PDS APES 8th Period 2009-10

*This is a guest post by EmilyO in the other class.  Not sure everyone was there due to APs and not sure those that were there were very focused, so maybe this will be of use… On Wednesday we reviewed some of the qualities of soil. To do this, we looked at a soil profile, [...]

We love corn in APES so I thought I’d share this random image I found! If it looks weird on your screen just click it and it will take you to the website.

If you enjoyed “The Meatrix,” then you might like this parody too…

Traditional intensive agriculture is when farmers increase human and animal labor, fertilizer, and water to produce more food per area of cultivated land to the point that they have enough to sustain their families and still some for profit. Does this mean that  industrialized agriculture is just another form of traditional intensive agriculture? Or is [...]

I told folks I’d handle scribe post duties yesterday (Thursday), so here goes.  We made lists of organic farming techniques that students viewed at green.tv in the Food for Life videos (homework).  While these videos were based on the UK’s Soil Association organic standards, they are almost the same as the USDA National Organic Program [...]

Okay, so after watching the video today in class about the conditions of feed lots, I remembered this video which I saw a while back. You can fast forward until about a minute into it, but there is an artist who has actually created a television show to show to chickens when they are in [...]

In class on Friday, we had a long discussion to try to figure out what the benefits and drawbacks of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are. (If anyone needs help remembering how they are made, try revisiting http://www.mhhe.com/biosci/genbio/virtual_labs/BL_22/BL_22.html). There were some clear points to each side, but there were also many blurred lines where it was [...]

http://cogtoronto.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/6a00d83451e03769e200e54f8b79958834-800wi.jpg Today in class, we finished the movie KING CORN. The movie is fimed by two college friends who grew two acre of corn in Iowa to examine the influence of larger industrilizesd corn production. At the last twenty minuts of movie, Ian and Curtis leave the farm to see where their acre of corn  ends up. [...]

So, since we introduced the idea of cover crops, I thought I would mention my garden. We moved last fall, and so I decided to start a new veggie garden in my back yard last spring. I grew tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, carrots, onions, potatoes, and herbs–all in a 10 x 20 foot plot. Here’s a [...]

To review, we know that soil is a complex mixture of inorganic material (sand, silt, clay), macronutrients (N, P, K), air, water, organic material (humus) and a dazzling multitude of critters like decomposers and detritovores. Soil’s also critical to humanity’s survival; the 15-20 cm of topsoil keeps the world from mass starvation by growing our [...]