Organic farming

Good afternoon! How was your day today? My day was fun because I danced with my friends after school.

Well, in one of my earlier posts, I talked about the book that I'm reading right now which is about organic farming. But the book is written a little difficult, so I searched for videos that can explain it a little bit easier for me and I found a lot! So I would like to introduce one that I thought was really easy to understand and fun to watch. The video title is "What is Organic" and let me give you a short description of the video. To the people who don't know what organic means, it means products with no chemical fertilizers or pesticides. 

The opposite word for organic is conventional and this was a new word or fact I found out. Conventional  farmers use many harmful chemicals and pesticides. Another new fact I found out was organic farmers use flame weeders (made of clean natural gases) to kill the weeds, and this type of gas is used when we have barbecues. 

Now I think everybody is wondering how do we know what is truly organic. We need certification. And this was another new fact for me and Australia has 8 government certifiers and some international organic certifiers. I added some pictures of those certifiers below. If you search on google, there are hundreds more!

And on this video, a website www.pureandgreen.com.au was introduced. When I looked at it, it was a site with whole bunch of organic facts and products! This got me really interested in reading it, so when I have time, I definitely want to take a look at it.  

Here is the video: 

See you at my next post! 

Last week"s assignment

Hello and I am so sorry for not posting the last two weeks or so. I would like to be more careful and make this blog more fun to read for everyone.

On this post I would like to talk a little about a another food related blog that I looked at and that is neverseconds.org. My first impression was that the first post said 10 million hits and I thought "wow!! That's a lot!!" And as I started to scroll down, there were pictures of some volunteer work, meals, and it looked healthy too. While reading some posts, I was so moved by how much volunteer work she has done and how much children she has helped, it made me want to help other people also. I should be thankful that I have food to eat everyday, every meal.

This picture is when I ate spaghetti for dinner :)\

It also looks like she has been going to many places around the world and I really admire her for how big she's working. My dream is to work worldwide also, so I would like to take her work as an example. 

Hmmm....volunteer work.  I wonder if there are any that I can do. I really love children and doing things for other people that make them smile and happy. So to the people who read this, if you know any, if you could leave some comments I would really appreciate it! Thank you!

Analyzing a food blog

The blog that I analyzed is thedomesticman.com. As the website opened, there was a big picture of a delicious looking food and it got me interested. As I read along, there were advices and recipes written and I thought it was really useful. The author introduced many balanced food recipes and so maybe when I have time, I'll try to make it myself. The past years, I wasn't that interested in cooking but reading this blog made me motivated and want to cook. Also, to learn about diet and the things that we put in our body. I recommend everyone to take a look at this blog!

The Book I'm Reading

The book that I started reading is called "Good Growing Why Organic Farming Works" by Leslie A. Duram. To give a quick summary, the author researches and interviews working organic farmers from all across the USA to find out the realities of organic farming; the pleasures, problems and concerns about it.
The first chapter is "Organic Farming and Geography." From reading part of this chapter, I found out that there are 5 geographical regions in the United States which helps the investigation of organic agriculture. Organic agricultural researchers and farmers define organic farming in many ways, such as crop rotation to build healthy fertile soil that has few pest problems. Crop rotation is changing the crops grown in a field each season. Organic farming also means growing large number of crops both for ecological diversity and for sales diversity. And lastly, it means innovation which is to try new crop rotations or varieties, timing, new machinery, and new sales venues to meet the consumer's demands.
The opposite of organic is what they call conventional agriculture.  This kind of agriculture relies on synthetic fertilizers and toxic chemicals which kills most weeds and insects but pollutes the rivers and oceans. Some chemicals stay on the food and it affects the consumer who eat it. When I read this, I got scared what the farmers are doing to what we eat. I was glad my mom relies on organic food and products, and that she told me about it. That is why I chose this book; to know more about how organic production works.
This book is really scientific but I'm really interested in reading more about it and challenging myself to a higher level of understanding.