farmer
dr. dolittle | September 16, 2015 Image of a corn earworm by Sarah from Statesboro GA, USA (Corn Earworm on corn ear) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
New research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that bats are important nocturnal predators of insects that would otherwise attack crops. In addition, bats help to protect crops from fungal infections brought on by pests and are important pollinators. According to the new research, the pest-control services provided by bats for corn crops alone is worth about 1 billion dollars on a global…
tsmith | February 7, 2013I didn't grow up on a farm, but my dad did. He was the youngest of 13 kids, several of them who grew up to own farms of their own. As a kid, my family had almost an acre in the country, but the only animals we kept on it were stray cats and the occasional opossum (the latter, not on purpose). Still, the school I attended was definitely in a rural, farming community, and I frequently spent time at my Grandma's farm. She'd downsized since her kids were young and working the farm, but even when I was a kid and she was in her early 80s, she still kept chickens for eggs, cows for milk and meat,…