Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[firekeeper@netscape.net]

 Sorry guys, I was piddling and thinking for a while and must have overwritten the 1st link I put in, when I wrote that.  Now I can't find the origional link that set this train of logic off I have a few below to replace it.

 

I was interested in the information about China's and India's efforts because wetland loss and restoration and the simpler system of water cachement have been particularly identified as critical to farmland and ecological recovery.

 

One of the particular points that has been popping up in some of the soil building and sustainable ag research, not to mention; 1) water table restoration and 2) water filtering 3) flood and drought protection 4) Atmosferic water for rain 5) new source for healthy livestock feed 6) old source for everything a human needs to live 7) carbon sequestration and 8) topsoil building ...is wetlands. 

 

Closer to home, my own ancestry regarded swamps and lakes as their own sort of grocery store and gained the larger portion of their food out of the water in the form of cattail and a number of other water veggies plus birds and fish, and Wild rice for grains so I have started a teensy little wetland in my back yard a little over 3 sq yds of cattail and taro growing in it.  I have to say that the imported taro is doing better since the area is so shady, but hey, that's food too.

 

I am just thinkint that we need to bring more water cachements and ponds into our idea of topsoil building and protection.  Without water we can't farm or live, as China has so unpleasantly been remindid.

 

 

http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-5265-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html

 

http://www.wwfchina.org/english/print.php?loca=91

 

It turns out that Earthwatch has this on as an Eco-vollunteer trip, for a "mosest" price, err donation (whatever they call it, a chunk o change). 

 

http://www.earthwatch.org/site/pp2.asp?c=dsJSK6PFJnH&b=1147485

 

http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu02fe/uu02fe0b.htm

 

"This link is a paper on current Chinese methods to stop the advance of their
new northwestern deserts.  They are using till and chem, but less so than I had
expected, however it must be said that this paper only addresses success, where
in reality quite a bit of China has become Dunes and that driffting sand, now
freed from it's thin cover of steppes grassland and tiny bit of topsoil is
simply being abandoned"

 

Yours Pego