of summers ago, past a gentle patchwork of barnyards and soybean fields in central Iowa, farmer Kent Friedrichsen strained over the steering wheel of his van and stared through the windshield in dismay. His soybean fields, where he'd used seeds developed by Monsanto Co. and sprayed with its popular glyphosate weed killer Roundup Ready, were littered with yellowed leaves and dead plants. Four days earlier, the plants had been waist high and emerald green.

New laboratory tests have found that veggie burgers and meat-free corn dogs made by natural foods brand Morningstar Farms contain genetically modified soy and the controversial genetically altered feed corn, StarLink, that has not been approved for human consumption. The tests, commissioned by the activist group Greenpeace, highlight the difficulty that even natural foods companies are having in assuring customers that their products do not contain genetically modified ingredients. Kellogg Co.

The last thing a New Yorker expects to find atop a massive building in industrial Queens is a farm. We're talking 140 rows of crops, including leafy greens, tomatoes, even fancy Japanese turnips - as well as high-tech irrigation and five plump hens who enjoy a sixth-story view of the Manhattan skyline that any penthouse dweller would pay millions for. The Brooklyn Grange, named before its young founders settled on another borough, is...

Your portrayal of the current protests surrounding genetically engineered crops is timely in more than one way ("Protest May Mow Down Trend to Alter Crops," Oct. 5). As a supporter of environmental protection efforts for much of my life, I would hate to be remembered as part of the generation that stalled the development of transgenic technology. The scientifically sound application of this technology offers us a remedy within reach to such sources of environmental degradation as loss of undeveloped land to farming low-yield crops and excessive use of long-residual, broad-spectrum insecticides to battle moth pests of crops worldwide.

Colombia's coca crop shrank by nearly 20% last year while cultivation rose for a third straight year in Peru and Bolivia, the world's two other coca-producing nations, the United Nations said Friday. The U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime said the 18% reduction in Colombia, the world's top cocaine producer, from 2007 was owed in part to record manual eradication of 371 square miles of the bush, the leaves of which are used to produce cocaine.

Genetic engineering has been hailed as a tool to produce crops that are left unharmed by weed-killing pesticides and that are more productive than their forebears. But critics have worried that modified plants might take over land used by native species and that increasingly hardy "superweeds" may develop. A new study supports some of these fears, detailing an abundance of genetically modified canola crops found outside cultivation in North Dakota. The so-called feral canola is the first report of a genetically modified crop found in the wild in the U.S., although another genetically engineered plant designed for golf putting greens, creeping bentgrass, was found in Oregon in 2004.

Organic agriculture generally comes at a cost of smaller harvests compared with conventional agriculture, but that gap can be narrowed with careful selection of crop type, growing conditions and management techniques, according a new study. Organic farming has been touted by supporters as a more environmentally sustainable method of farming that's better for consumers because crops contain fewer man-made chemicals. But without the high-nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides often employed in conventional agriculture, it's also less efficient.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Angels' World Series championship, a club distinguished in part by a bullpen built more on hope than on money. The closer was a converted catcher. The key setup guys were a September call-up not old enough to drink and two refugees from the independent leagues. The Angels had no choice. That was the last year B.A. (Before Arte). The Angels did not spend even $1 million on their shortstop, let alone a middle reliever. So, if progress means they can spend $5 million on a guy to pitch the seventh inning, why does their bullpen seem so much more unstable now?

NEYYATTINKARA, India - Retired government worker and small-time coconut farmer Prakasan Thattari is very proud of his invention: a machine with the look of a giant metallic praying mantis that clangs fearlessly up vertigo-inducing coconut trees. It climbs well, but has a little trouble cutting off the coconuts once up there, said Thattari, who estimates that he's gone through thousands of dollars tinkering with various gizmos. "I spent all my retirement money," he said. "The machine is close to my heart.

A years-long environmental battle ended abruptly when the company producing a fumigant for strawberries and other crops yanked it from U.S. distribution, bringing relief to activists and raising concern among growers. Methyl iodide, meant to replace an ozone-depleting fumigant being phased out by an international treaty, was believed to have little effect on air quality. But some scientists say it can cause cancer, brain damage and miscarriages among workers who handle it and can be a threat to ground water.

Almond trees are exploding with pink and white blossoms across the vast Central Valley, marking the start of the growing season for California's most valuable farm export. Toiling among the blooms are the migrant workers that will make or break this year's crop: honeybees. The insects carry the pollen and genetic material needed to turn flowers into nuts as they flit from tree to tree. It's a natural process that no machine can replicate. But it can't be left to chance. Bees are too integral to the fortunes of California's nearly $3-billion-a-year almond industry.

Although most of the larger farmers markets in Southern California have at least one vendor of cultivated mushrooms, the great majority of these buy from large commercial producers and so must sell in the non-certified section or under a second certificate arrangement. There's not necessarily anything wrong with that, but it takes just a glance at the pristine and tender shiitake and oyster mushrooms that Fred Ellrott grows and picks himself, to see that there is a real advantage to the consumer in buying mushrooms direct from the producer.

She stops for long stretches, lost in thought, trying to make sense of how she's been left half a person. Sunita, 18, who requested that her family name not be used to preserve her chance of getting married, said her nightmare started in early 2007 after her father took a loan for her sister's wedding. The local moneylender charged 60% annual interest. When the family was unable to make the exorbitant interest payments, she said, the moneylender forced himself on her, not once or twice but repeatedly over many months.

The Lockes have tilled the rich soil along the Mokelumne River since 1850. Now Chris Locke, 57, looks forward to passing down his orchards of 40,000 walnut trees to his four sons. But the threat of global warming has him worried. "I talk to my boys about climate change," he said. When he was young, frigid fogs rolled off the delta into Lockeford, the town named for his forebears. "We would go a week without seeing the sun. But we don't seem to get that weather anymore."

A few California farmers have long pushed the envelope by trying to grow crops like pineapples or lychees that are really a bit too tropical for local conditions but still tantalizing in their possibilities. A case in point is the mango, which just barely gets enough heat in the scorching Coachella desert to merit being grown commercially; all the more amazing that Markov Farms of Valley Center, located in a coastal climate zone even less well adapted to the fruit, is finally starting to market its crop at farmers markets, albeit with a catch.

Connoisseur Osier Jean steps into the sterile room, pauses and clears his mind. With notebook and flavor wheel in hand, he quickly turns to the task at hand: checking the quality. He sniffs, slurps and swirls, allowing his senses to take in the richness. The liquid is not wine, but caffeine-rich Kafe Kreyol, Haitian coffee. It is the country's latest effort to revive a once-flourishing industry that has been crippled by decades of deforestation, political chaos and crises.