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permaculture - Intro and prairie thoughts (fwd)

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  • From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <london@calypso-2.oit.unc.edu>
  • To: permaculture-mg@ces.ncsu.edu
  • Subject: Intro and prairie thoughts (fwd)
  • Date: Thu, 26 Jan 1995 14:18:01 -0500 (EST)


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 1995 09:54:40 -0800
>From: Tom Hodges (moderated newsgroup) <sustag@BETA.TRICITY.WSU.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list SUSTAG-L
<SUSTAG-L%WSUVM1.BITNET@cmsa.Berkeley.EDU>
Subject: Intro and prairie thoughts (fwd)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 95 12:21:11 -0500
>From: Bob Engelman <re@popact.org>
To: SUSTAG@beta.tricity.wsu.edu
Subject: Intro and prairie thoughts

This is mostly to comment on a posting from Frank J. Kutka on
making use of prairies, but I'll also take advantage of it to introduce
myself.

I direct a program on population and the environment for a
Washington-based research and advocacy organization, Population Action
International. The group's mission is to help solve one of the world's most
intractable long-term problems, ongoing population growth, through
empowering individuals to take control of their own lives, especially in
the area of women and reproductive health. The evidence is solid that women
who have education, reasonable health care and access to safe voluntary
family planning services tend to delay first childbirths, space their
pregnancies over time, and have fewer children. All of these together have
a powerful effect on slowing population growth. Researching how all this
relates to the environment and sustainable development is what our program
does.

We have just finished a report on the linkages among population,
arable land availability and sustainable food production that involved me
deeply in the fascinating and important issues discussed in this forum. It
helps also that I am a long time gardener and composter, am involved with
Community Supported Agriculture in the Washington, D.C. area, and come from
a long line of farmers. My late father, born on a farm near Des Moines,
Iowa, was a career ag economist with USDA. So I have the soil in my blood,
and find the issue of sustainable agriculture one of the most compelling in
the environmental and population fields.

Now, back to Mr. Kutka's idea of practical uses of prairies. Seems
to me that prairies are in many ways gigantic solar collectors and carbon
processors. I would like to see more research on and discussion of biomass
fuels, the use of which shouldn't add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere
assuming no fossil fuels are used in their harvesting and processing
(admittedly a big assumption). Prairies could actually take carbon dioxide
out of the air if their biomass was collected, composted (with other
materials) and used to restore degraded soils on farms and in forests. It
would be important, of course, to harvest this biomass at sustainable
levels, so that the soils under the prairies did not become further
degraded in the process.

I look forward to more discussion on these and related topics in
this forum. Thanks are owed to Tom Hodges, our moderator.

Bob Engelman
Population Action International
Washington, DC




  • Intro and prairie thoughts (fwd), Lawrence F. London, Jr., 01/26/1995

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