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homestead - Re: [Homestead] AHIPA: Exploring the Potential of a Sustainable Crop as a Food Source

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  • From: Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] AHIPA: Exploring the Potential of a Sustainable Crop as a Food Source
  • Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 09:55:48 -0700

Any time that people who you know hate each other are all nodding like dashboard dolls over the same catch phrase, evil's got to be afoot. One day it occurred to a PR type that all agribusiness revolves around crops that are either "native" (like timber) or decidedly non-invasive, like corn. So the catchy phrase "non-native invasive" was born. It sound perfectly environmental, yet it's completely self-serving to agribusiness. Since then a way has evolved for botanists to stay silent on the issue of habitat destruction, and thus keep their jobs, by scapegoating us.

I think it's fair to say that in Western culture farms always seem to expand to be as big as one guy can plow in the spring. This is inevitably bigger than "one guy" can actually take care of. I wonder how much of the tumbleweed problem in Missouri is actually due to that. I'd really love to have some growing. They seem as though they'd make the best choice of all for compost. You need material that's stiff enough not to mat down, but thin enough to decompose along with manure in a timely manner. I wonder whether a different sort of farming model, one that optimizes the use of small plots of land and leaves the rest undisturbed (along with those common sense tillage practices I was talking about) would have made a difference in the tumbleweed population.

Bill
S. Oregon coast




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