November 13, 2016 / como / 0 Comments
Firstly you will need a set of skills and tools in order to get a job in agriculture. Hands-on skills are required. Many farming jobs are usually manual and need persons who are great at performing multiple and complex tasks fast and efficiently with minimal errors. Persons seeking work and jobs in agriculture need to work great with their hands.
Driving skills are also a must. People who want to work in the agriculture business need to have several driving certifications. Tractors and other machinery are common vehicles used in agriculture. Being able to manage, drive and manipulate these vehicles can be very confusing for someone without these skills. There are several lessons and skills you will need in order to drive a large piece of machinery. This is a necessary skill when trying to get jobs in agriculture.
Research and analysis are other components of the agriculture field. Not everyone needs to work on a farm or operate large machinery. Some persons will need to work in the agriculture field from the scientific end. This type of occupation requires persons in a laboratory setting who scientifically research various crops in order to improve farm productivity.
The agriculture and farming industry is a business like any other industry. Skills in business are required. There are many aspects of agriculture that require a keen business eye. For instance, great business skills will come in very handy when purchasing or selling crops and livestock.
Jobs in agriculture require great animal handling skills. Knowing about the various types of animals on a farm and how to care for them is crucial. Say for instance you apply for a position as a Farm Manager, Pig Farmer or Shearer. All these jobs require knowledge and certifications with handling certain or even all farm animals.
These are just some of the requirements necessary in order to get a job in agriculture. There are also several different fields within the agriculture industry that call for different areas of study, technique and skill. The range of occupations within the industry is diverse. If you want to obtain a job in agriculture then there are several skills and schooling you will have to go through first.
November 12, 2016 / como / 0 Comments
Over the last year or so there’s been a major change in world agriculture. It concerns the comparative power and market shares of two main players, the US and Brazil.
The main reason for the changing situation is the severe drought this year in farming areas of North America. This has of course led to drastic reductions there in the production of important crops of all kinds. One major example is corn (maize) an absolutely vital food for both humans and animals and one of the five main crops cultivated world-wide. There’s been nearly a fifty per cent drop in American output this year, due to the weather conditions there. Another important crop seriously restricted is soy (soya or soybeans) almost as vital as corn, with a one-third fall in production in the US.
Needless to say all this has had a severe knock-on effect on food prices worldwide, with many of the world’s poorest people bearing the brunt of the increases. According to the United Nations, world food prices experienced a six per cent rise overall in July this year. A huge amount for just one month.
Brazil has managed to redress the shortages to a considerable extent, without such severe weather conditions as the US and its own exports boosted by increased demand from countries such as China. Evidence of this points to the fact (according to the International Grains Council at least) that Brazil will overtake the USA as the world’s biggest soy producer this year.
Corn (maize) producers in Brazil are also seeing record growth in sales as they strive to fill the gap caused by widespread ruined harvests in their northern competitor. A significant feature is that this year, for the first time ever, the USA is actually importing corn from Brazil.
All this increased activity in Brazilian agriculture is of course due to the misfortunes of the North Americans, a situation that is regrettable for them. However, it is certainly good news for the southern hemisphere BRICS nation. According to Luiz Antonio Pinazza, the President of Brazil’s ‘Sectoral Chamber of Agricultural Inputs (‘CSIA’); “The US situation has created an atmosphere of euphoria in our own countryside”. However, so far the main beneficiaries of the boost seem to be the large food producers in Brazil with working class and middle class consumers much less enthusiastic over rising prices.
None the less, as regards providing opportunities for domestic or foreign short term investment or long term investment in Brazilian agriculture, the present situation is an attractive one. In the long term the private and public sectors both say that the benefits will ‘trickle down’ to everyone. In any event the view is that the general market economy in Brazil will benefit.
This is especially remarkable when one looks at the Government’s recent easing of restrictions in developing new agricultural land, especially in the rainforest areas. This is a controversial measure, to be sure, but one that President Dilma Rousseff and her government say is economically necessary. Environmentalists and conservationists don’t agree and say that the steps are actually not needed. The investment community in Brazil and well a Investment News websites tend not to sympathise with them and general investment in Brazil continues to grow year after year and with the upcoming Fifa World Cup in 2014 and the Rio Olympics in 2014 there has never been a better time to invest in Brazil and turn a modest profit.
November 10, 2016 / como / 0 Comments
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a great way for farmers and consumers to connect. The demand for fresh local food is growing steadily; there’s never been a better time to start market gardening. Learn how to start your own CSA and grow an income from your garden.
What is Community Supported Agriculture?
In the CSA model, customers support the farmer by buying a share of vegetables from her market garden. Customers often pay in advance for the season; this early cash flow provides start up capital for the farmer to buy seeds and supplies. In this model the CSA farmer can launch a market garden with little capital of her own.
What is the benefit to the consumer?
Customers of the CSA benefit by receiving a weekly share of fresh, natural food, often delivered right to their door. They also benefit from the knowledge they are supporting local food and local farmers, and reducing the ‘food miles’ that most produce travels before it reaches the consumer. Finally, the consumer is connecting back to the real source of all food, the soil. Many CSA customers feel a sense of ownership as they support their farm.
How to get started in Community Supported Agriculture
Step one is to set some goals for your CSA garden. How much money do you expect to make from your garden? Do you expect to make a part time income, or will your CSA be your main source of income for the season?
Once you have set an income target, you need to determine a price for your CSA shares, and the number of customers you will need to reach your target. For example, if you plan to make $10,000 from your garden, and you think that $500 per share is a fair price for your produce, then you will need to find 20 customers to meet your income goal. You can determine a price per share by surveying other CSA farms in your area, and comparing their offerings and prices. You can also estimate fair price by determining how much of each vegetable you plan to include in the share, and researching to find out an average price for each one.
Finding customers for your Community Supported Agriculture market garden
The first step in marketing your garden is to reach out to your warm market. Talk to your friends, family, co-workers, golf buddies, car poolers, in short everybody, and tell them you will be growing delicious, fresh vegetables in limited quantities, and if they hurry they can get on the list to get some. If they are interested, sign them up and accept a payment to help finance your garden.
If your warm market can’t fulfill your target for customers, then you have to find another source. Mail out flyers are a good way to target a specific area to find more customers. Find a neighborhood within your delivery distance, and send each home a flyer describing your garden and the benefits of your CSA program. If you write a good, compelling flyer, you can expect to receive about a 1% response rate. In other words, if you send out 1,000 flyers you will net about 10 customers. Repeat the mailing in other close neighborhoods until you reach your target.
Planning your Community Supported Agriculture market garden
Once you have confirmed how many customers you have, you now need to plan and schedule your garden to grow the vegetables for them. One of the big advantages of Community Supported Agriculture is that you know exactly how many customers you have, and therefore you can plan your market garden to be quite efficient. You will need to know your last spring frost date and your first fall frost date to plan your growing schedule. You also need to know how long each vegetable takes to mature, how much it yields, and how often you need to replant to keep a continuous harvest coming.
For example, if you have 20 customers, and each customer expects to receive one head of lettuce per week, then you know you need to harvest at least that many lettuces each week. If lettuce takes 50 days to grow to maturity, and needs one square foot of space to grow, you can figure out when to start the plants, and how much space in total you will need. You carry out this calculation for each crop you plan to grow.
Growing your Community Supported Agriculture market garden
A successful market garden requires regular attention to survive and thrive. You need to take all reasonable effort to grow and protect your crops; your customers are counting on you to bring them fresh vegetables each week. You should plant more than one variety of each vegetable, and make multiple plantings at short intervals to protect against crop failure. Grow disease resistant varieties whenever possible. Raised beds can protect against heavy rains and flooding, and drip irrigation will protect against drought. Floating row cover will provide a physical barrier against insects, and will protect young plants from cold and wind.
Starting a Community Supported Agriculture market garden is a great business you can start for very little cash. If you are successful you can grow from a part-time to a very good full time income with CSA.
November 9, 2016 / como / 0 Comments
It’s my second year taking part during a community supported agriculture program, and I am hooked!
Last year, I loved my CSA therefore abundant that I joined 2 this year! I’m splitting them with an admirer I apprehend who was additionally interested, and I’m glad I did, as a result of although I like vegetables, I am practically overwhelmed right currently, even once dividing each of my shares in half!
I’ve been interested in the CSA concept for years. It appears like such an amazingly commonsense, nonetheless innovative idea. You get fresh, healthy, domestically grown (and typically organic) foods, typically at a lower price than what you’d notice at the supermarket. The farmer gets a designed-in market, and typically they get paid at the start of the season, after they want it most. And you’re serving to out the surroundings by eating locally grown rather than having foods shipped in from different areas (or even other countries), plus supporting tiny farms that tend to control more sustainably and take better care of the soil & water they use.
The problem was, I did not understand how to search out a CSA, or if there even were any in my area. I searched online some times many years ago, however didn’t have abundant luck. But in the few years since then, the farming community has embraced the use of the web, and many farms currently have their own websites, that makes it abundant easier to seek out participating programs. There are a minimum of five or six CSAs that deliver regionally to my hometown now, and many others in outlying areas in the vicinity.
I’ve told several friends regarding it, and for the general public, the community supported agriculture concept sadly appears to be a well-kept secret.
For those that are unfamiliar with the thought, it is somewhat sort of a co-op. People subscribe by buying a “share” of a given farm’s (or group of farms) harvest for the year. Sometimes this can be done before the start of the season, thus you create a one-time payment, and then collect your shares weekly or monthly throughout the harvest season.
Historically the concept has been largely used with vegetables. However, there are all kinds of CSAs cropping up these days, from vegetables & fruits, to dairy and even meats. Here in Ohio, where the growing season is not that long, I subscribe to a vegetable CSA within the summer, and a meat CSA (with one among the same farms) in the winter months, thus at least I apprehend I’m eating locally in part throughout the year.
One among the farms I’m subscribed to is organic. The other has mostly naturally grown produce, aside from the fruit. One share I choose up at a local farmer’s market. The other is delivered right to my office!
Right currently I’m overwhelmed with the summer’s bounty. My refrigerator is stuffed to overflowing with amazing, recent vegetables (and my freezer still contains some organic meats from the winter share). It’s been years since I lived on a farm, and with all the years of looking at supermarkets and just choosing up whatever I felt like, I had forgotten what a bounty the summer really brings…. It makes me feel thus abundant a lot of connected to my atmosphere to solely be eating things that are in season. It also forces me to cook more creatively!
These days, in my fridge I’ve got turnips, turnip greens, sweet corn, inexperienced beans, red cabbage, white cabbage, red onions, white onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, green peppers, 3 quite hot peppers, eggplant, summer squash, patty-pan squash, zucchini, broccoli, cantaloupe, and honeydew melon…and pasture-raised eggs that are included from one amongst the farms. And all of it is organic or naturally grown, and was picked among the last 2 days.
November 6, 2016 / como / 0 Comments
Laos is one of the poorest countries in all of Southeast Asia with a great percentage of its people in poverty. It’s wedged in between two vastly larger and vastly more successful countries, leaving it in the dust in terms of economical growth and prosperity of its people. Laos has been fighting and gaining political independence, breaking free from its French Protectorate roots in 1949. Its civil war also brought it political freedom from communism in 1975. Laos is probably most familiar to Americans due to its role in the Vietnam War.
Laos is and always has been heavily dependent on its neighbors. Cities continue to grow due to trade but one of the biggest issues plaguing the country is its lack of infrastructure, a major weakness. There are hardly any railways to allow for the transportation of goods and, even though the major roadways have gotten paved in the past few years, most of the country is still only accessible through unpaved roadways. Communication also poses a problem as most of the area, outside of the major urban development, is inaccessible even to electricity, a weakness both to visitors and its citizens.
One of the major sources of pride to Laos is the Lao Brewery. There are 3 types of beer produced, all varying shades of the name Beerlao. Beerlao has actually grown in popularity across the globe and at the moment has 12 countries of export. This list is increasing and the effects are also helping to increase the country’s economy as a whole. Most of the GDP is still in the form of subsistence agriculture, equating for more than half and also provides 80% of the employment in the country. The government has been utilizing reforms and developing things such as International Rice Research Institute, one of the great strengths.
The Laos economy also receives aid from such sources as ICF, ADB, and other such international institutions. There have also been an increasing number of foreign investments to help grow Laos’ society and industry. Tourism is actually the fastest growing industry but on the flip side of what Laos has to offer, its smartest people are being taken away. In 2000 alone, they suffered a skilled emigration rate of 37.4% which has been a weakness to the industries. While Laos is considered a poor country with many citizens in poverty, it is high in valuable substances and commodities like rice, a key strength of the country. The country and foreign investors are working to help to grow Laos into a thriving nation. It you want to experience something truly amazing then Laos would be for you.