Gary Martens photos: supplied

The view from Northern Blossom Farms

A university instructor is turning his nano farm into a living laboratory for sustainable farming systems

I spoke to a number of young farmers recently and learned that they are questioning the business decision that every farmer makes every year: Hold $2 million in assets, invest another $250,000 cash in a crop in order to get $60,000 profit. And that is if everything goes right, which it typically doesn’t. What is


An E. coli bacteria that we don’t mind

A team from the University of Exeter, with support from Shell, has developed a method to make bacteria produce diesel on demand

Most E. coli are harmless or even beneficial, but the bacteria get a bad rap because of toxin-producing strains such as 0157:H7. Scientists at the University of Exeter in England are using E. coli to produce another toxic product, but in this case a good one — diesel fuel. According to the university release, the

Fruit flies fed organic diets are healthier

Fruit flies raised on diets based on organic foods performed better on a variety of health tests, including fertility and longevity

Researchers aren’t sure why, but fruit flies fed organic fruits and vegetables in a laboratory study lived longer and produced more offspring than flies fed a non-organic diet. The study from the lab of SMU biologist Johannes H. Bauer, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, found that fruit flies raised on diets of organic foods performed better


Caffeine gives bees a buzz that improves their memory

Scientists have shown that caffeine improves a honeybee’s memory and that helps the plant recruit more bees to spread its pollen. Publishing in Science the researchers show that in tests, honeybees feeding on a sugar solution containing caffeine, which occurs naturally in the nectar of coffee and citrus flowers, were three times more likely to

A sausage a day is too many, says Swiss study

A study by the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Zurich says that more than 40 grams (1.4 ounces) of processed meat is hazardous to your health. “We estimate that three per cent of all premature deaths can be attributed to the high consumption of processed meat,” says Sabine Rohrmann in


Teeth show origin of European farmers

Farmers, look after your teeth. Someone in a few thousand years might be checking them out. That’s what archeologists have been doing to learn more about how farming spread to Stone Age Europe, setting the stage for the rise of western civilization. “One of the big questions in European archeology has been whether farming was

Can’t live with them, or without them

A U.S. animal rights group hopes to save a herd of genetically modified pigs from early deaths after funding dried up for a Canadian research project that has stoked controversy about altering animal genes to produce food. Possible euthanization of the nine so-called Enviropigs, descendants of swine first bred 13 years ago by the University


Study suggests red meat cheers you up

Amidst a bevy of studies surgesting red meat consumption is bad for your body, Australian researchers say not eating enough of it is linked to depression and anxiety. Associate Professor Felice Jacka and colleagues from Deakin University’s Barwon Psychiatric Research Unit have studied the relationship between the consumption of beef and lamb and the presence

Shoppers Rate Products By IPhone

Take your iPhone into a supermarket and go up to a product on the shelf. Hold the iPhone next to the bar code on the package and take a picture. Within seconds, a colour – green, yellow or red – comes up on the screen, along with a single-digit number. The colour tells you how