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The Agrarian's Alcove Celebrates: Earth Day

Good morning Agrarians!! Happy Earth Day ! Hopefully you are out celebrating with fun Earth Day crafts and free activities! I always loved Earth Day activities as a kid. So when I started hearing about the activities this year, I wondered how this all got started. It’s a huge event that happens each year, and is celebrated in more than 190 countries! More than one billion people celebrate Earth Day. If we go back to the very first Earth Day, in April 1970 we see lots of protesters with their signs held high. The 70’s were a time of great protests. If you look at pictures of the first earth day, you will see children wearing shirts that say “Let me grow up!”, large handmade signs with snappy slogans, and people doing generally weird things...like walking around in gas masks. So obviously this was a classic grassroots protest. If you think our world is dirty now, you should have seen it before Earth Day. Rivers were LITERALLY catching fire when someone tossed a cigarette into them...
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Ag in the Time of Pandemic: Cutting our Losses

The recent turn of events in our world has frightened many people. The economy is plummeting. The rate of unemployment increases daily, and along with these employment concerns, many have been concerned at some point about the supply in our American grocery stores. Our world has been tested time and time again with pandemics causing major pandemonium. Agriculture has withstood the trials of these viruses, and will continue to do so this time around. Farmers will continue to work and provide for the world. So just how does agriculture function during the time of pandemic? We will take a look at this in a series called Ag in the Time of Pandemic. This is the first post of the series- Cutting our Losses. One of the most frustrating things that we have heard about in the agriculture industry throughout this time is the amount of waste that has occurred. Of course, we’ve always been conscious that America produces some of the largest amounts of food waste in the world. You can read about th...
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Lab to Table: Meat Without the Farm

Thanks to the great responses I got from my poll, this week’s post is on none other than lab grown meat! First, we’ll discuss why lab grown meat was even a thought. Then, we’ll discuss a little about how it works. And finally, we’ll discuss what it could mean for our future. Ready to dig in? We all know PETA is against the animal agriculture industry as well as literally any other industry that has anything to do with animals. It isn’t a surprise that they offered a reward for the first person to develop lab grown (sometimes called cultured) meat and market it successfully. This is a project that has been in the making for several years. By 2012 more than 30 research teams worldwide were trying to make it happen. PETA wanted to be able to prevent animal “cruelty” by removing the animal entirely (although...this would require stem cells from animals, and lab tests so I’m not really sure what they were thinking.) Others saw test-tube meat as a means to satisfy the food source for a...
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The Agrarians Visit New Orleans

*this is not a sponsored post. all content is original* If you follow The Agrarian’s Alcove on Facebook you know that we recently visited New Orleans! Let me assure you: coming from Texas, you can just tell when you cross the state line. It’s an amazing change. The entire atmosphere is different. If you’ve ever been to Louisiana you probably know that New Orleans is known for the mansions in the Garden District, the amazing above ground cemeteries, and the old plantations. We didn’t get to take a tour of the plantations this time since the tours were between 5 and 8 hours long, and our short trip just didn’t allow for that. But we did have a lot of fun and learned tons!! When we first got into Louisiana we saw lots of fields with standing water. Sticking out above the water were these little orange things, and several blades of stuff that looks like grass. In doing further research, these fields were rice fields. Not just any rice fields, though. The orange things sticking out...
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GMOs Today

I have had some people ask me about GMO’s, and to clarify some things. I have written a post about being #ProGMO and about the Non-GMO Project , but they’re from when I was first getting the blog started, and I feel like I can do better. So in researching more, I have found about a million articles on how GMO’s are bad… but guess what? All of the articles are from 2010-2015. It’s 2018 yall!!! They clearly have no new cases to make. If you go through the articles they often mention studies that are vague or seemingly biased; that say more research needs to be done, and other things that are ambiguous. I will say, I was actually impressed with this WebMD article . It was on point, unbiased, and told you to make your own decisions. So let’s take a look at what others have to say. The Natural Society website had some awful, awful things to say about GMO’s. They claim that GMO’s are linked to more than 22 diseases. The study they use is from the Journal of Organic Systems. While ...
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The Agrarian’s Alcove Celebrates: Women’s History Month

Last month we celebrated Black History month here at the Alcove, and this month we are celebrating Women’s History in agriculture! So I was thinking about who the most influential women in the ag industry are, and in my opinion Temple Grandin is at the top of the list. You could say I’m biased since I’m an animal science major and she works directly with animal ag, but she’s still my favorite. Anyways, since I’ve already done two posts about Temple Grandin and her work, I figured I needed to focus on some other women. If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you know how I feel about GMOs. If you’re new, read this post. So, you can understand why I’m a huge fan of Alison Van Eenennaam and her assistant’s research on GMOs. Together, these women conducted a study that involved reviewing 29 years of livestock health and productivity data. They studied groups livestock both being fed genetically engineered livestock feed, and being fed regular feed. Their study found that GE feed...
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The Truth About Uncured Meats

When you’re at the grocery store, do you ever feel like all you see is greenwashed logos and brands? It’s hard to find anything that’s not “all natural” or non-GMO. We’ve talked about labels before, and how they can be misleading. For example, meat is always gluten free, but now tons of meat products have a gluten-free label on them. Some consumers likely don’t realize that all meat has always been gluten free, and they pay extra for that little banner. One of the most misleading labels-in my opinion at least-is the “uncured” label on processed meats. What do you think of when you see that label on your lunch meat or bacon? I assume  most people, when they see this label, think Oh, there’s not as many chemicals! It’s gotta be better. More natural. Maybe even healthier! The good news is, I was really impressed with how accurate the first few Google results were when I looked up the differences between uncured and cured bacon. I saw only a few statements that uncured bacon ...
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