Yeo Valley Organic sponsors the Soil Association Organic Food Festival it is the Europe’s largest celebration of all things organic and kicks off this year’s Soil Association Organic Fortnight, this is a nationwide campaign bringing together communities, retailers, restaurants, organic farms and schools.
The festival is now in its eight year and the event will take place in Bristol on September 6 and 7, 2009 and it will be host to over 300 organic companies, showcasing the very best organic food, drink, skincare, and home ware products.

People who will visit will be spoilt for choice with food markets, green plane pavilion, kitchen demonstration, food cruises around harbor, and an arts and entertainment fringe. The festival will open with the Matthew sailing towards the Amphitheatre and new to the festival are the Local Market in Anchor Square, Grow Your Own Organic Garden area, Organic Live!, areas including cookery demos and wine tasting and the food for life Partnership Cooking Bus in the Kid’s zone.

The Soil Association Organic Food Festival is greener than ever with the introduction of sustainably source biofuel to power the festival generators, and an emphasis on travelling to the festival by train, bus and ferry. To encourage people to come by train, the Soil Association, in partnership with First Travel, offering a 2 for 1 offer on festival tickets on presentation of proof of using First Travel transport.

The month of August is a good time to start raising some of your own fruits and vegetables, because it is easy to dig due to all the rain which also helps plants take off and flourish.  August 24 Sunday the annual Organic Garden Tour in Sierra Vista it will be held at two backyard gardens on Choctaw off Highway 92 from 10am to 2pm.  New grower, Jim Woodruff will show his concrete block raised veggie beds, fruit trees watered by harvested rainwater,   berries, grapes, onion and garlic.  Elly and Bill Stavark’s 13 year old multiple raised bed backyard garden where they grow vegetables year round and make great compost.

The Bisbee Farmers Market, Compost Queen, Marcia Gibbons, will be sharing wealth of experience making compost.  She will have compost samples at various stages as well as information on composting systems.  This is on Saturday August 16 and on August 17 Sunday the Bisbee Community Gardens Group will have its first annual Organic Garden Tour, including several gardens in the Warren district.  There will be demonstrations of rain water harvesting, composting, solar cooking and solar drying.

Jane Wyatt of San Simon Chile Company will return with her green chiles and chile roaster to the Sierra Vista Farmers Market beginning on August 14.  On August 23 from 8 am to 1pm celebrate chile seaon at the annual Chile Festival at the Bisbee Farmers Market.  Jane will bring two large roasters and a trailer loaded with sacks of her green chiles and jalapenos as well as red chile pods.

Organic Alliance announced that it has agreed to implement the GS1 System to track its produce in order to improve traceability and consumer safety.  The GS1 System can play a vital role in product recalls, it enables product traceability and GS1 standards make traceability system possible on a global scale across the supply chain.  The GS1 System enables global tracing and accountability of organic produce pinpointing the farm.  GS1 is a global organization with an integrated system of standards that provides accurate identification of products and location through the use of standards, barcodes and electronic product code/radio frequency identification tag.

Tom Morrison said the chief executive officer of Organic Alliance, Inc. that “Utilizing the GS1 System, we have the ability to not only track our produce back to the farm of origin, but all the way down to the actual row on which it was grown.  The rapid growth of the organic industry makes an effective tracking system on the produce a necessity and we are pleased to take this leadership role through our initial agreement with GS1.”

Organic Alliance will only source top quality; safe tested and certified organic produce, prior to customer shipments, utilizing USDA certification in conjunction with the in house OAI Quality Team.  The Organic Alliance plans is to be one of the world’s leading providers of USDA certified organic crops to many of the country’s leading consumer package goods manufacturers, grocery, retail restaurant and food processors.

It is all natural fertilizer and environmental friendly for organic growers.  Converted Organic Inc. (NASDAQ:COIN) has receive certification from the Washington State Department of Agriculture’s (WSDA) Organic Food Program for its Pacific Choice(TM) Hydrolyzed Fish fertilizer use for organic agriculture.  Converted Organics developed the product in partnership with Pacific Choice Seafood it is a Pacific Seafood Group company.

Pacific Choice(TM) Hydrolyzed Fish is an all natural fertilizer whose nutrients is from the by-product of oceangoing fish and stabilized with phosphoric acid.  Converted Organic is very pleased that they receive the WSDA’s organic certification for their Pacific Choice(TM) Hydrolyzed Fish.  The product has been specially formulated to provide organic growers with a high quality, natural liquid fish fertilizer, suitable on variety of crops.

The Converted Organics (NASDAQ:COIN) is based in Boston, MA, is dedicated to producing valuable all natural organic soil amendment or fertilizer products through food waste recycling.  The company plans to sell and distribute its fertilizer products in agribusiness markets, turf management, and in the retail.  The Converted Organics uses state-of-the-art technologies to create a product that helps grow healthier food and improve the environment.  The company’s product have been tested in numerous trials for more than a dozen crops, the result is on average, the net value of the farmer’s crop increased to 11% to 16% depending on the particular crop.  Increased use of nitrogen in commercial agriculture turf grass applications has lower the soil’s ability to absorb nitrogen and other nutrient, by using the products produced by Converted Organics helps restore the soil.  It reduces the amount of nitrogen required in a virtuous cycle that benefits from long term use.  Converted Organics’ fertilizer products will be produced in both a dry pellet and liquid concentrate.

China is going for organic food product.
A farm called Fruit Garden, Fragrant Pig an organic farm about 15 miles south of the city of Chengdu, and in China’s southern part of Sichuan province. Lou Yu is a 37 year old and owner of Fruit Garden, Fragrant Pig farm, he used to be a stockbroker earning several thousand U.S. dollars a month. When he heard about organic farming from Taiwanese friends and was intrigued by reading some books about organic farming. He spent six months driving around China, looking at conventional farms.
Luo is running his own organic farm with fruit trees, vegetables and pigs. In his farm you see plastic bottles hanging of peach and plum trees, they each have hole cut out and filled with sugar water to attract and trap bugs and insect. He expects to lose one third of his crops to bugs and another third to birds, leaving him just one third for him to sell Luo said. Luo also said that “Those bugs have the right to stay here. They are part of the food chain. If we kill them, then there will be no birds of the farm.” “Eventually, there will be only human beings on the planet and it will be a silent spring.”

Luo’s parents were surprised when he told them that he was leaving the job and going “back to the land” his parents said he was “crazy” and “going back to ancient time,” but Luo sees it differently. The economics of organic food in China don’t work in Luo Yu’s favor, there is the lower yield and in the market, organic food costs two to three times more than a conventional food which is hard to sell. Luo has about 50 buyers for his weekly market baskets. Luo used to make most of his money serving organic lunches to visitors. After the May earthquake his business plummeted and same with the restaurant who buys organic food from him. He sells about 10 percent of what he used to sell to them and even before the earthquake. Luo Yu managed to stay afloat with the help of some local investors. Luo is still committed to bring more farmers into organic and promoting organic food to the public.