In contrast, organic farming restores and builds up the soil, increasing its organic content, which in turn increases its water-sustaining ability. The rich, moist rearth results in stronger plants, which improve the soil even more. Far less water runs off organic fields, and what does is not polluted with pesticides or synthetic fertilizers.
Seeds: Uses untreated seeds, never GMO seeds
Soil and Water: Builds strong soil through crop rotation. Retains water more efficiently thanks to increased organic matter in soil.
Harvesting: Relies mostly on the seasonal freeze for defoliation. May stimulate defoliation through water management.
Weeds: Weeds are physically removed, rather than chemical destruction. Hand-hoeing and cultivation control weeds.
Pest Control: Maintains a balance between pests and other natural predators through healthy soil. Uses good bugs, biological and cultural practices to control pests. May use trap crops such as alfalfa, planted around the cotton to lure insects way from the cotton
TRADITIONAL:
On may traditional cotton farms, because of the depletion of nutrients and pesticides, the soil is most often sterile, meaning that the farms rely on additives, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, plus vast quantities of water to keep growing.
Seeds: 70% of seeds used are GMO – “Genetically modified organism” seeds. Typically treated with fungicides or insecticides
Soil and Water: Applies synthetic fibers. Loss of soil due to predominantly same-croprepetition. Requires intensive irrigation
Harvesting: Defoliates with toxic chemicals.
Weeds: Applies herbicides to inhibit weeds. Repeated herbicides to kill weeds that appear.
Pest Control: Uses insecticides heavily. Uses pesticides – the 9 most common are highly toxic; five are probable carcinogens. Frequently uses aerial spraying, with potential drift onto workers, communities and wildlife.
Corn Plastic from America's Heartland
Corn Plastic Products - Made from 100% U.S. CornPlastic Until now, plastic products had been manufactured utilizing a petroleum based material. Amid soaring oil prices, disruptive supplies, and increased petroleum demand, Our Corporate Gear Company factory is utilizing all natural plastic, that not only helps relieve U.S. dependence on foreign energy, but is based on a renewable U.S. agricultural product...CORN PLASTIC!
The Broom Man
Corporate Gear Company Helps The Broom Man Clean Up!
Published Saturday | December 8, 2007 Goodfellows: Making a warmer holiday for 'broom man' BY MATTHEW HANSEN OMAHA WORLD-HERALD
The Rev. Livingston Wills, 90, has sold brooms on Omaha's streets for decades, but poor health has cut his workload and put him in a financial pinch.
A man named Jeff drove across Omaha Thursday, listening to nonstop radio coverage of the Westroads Mall shootings as he slid over the icy roads. He stopped at the home of Tegory Criswell, grandson and caretaker of the Rev. Livingston Wills, known to generations of Omahans simply as the "Broom Man."
The 90-year-old Wills has fallen on hard times. He still travels around the city hawking brooms, but he doesn't sell as many as he used to. His health and memory are failing. He's having trouble paying his electricity bills.
Jeff and dozens of others like him decided to do something about that.
Here's what Jeff did: He handed the Broom Man's grandson an envelope that a former state senator had asked Jeff to deliver. Inside was $1,000 in $20 bills.
This is for your grandpa, he said.
"He came all that way in the snow," Criswell said Friday. "Sometimes you just don't realize just how beautiful people really are until something like this happens."
________________________________________ Buy a broom? The gift shops inside the Union Pacific headquarters at 1416 Dodge St. and ConAgra headquarters at One ConAgra Drive will be selling the Rev. Livingston Wills' brooms through the holidays, said Dennis Houston, whose Corporate Gear Company operates both gift shops. The full-size brooms are $12. Whisk brooms are $7. All proceeds will be donated back to Wills. ________________________________________
What has happened since a short article about the blind broom salesman appeared in The World-Herald is an outpouring of support, most of it directed through the newspaper's Goodfellows charity.
Goodfellows is raising money for its year-round emergency assistance program and its holiday food program through the end of the year.
Dennis Houston wrote Wills a check for 48 brooms, more than he usually sells in a month. Houston is now selling those brooms in the gift shops his company operates inside the Union Pacific and ConAgra headquarters.
All proceeds go to the Broom Man, and Houston says he'll buy more brooms when his first four dozen run out.
"I told Reverend Wills that this is the new deal. He can sit on his couch now, and we'll come to him," Houston joked. "It sure beats walking around town."
Many students in Cathy Sopinksi's sixth-grade class at Sunny Slope Elementary have seen the Broom Man around town.
Sopinski read the article about Wills, clipped it out and brought it to school.
It prompted a class discussion. How does the Broom Man get around? Does he live alone? Should you treat him differently or the same because he's blind?
The class decided they should help.
In the first week of a fundraising drive, the sixth-graders have raised $100 for Wills, some of it in crumpled one-dollar bills saved from weekly allowances.
"It's a teaching moment for these kids," Sopinski said. "It's taken this idea of how you should treat people with disabilities, how you should treat people different from you, and made it very real in their lives."
People like Jeff, the former state senator and others prefer to remain anonymous.
One Goodfellows donor pledged to pay Wills' electricity bill for all of 2008. Three other donors combined to pay his heating costs for the next six months.
The newspaper charity has received more than $2,000 in donations in the past week, checks big and small, delivered with one instruction: Please give this to the Broom Man.
The donations left Wills' grandson stunned. Criswell, 48, has taken over primary care of the Broom Man since his mother, Lorraine Criswell, died unexpectedly in March.
He often eats breakfast with Wills, makes sure he takes his medicine and then drives him to his favorite broom-selling locations.
Criswell knew Omaha residents liked his grandfather, who has been selling brooms on the streets for nearly six decades.
He didn't realize they loved him.
"It must be his strength of character," Criswell said. "It's his love of God. The Reverend is just a beautiful man, and people respond to that."
Follow Up Note: Dennis Houston, President of Corporate Gear Company, indicated that in the two weeks prior to Christmas they sold several hundred brooms for Reverend Wills which is more than he had sold in the previous 2 ˝ years.
_______________________________________
Published Saturday | December 1, 2007 Goodfellows: High utility bills multiply worries BY MATTHEW HANSEN OMAHA WORLD-HERALD
Livingston Wills is still trying to sell Omaha a broom The blind 90-year-old still boards city buses and travels to Benson, to Dundee, to Dodge Street and to South 24th Street.
He still wanders the city's streets and hawks the same cleaning product he started hawking nearly six decades ago, before every family had a vacuum cleaner, before the DustBuster, before the Swiffer Sweeper.
"Ya need one?" he asks everyone he meets.
Livingston Wills, 90, is Omaha's self-proclaimed Broom Man, but the sales pitch is getting tougher as the blind man's health starts to fail. If you say no, as most people do, Wills' reply is as certain and as timeless as his navy slacks, his red-striped dress shirt and his frayed suspenders. "Need a whisk broom?" he asks.
But the sales pitch has gotten tougher for the city's self-proclaimed Broom Man.
Wills shuffles slowly, sometimes using canes to support his weight. He can't work as hard or as long as he used to. He said he still tries to go out at 8 a.m. every day but can't always make it.
His second wife died 20 years ago. His stepdaughter died this year. His own health is starting to fail — about a dozen bottles filled with prescription medicine for sinus problems and indigestion fill a basket near his dining room table.
He guesses that he unloads only five brooms a week now. Sometimes more. Sometimes less.
"I'm not rich," said Wills, an ordained minister, "but God takes care of me."
Wills fell behind on his electricity bill during the heat this summer and applied for and received Goodfellows emergency aid in October. Goodfellows, The World-Herald's charity, is raising money for its year-round emergency assistance program and its holiday food program through the end of the year.
Now the winter is coming, forcing Wills to don an overcoat and worry about another high utility bill.
But the weather won't stop him from hawking his brooms.
"I'll sell 'em long as the Lord lets me," he says. "Ya need one?"
Hurrican Katrina Evacuees in Omaha
Corporate Gear Company Helps Hurricane Katrina Evacuees
September 12, 2005
Dennis and Sheryl Houston, along with their sons Ryan and Jack, donated 500 polar fleece blankets, jelly fish yo yo's and welcome letters to hurricane Katrina evacuees who spent time in Omaha immediately following the devastation in New Orleans.
The Houston's and their team at Corporate Gear Company worked closely with key supplier partners to expedite shipments of merchandise to Omaha from other areas of the country. The Corporate Gear team was waiting at the Omaha Civic Auditorium to greet the evacuees and welcome them to Omaha.
Ryan and Jack Houston jumped into action at Aldrich Elementary School and had 500 fellow school children write letters and create drawings to hand-deliver to the evacuees families who came to Omaha. Ryan, age 5 and Jack, age 4 were interviewed at a press conference by several members of the Omaha media including the ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX television affiliates.
Corporate Gear partnered with Huber Hummer of Omaha to provide a caravan of Hummers to transport all of the blankets, yo yo's and childrens letters to downtown Omaha.
According to Dennis Houston, "this was the best day at the office since founding Corporate Gear in 1996 as we feel the Houston family and Corporate Gear Company truly made a difference in people's lives".
