Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Keith Addison <gha@journeytoforever.org>]

Well, Paul.

Actually I do know the difference between industrialised feedlots and 
small, integrated, mixed farms, and between cattle ranchers and 
poverty stricken Nepalese peasants. So do the people we're in touch 
with. They're not just theorising about these things, they're doing 
them, and many of them haven't been to a gas station for years. 
Neither have I.

Indeed it's easily possible to use crop by-products and crop wastes 
for on-site energy production without cheating on soil fertility 
maintenance, the same as it's possible to sell crops off-farm without 
cheating on soil fertility maintenance. On a real farm there's always 
an ample array of choices and options on just what shall be deemed 
"production" and what "waste". If there were any basis to your view 
of it everything would have to be returned to the soil and I wonder 
what would be the point of farming in the first place. Organic 
farming is all about sustainable surpluses.

Indeed there are farmers in the US using $200 DIY stills to produce 5 
gal/hr of 190-proof fuel ethanol without robbing the soil. On a 
slightly larger scale, more than four thousand people download Floyd 
Butterfield's on-farm fuel ethanol plans every month. And so on. I'm 
not talking through my hat but there's no point in my arguing about 
it.

We do a lot of work with sustainable biofuels and now it's sweeping 
the world, whether other people notice it or not. But it's just a 
part of our project, we don't think it's the most important part, 
we've always been much more interested in Albert Howard. We wouldn't 
do biofuels at all if they weren't entirely compatible. Fear not, I'm 
sure Sir Albert's old bones don't rattle a lot whenever someone says 
"biofuel". It's possible to do anything badly, but it's a delusion to 
be blind to all other possibilities.

I must admit I'm a little puzzled by the quite widespread resistance 
to sustainable biofuels among organics people. After all it's the 
same issue. How can biofuels be sustainable if they're not grown 
sustainably? And which crop cannot be grown sustainably? Conversely, 
how can organic growing be sustainable if it's still plugged into the 
fossil-fuel energy system when it could so easily be independent, via 
air, fire, water, and, most certainly, earth. Off-topic on a soils 
list? Well, if you insist, and of course I'll defer and desist after 
this reply.

It's strange that this resistance seems to be virtually confined to 
the US, where it's rather common, while elsewhere it might be just 
the odd individual. Are you aware that Dennis Avery takes the same 
stance as you do?

Regarding Robert's comment on $27 per gallon gasoline, you can find 
those ideas explored in old Biofuel list messages from around five 
years ago and later. If humanity were capable only of reacting we 
wouldn't have made it past the autralopithecene era. People are just 
as capable of foresight and acting upon it, even if only in their own 
lives and communities and not instantly at the national level in the 
full focus of the mainstream media.

That's how change happens, via small minorities working away quietly 
in advance of events, not by whole communities suddenly waking up 
when it's much too late. Nor by "getting the message out" until a 
democratic majority votes for it with their pockets and ExxonMobil 
says Hey, you win, hands over the keys to the castle and mooches off 
with their $400-million golden handshakes to devote their attention 
to golf.

People have seen the energy crunch coming for 35 years, much longer 
in some cases. It's hardly begun, but it's already too late to start 
thinking about it only now. No need though, sustainable biofuels 
production is already happening all round the world, the appropriate 
technology solutions are developed, being used and being developed 
further in a wide range of conditions, and it's not at odds with the 
needs of the soil, quite the opposite. Those involved think it's too 
late to stop it.

Despite appearances, what industrial cartels and governments might do 
might not be very relevant. Big Central is the wrong paradigm for 
biofuels, no matter how big and powerful they might be or how much 
they can tilt the playing field their way. There's a role for it, but 
only a secondary one.

In the same way, the food miles issue turns out to be just a fuel 
miles issue in drag, and that marks the end of the road for a 
so-called food production system that has to truck a cabbage a 
thousand and a half miles before selling it. Sad about the inevitable 
fall-out no doubt, but apart from that, so what? The sustainable 
alternative is also already happening all round the world, and has 
been since Albert Howard's day.

Energy and food are much more closely linked than most people imagine.

Thankyou, I'll bow out now.

Best wishes

Keith Addison
Journey to Forever
KYOTO Pref., Japan
http://journeytoforever.org/


> My thoughts on it interspersed.
>
> paul, tradingpost@riseup.net
> ---------------
> The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after 
> all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it 
> and to foster its renewal is our only hope.
>   - Wendell Berry
> *********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********
>
> On 4/30/2006 at 12:30 AM Keith Addison wrote:
>
> >Yet many small farmers and homesteaders in the US are using biogas right
> >now.
>
> Ok, but the question remains, what makes it practical or economical 
> for them - if it is - and would it be practical across the board for 
> family farms in different climates, and those without large numbers 
> of livestock? I'm suspecting it's most practical for large feedlots 
> which we really find abominable.
>
> >They (Nepalese) don't compare it with the cost of fossil fuels. Smallscale
> >biogas units are in use all over the world.
>
> Where they have plenty of livestock and few alternatives for fuel, 
> they might find biogas practical.
>
> >They're not wildly conflicting and they're not all government
> >studies. Eight studies over the last 10 years show a net gain of
> >between 15,000 and 30,000, only Pimentel shows a 33,500 loss - 45
> >btu's less than he claimed 10 years previously, despite considerable
> >changes in farm practice in the meanrtime, as shown. Anyway, who
> >cares about Pimentel and ADM? It's just irrelevant to a real soil
> >farmer.
>
> Pimentel as you know headed a government panel to study the 
> economics of ethanol, and I see no obvious reason to throw him out 
> and credit the later studies by similar panels. I just don't give 
> much credibility to followup government studies and corn growers' 
> studies to justify enormous subsidies for corn ethanol. To me, it 
> sends up red flags all over the place. My personal view on that.
>
> >$200 to build a 5 gal per hour still with a 55-gal oildrum boiler?
> >Hardly. People are doing this right now on US farms. This is nothing
> >new, go back 25 years to when Pimentel's figures might have had a
> >little more reality:
> >The Butterfield Still -- Farm-scale ethanol fuel production plant
> >http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library.html#butterfield
> >Farmers in the US were doing that then and a lot more of them are doing it
> >now.
>
> But we're not seeing the whole economic analysis of it. The startup 
> cost may be low, but the opportunity cost is overlooked. In other 
> words, how much do they lose in not selling or using their ethanol 
> crops for food, compared to what they save by substituting ethanol 
> for gasoline?
>
> >... Please see:
> >"How much fuel can we grow? How much land will it take?"
> >http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html#howmuch
>
> That page states  "A sustainable mixed farm can produce all its own 
> fuel, with much or possibly all of it coming from crop by-products 
> and waste products without any dedicated land use, and with very low 
> input levels."
>
> But I have a problem with that. Which byproducts and crop waste is 
> *not* needed to return to the soil? None I can think of. Again, 
> there's the economics of it, the opportunity cost. Anything used to 
> produce fuel could instead be returned to the soil directly or 
> composted. Is anything gained when you turn crop waste into ethanol 
> and have to truck in organic matter to take its place in soil 
> building?
>
> >No, livestock do though, and that's what's done with most of the corn
> >anyway
>
> But we don't need more livestock; we need to eliminate corporate 
> feedlots and devote more land to people food instead of grain for 
> cattle. If this country cuts way, way back on beef (and other meats) 
> as it ought, there won't be many livestock to eat that 
> ethanol-processed corn. Of course, it could still be composted ;-)
>
> >It's not just theory. Most people are only starting to think about
> >this now, when it's beginning to hurt. We've been watching it playing
> >out in the real world for six years and it's been going on much
> >longer than that.
>
> We'll see.
>
> >Best wishes
> >
> >Keith Addison
> >Journey to Forever
> >KYOTO Pref., Japan
> >http://journeytoforever.org/