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Agriculture

Maintenance of Drip Irrigation Systems

Agricultural practices have refined in last few years. People have broader idea about getting fruitful results out of their investment on the lands. One can ensure effective growth of plant only if the plant or whole plantation is administered with good irrigation facilities. These facilities can be helpful in providing useful gains for the farmers. By far technological advancements have gathered minds of farmers to render useful ideas into planned actions. These technological advancements can be adjudged with useful application in day-to-day life.

Importance of irrigation system

Irrigation plays a vital role in the modern day agriculture. The root tips are in search of water when they travel down inside the ground. These can be ably supported by irrigation administered by the cultivators. The irrigation methods are of varied types that are available for cultivators. Starting from drip irrigation to center pivot irrigation. Some of irrigation methods take care of all the necessary topological features that prevail in particular land. The contour of surface changes from place to place. It is quite evident that it can affect watering scheme adopted by the farmers. But this would be justified by the amount of water needed. Some crops would need large supply of water to be supplied to root tips.

Irrigation facilities promised by drip irrigation

Drip irrigation is one of the popular methods adopted by the farmers all over the world. This method could bestow useful irrigation to the crops that are planted. Drip irrigation is preferred in the gardens. The gardens that are small can be well sheltered under effective watering through drip irrigation scheme. Also some watering scheme require some additional components such as tubing that can add to the cost of establishment of watering facility. This can be cashing for the farmers initially but with effective maintenance it can fetch huge profits on long run. Drip irrigation also ensures correct level of moisture that is to be maintained around the root tips. Any variation in this can cause adverse effects on the plant.

Drip irrigations systems – Components

Drip irrigation involves use of valuable wit to design the overall plan of the system. The system includes tubing and piping needs to be satisfied before going for commissioning of irrigation system. There are several components that form integral part of drip irrigation systems. Also one needs to ensure proper design of irrigation systems can be employed to facilitate moisture monitoring. The shoot system of the plant needs supply of water and other nutrients through root. The watering of plants at optimum level ensures proper supply of nourishments for the development of crop into sizeable yielding. Special simulation software is available to map all the essential failure nodes that can lead to drastic changes in the irrigation channel. Hence it is advisable to use that software to clear out all the loopholes present in irrigation channel.

Effective maintenance of irrigation systems

Maintenance of irrigation system largely depends on the design of irrigation system. The maintenance of the drip irrigation system involves series of actions that can ensure proper working of overall system. Subsurface drip watering schemes are widely used by the farmers pertaining to different parts of world to irrigate the lawns. These can be effectively monitored for pressure inside the channel. This pressure if not checked periodically can institute massive technical failures for the entire irrigation system. People can seek expert advice to have proper maintenance. The tubing can be checked for correctness periodically to eliminate water leakage. The inlet and outlet nozzle can be cleared off from dust and mud in order to have proper entry and exit of water inside the whole watering system.

Water in Agriculture

Research shows almost %70 of all water consumption consists of watering. In our country, %75 of yearly usable 110 billions cubic meters of water is used in agriculture. The coming years will lead to more consumption with greater needs to feed the growing population.

Korea Boseong Greentea Garden

The ignorant and primitive watering not only wastes water but also damages the soil. Drip irrigation prevents both unnecessary use of water and soil damage while providing the plants with just enough water.

Natural Enemy of Salt

Watering done in random intervals in hot climates with little rain to improve the production, leave the salt in the field. It will also raise the sub surface water levels and the salt they contain. When the waters vaporise through the intense heat, leaves the salt in the soil. Salt prevents efficient production. Even good quality water leaves 1.1 tonnes of salt in 10 acres of land in such conditions.

Bloxorz – Best 3D Cubic Puzzle Game

[click to continue…]

Buying a Home with a USDA Home Loan

The United States Department of Agriculture is home to a little known mortgage program that’s actually quite large. Along with VA loans, USDA mortgages are the only zero down mortgage product on the market today. Homebuyers can finance rural property and even small farms with some of the USDA’s mortgage programs.

Types of USDA Loans

Loan Guarantee Programm – Section 502 This program functions similarly to FHA loans; the lender makes a loan, not the USDA itself, however the USDA guarantess the to pay the lender the full amount should the borrower default. This program is attractive because it does not require a down payment.

Mutual Self-Help Program – Section 523 This loan program enables borrowers to buy a fixer-upper or personally build a new home and use their own labor to build some “sweat equity.” Homeowner’s must commit to doing 65% of construction or repair work on their own.

Home Repair Loan and Grant Program – Section 504 This refinance program helps low income homeowners obtain a USDA refinance and borrow to fix major issues such as a leaking roof or foundation crack. Generally this program is coupled with a grant that makes the interst very low–sometimes as little as 1%.

Qualifying for a USDA Loan

USDA Loans are made to families with incomes below 80% of the median in their area. This is specifically meant to help lower income borrowers that could not afford a conventional mortgages. Also, USDA loans must be issued in “rural” areas. Rural is defind as areas with 20,000 residents or less and is loosely enough interpretted that many suburbs of large cities can qualify.

To learn more about the USDA Rural Mortgage Program visit their site today.

Improving the Soil – Ventilation,Processability,Color and Water Holding Capacity

Ventilation: Ventilating the soil not only improves drainage but also makes roots and underground organisms breathe. Ventilation can be achieved with most of the methods that improve drainage.

Processability: Heavily clayed soil is hard to work on. To improve this, drainage methods can be used together with adding organic materials that the soil lacks.

Color: Color of soil will change depending on for how long it’s been worked on. While the color of soil depends on the kind of rock it originated from, the amount of organic matter also has an effect. It can be said that the dark colored soil has been used in agriculture for centuries. Dark colored soil absorbs the heat faster and it will lose it slowly. This means they start getting warmer earlier in Spring. As such, improvement of color means darkening it. In old days, this was done by adding ventilated ash to soil, but nowadays we use organic mixtures.

Water Holding Capacity: Soil with too much sand in it has too good drainage, water disappears before the roots can absorb it. To improve water holding capacity of soil, as much organic matter as possible must be added. This will improve the situation and let the roots absorb water when the moisture is low.

How to Grow Vegetables at Your Apartment

One of our readers asked for adding his review about Growing Boxes to Agriculture Guide, his words : Recently my wife and I moved closer to the family in the city. We’ve both worked on farms our entire life but at our age it’s just getting too hard to maintain that style of life. Being a country boy that I am deep down inside ever since we moved into our new apartment the hardest adjustment has been the lack of garden. We’d spend hours in our old one with our lush greens, vibrant flowers and just the orchards of tree’s we used to own but that wasn’t the case anymore. [click to continue…]

Importance of Organic Farming in Terms of Food Safety – Featured Article by Agriculture Guide

Food safety is defined as taking precautions and complying with necessary rules during production, processing, storage and delivering stage of food in order to provide healthy and precise food production.

Sufficient food supply or food safety has been a strategic issue in history of humankind. In view of rapidly increasing world population, environmental pollution has become a serious threat for human health as a result of the use of developing technology and of policies providing for the intensive input use for the supply of food necessities.

In addition to these developments, economic troubles and inadequate education in less developed and developing countries have increased the feeding problem of rapidly increasing population; made it hard to supply food; increasedthe number of the establishments producing unhealthy and low quality food; and allowed them to make unfair competition with the ones producing safe food. As a result, health of the society, food industry and the production of high quality and safe food have been affected negatively.

Production of healthy and high quality raw material

Production of healthy and high quality raw material should be seen as a prerequisite for food safety. Safe food should be produced in establishments under minimum health, hygiene and technical conditions.

Physical, biologic and chemical dangers have great importance for food safety. Physical dangers are all kinds of foreign materials (stone,sand,metal,wood,etc.) which are not desired to be included within the food. They affect the demand of consumers and cause health problems. Bacteria, fungi, viruses and parasites are serious biologic dangers regarding food safety. Chemical dangers for food can be listed as natural toxic materials (mytotoxins and sea oriented toxins), environment oriented toxins (ex. Hg, Pb, Cadmium, dioxins) and chemicals naturally found in plants (ex. Glycoalkaloids in potato).

In order not to pollute the environment, it is quite important for food safety and environmental hygiene to control and send away the wastes and residues that occur during food production.

In order to increase the production supply for the increasing population in the world, transgenic products are produced by means of modern biotechnology. Different from the other crops grown on nature, transgenic crops have genes which do not belong to their own varieties, raise significant doubts and create risks for animal and human health, for food safety, for biologic diversity and for environmental and socio-economic structure.

Monitor all stages from production to table

The concept of food safety is evaluated with the criteria of “food safety from field to table” in developed coutries. With this in mind, main principles of this criterion, animal health (preventation and control of animal diseases, animal welfare), plant health (pesticide safety), safety of animal feeds, safety of food products and labeling of food are under the control of central authorized food safety authority. In food safety chain, it is important to monitor all stages from production to table.

In every part of the world, especially in EU countries and in other developed countries, the people are more conscious of environment and of the products on market. Consumers prefer safer, healthy and environment friendly food.

Marketing the products whose genetic structure is modified, as a result of dioxin problem that appeared in Europe recently has increased the demand of conscious consumers for organic products whose all production stages are under control and which are away from such concerns. These developments have been effective in the consumption of organic products by environmentalist groups and the people caring their own health.

Organic farming includes production systems which are friendly to environment and livings and which aim to reestablish the natural balance lost as a result of misapplications. To this end, organic farming has been developed as an alternative production system whose all production stages from production to consumption are under control and registered, and which aims for the protection of soil and water resources in all kinds of growing techniques and inputs which are used beginning from the preparation of seedbed.

How to get maximum yield per unit area ?

In development targets where the balance between human and nature is in the forefront, it is aimed to secure sustainability in agriculture avoiding from the factors polluting soil, air and water in agricultural activities. The main aim in organic farming is to get maximum yield per unit area by protecting the productivity of soil and water resources providing the continuity for nature.

Although agriculture is done under organic production conditions in many regions of some countries, the products are not marketed as organic products because the agriculture is not included within control and certification system. Some countries are very advantageous as per organic farming because of its proper ecology and unpolluted natural resources such as soil and water.

Control and certification are among the most important stages of organic farming. In order to introduce the products to domestic and foreign markets as organic products, they sould have an organic product certificate. Certification system is a guarantee for the production, processing and packaging of products as per organic standards. Besides providing reliability for consumers, the system protects the producers and firms against unfair competition.

By means of regulations related with organic farming activities, maximum food safety is provided by disciplining all shareholders inside this system. Moreover, the logos on organic products increase the confidence of consumers for these products.

The increase in organic farming export as a result of the validity of the Organic Farming Law and harmonization with the provisions of current legislation with the European Union directives numbered 2092/91 is an indicator of the confidence of importer countries in the organic products of our country.

Dangerous Weapon Jeopardizing

Because of the commercial concerns and danger of hunger of the rapidply increasing world population in the future, unconscious use of developments in scientific technology, mechanization and industry without taking sufficient precautions for the production of environment and current resources has become a dangerous weapon jeopardizing the human life by damaging the existing critical balances of the world.

So, the aim of organic farming is to introduce and market safe food not threatening the human health by damaging the natural sources and polluting the environment by stopping the harmful pace of humankind.

Drip Irrigation Systems: a Simple, Surprisingly Cheap and Easy Way to Improve the Drainage Of Plants

One of our followers, we say them AgriGuiders, has post an article at his site. He asked for publish it at AG. His article as follows :

Are you looking to find the right solution to help improve the drainage system of your garden?
If the flowers in your back garden are continually suffering from having large amounts of excess ground water blighting your efforts to create the perfect environment for your prized plants, you may be pleasantly surprised to find out that there are in fact several viable options to help eradicate the issue and thereby hopefully get the most out of your garden space.

In my experience in this area, I can generally recommend using drip irrigation systems to tackle the issue and

help control ground water flow – as they offer perhaps the most effective method of managing the problem of plant drainage and can be a lot more reasonably priced than you may perhaps initially think. For example, why not try checking out the range of irrigation systems currently available to buy on the web and see if this can solve your plant drainage difficulties. You may also find that many such systems that can be found online are actually very easy to install and use – indeed much less complex than one may think.

I learnt many useful irrigation methods thanks to Agriculture Guide – you can find comprehensive irrigation systems reviews, and also what they are, where they used, how you can construct them easily etc, – for details you have to look Agriculture Guide’s irrigation systems tutorials and reviews. Especially I strongly advise you to look their drip irrigation page too.
So if you are having real problems with getting unwanted standing water away from your plants why not give some serious consideration to installing a drip irrigation system in your garden today ?

* Thanks to you Agriculture Guide, you let me learn about all those irrigation systems that are suitable for my backyard garden.

Farmers’ Day Marked Amid Problems in Agriculture

Turkish farmers and chambers of agriculture marked World Farmers’ Day by discussing the problems Turkish farmers and agriculture face as well as possible solutions.

Turkey is one of the few countries in the world that is self-sufficient in terms of food. The country’s fertile soil, access to sufficient water, suitable climate and hardworking farmers all make for a successful agricultural sector. Historically, the agricultural sector has been Turkey’s largest employer and a major contributor to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), although its share of the economy has fallen consistently over several decades. According to a sector report issued by UK Trade & Investment — a UK government organization that helps UK companies succeed in international markets — the share of agriculture in Turkey’s GDP has declined from 21 percent to 12 percent since 1983, and the country’s agricultural workforce, as a share of total employment, is also in gradual decline, falling from 35 percent in 2001 to 30 percent in 2007. The president of the Turkish Union of Agricultural Chambers (TZOB), Şemsi Bayraktar, and representatives of chambers of agriculture visited Anıtkabir, Atatürk’s mausoleum, on the occasion of Farmers’ Day.

Signing the official Anıtkabir memorial book at Misak-ı Milli (National Pact) Tower, Bayraktar wrote that chambers of agriculture are aware that being self-sufficient in terms of food has a strategic importance and they will keep producing more.

Stating that the agricultural sector had embraced the unemployed in this atmosphere of crisis, he complained about the lack of attention paid to agriculture in Turkey.

Turkish Agriculture Credit Cooperatives Central Union (TTKKMB) Chairman İlhami Teke said the agriculture sector should meet European Union standards. Stating that the sector should be able to produce with lower costs and higher productivity, he said more importance should be attached to research and development and higher productivity should be attained by utilizing advances in technology, increasing irrigable lands and instituting applied training programs for farmers.

Stating that the significance of agriculture has increased during the current global financial crisis, Bursa Chamber of Agriculture Chairman Fuat Sarı said the population engaged in agriculture had decreased considerably in the last decade. Noting that the agrarian population has declined to 27 percent from 35 percent in 2008, he said these people were forced to migrate to big cities. “Our country is not a very rich one. Unfortunately, we consume some of our money by importing agricultural products. So, the economy comes to a deadlock,” Sarı said.

Agricultural product export increased, while import decreased

In the meantime, Agriculture Minister Mehdi Eker delivered a speech at Parliament yesterday, and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) deputy Muharrem Varlı took the floor on the occasion of Farmers’ Day. Varlı noted that the direct income support provided for farmers had been abolished and the diesel fuel support provided for them does not meet one-third of the taxes charged on diesel fuel. Responding to Varlı, Minister Eker said the support lent to the agriculture sector amounted to TL 1.806 billion and this amount has now increased to TL 5.876 billion. Noting that the yearly income per capita of those engaging in agriculture has increased to $3,188 from $1,000 in 2002, Eker said, “The agricultural product export of Turkey has increased to $11.4 billion, while the agricultural product import has declined to $8.5 billion from $10.7 billion.”

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also issued a message on the occasion of Farmers’ Day. In celebrating Farmers’ Day, he said, everyone — including state institutions — should cooperate and work more effectively to find solutions to the problems of farmers and the Turkish agricultural sector. Stating that World Farmers’ Day is a good opportunity to evaluate how efficiently Turkey is making use of its agricultural potential, Erdoğan said his government had been working to bring permanent solutions to problems that Turkish agriculture experiences, such as infertility in production and the low level of income farmers make.

Organic Cotton Cultivation & Natural Pest Slaying Options

Eco-awareness and an increased demand for safer products continues to spread in the global marketplace, which could very well be why organic cotton is currently enjoying its well-deserved time in the limelight. Whether we slide underneath cozy organic cotton bed sheets, wrap ourselves in a downy-soft organic cotton bath towel or try on a simple organic t-shirt for size, the opportunities that today’s modern consumer has to purchase certified organic products has grown in leaps and bounds. They say that numbers don’t lie, a claim made even more concrete by the fact that global organic cotton sales in the retail market, which hovered at $1.9 billion back in the year 2007, climbed to $3.2 billion just one year later. As mainstream retailers such as Target, Wal-Mart and H&M hop on the organic cotton textile products bandwagon, global efforts to generate certified organic cotton crops will undoubtedly follow suit. [click to continue…]

Overall position of Agricultural Mechanization in Turkey

Agricultural equipment and machinery are the indispensable part of agricultural activities. If these instruments, which are used in various stages of production, are not used properly, there may be some problems. So, how can we use them properly ? As the proverb goes, “It is the want of care that makes the field bare”. They return the money and efforts invested in them if they are maintained well.

Ploughs, which were being used in our country up until recently, resemble those ploughs of the various tribes that [click to continue…]

Conventional Cotton Farming Suffers From Toxic Flaws

For every destructive insect invader, there seems to be an equally motivated buggy defender prepared to rise up and turn the tide in favor of a crop’s survival. One can’t help but wonder why commercial farmers fail to rely exclusively on this built-in system of checks and balances – but then, the obvious comes into focus. Oh right…it all boils down to time and money. Mother Nature tends to take her sweet time restoring the natural order to a crop ecosystem, however, in our fast-paced society where livelihoods are contingent upon absolute guarantees of [click to continue…]

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