Herb sweetens family business

Herb sweetens family business:
by Betty Beard -- The Arizona Republic -- 1/23/2006
"The Mays say it would take millions of dollars and several years to finance the tests that FDA requires to prove Stevia's safety as a sweetener. They say that many tests have been done and that Stevia products have been used for centuries in Paraguay and Brazil and are widely used in Japan."

Limit fertilizer to control costs, farmers urged

Journal Gazette | 01/12/2006 | Limit fertilizer to control costs, farmers urged:
by Jenni Glenn
"Farmers who save on fertilizer could reap higher profits, even if their harvest is reduced as a result, a Purdue University agronomy professor said Wednesday."

Peak Oil Expert Supports Localized Food Production

Japan Focus Article:
by Sandra Ward
"Then we encourage business leaders to start liberating their workforce and let workers work any place they would like to and pay them by productivity versus the system we have in place. Productivity improves as does worker satisfaction. Then we re-engineer how we grow and distribute food and get away from this ridiculous system we have today of creating ornamental food that looks good all year long but doesn't taste very good because it comes from too far away. Have you ever had blueberries from Chile? To have food taste good it has to be grown locally. We are going to end up going back to bottling and canning.

What?

Do you ever cook pasta? Do you cook tomato sauce? Have you ever used local tomatoes?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Tomatoes by can are fabulous tomatoes because they have been canned at the peak of the tomato season, and that process is still as good today as it was when I was growing up. Then we have to take a page out of Whole Foods, one of the most successful food models ever, by having a stringer system of organic farms within 20 miles of their stores. Organic farms are just victory gardens. Making all of those changes at the same time will leave our economies in better shape."

Stevia Sweetener Business plan wins prize worth over $100,000.00

Moot Corp Competition - McCombs School of Business - The University of Texas at Austin:
May, 2005
"A natural sweetener which is 300 times sweeter than sugar claimed the grand prize at the 22nd annual Global MOOT CORP Competition held at the University of Texas at Austin on Saturday, May 7, 2005. Idyll Life from Thammasat University in Thailand beat out 39 teams from the London Business School, Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern and top MBA programs around the world to claim the Global Champion prize.
The Global Champion receives the opportunity to negotiate a $100,000 investment from the MOOT CORP...

Idyll Life has exclusive rights to the patented stevia seeds. Stevia sweetener is the only natural high intensity sweetener in the world market and has been used extensively in the Asian region for more than 30 years. The company has FDA approval and is ready to introduce Pure Lite, their first sweetener product. They are seeking funding to establish its first commercial plant to be located in Thailand. "

INFLUENCE OF STORAGE CONDITIONS ON STEVIA REBAUDIANA SEEDS

INFLUENCE OF THE CONDITIONS OF STORAGE ON THE SEED QUALITY OF STEVIA REBAUDIANA (BERTONI) BERTONI:
"Differences were observed between the fresh and dry weight of the normal seedlings, showing that the storing condition in the refrigerator, produced higher average values, at the same time presenting more vigorous seeds than those in the other treatment."