Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Kathy Moore" <anichinimoore@hotmail.com>]

Animal maures can also be utilized to produce alternative energy or methane 
gas along with fiber for composting or land application for plant nutrients. 
 Perhaps concentrated feeding operations also have this in mind as a means 
to confine manures so they won't have to transport them far for their 
alternative energy production operations?  It would make their operations 
sustainable in a sense.  Seriously, I think it is about monopolizing all 
food and energy production including manures.
Kathy Moore


From: Mark Nagel <activism98201@verizon.net>
Reply-To: activism98201@verizon.net,Healthy soil and sustainable growing 
<livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Fertilizer use by crop in Brazil
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 14:55:44 -0500 (CDT)

Thanks Paul.

I was going to mention the report's comments about poor use of organic 
fertlizers, but felt that this would suggest a solution, when in fact there 
isn't any solution when, as you note, you're exporting (and burning) your 
minerals.

One can see that as natural gas prices increase there will be a push to 
utilize animal manures.  This should be a no-brainer, but unfortunately 
industry will look to scale this up.  Scaling up will likely mean that more 
animals will be raised and more forest land cleared for them.  And at some 
point there's going to be contention between land for the animals and land 
for agriculture.

It's really a shame that we're heading down the biofuels path, as this just 
perpetuates the inefficiency of long-distance food transport.  And I see it 
as a wicked trap to suck small food producers into the corporate web, where 
they'll fall prey to the big conglomerates (and loose their land).

Anyone want to speculate on how long it is before agribusiness and 
big-energy combine?  ADM and Exxon for example?  As we here are all to 
familiar with, food IS energy!

BTW - Wouldn't marginal land produce less energy dense biomass?  In order to 
make up for this lesser density more land would be required.  And marginal 
land isn't likely going to be nice flat or gently rolling land, which means 
that it'll be fairly difficult (read energy intensive) to cultivate.


Mark Nagel
Everett, WA


=====================
From: TradingPostPaul <tradingpost@riseup.net>

Good work, Mark. Elsewhere in the FAO study I see Brazil makes extremely 
poor use of animal manures, as does the U.S. And their chemical fertilizer 
use is almost exclusively for export crops, not food staples for the masses. 
What's wrong with this picture? Not that this country is any shining 
example. I know some have argued we can all grow crops for ethanol on 
marginal land without sacrificing any food cropland, but that's not what's 
being done. If land can be cultivated mechanically for ethanol crops, then 
it can be cultivated for food crops instead.

paul, tradingpost@riseup.net

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