Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Gloria Baikauskas <gcb49@flash.net>]

They have now found they can make the solar cells much more cheaply out of other materials.  I don't know if it is being mass produced as yet, but it soon will be. 

 

The biggest thing so many miss when this discussion comes up of folks starting to garden/farm after this possibly happening is that the soil for the most part in the US, and elsewhere, is dead.....death by chemical farming.  So.....for a while it will be really, really tough.  Some things will grow on some of this land, but it will take years to get it to grow things with enough nutrition for us, and health for the plants. 

 

You have to remember that amendments will also not be readily available.  How many folks have access to even manure?  And....more importantly...will folks in their panice slaughter way too many animals thinking it is the only way they can eat? 

 

I worry less about all of the above than I do trying to protect what I have from those desperate for foodstuffs.  I don't need them to come along and kill my chickens so that I have no eggs to use.....or their manure....or dig up my plants to feed themselves....or worse trying to throw me out and do it for themselves here. 

 

Many of them will not know they can grow root crops in winter, or start spinach early in the fall/winter for early spring eating.  Most of them will not have the information available at all on how to do it.....and the time it takes them to figure it out may be too long. 

 

Still I don't like the worst case scenarios like this.  Man has always survived because we are good at adapting. 

 

Gloria

 

If you dig into Cuba's story after they lost the
Soviet's oil, it's not
what you think. There was widespread suffering and
worse. Their transition
to growing food without petrol was gradual; the ship
of state can't turn on
a dime; and today they get oil products from
Venezuela. Not energy
independent at all. And there's an ocean of difference
between Cuba and the
U.S. Our material "standard of living" is much higher
and this country is
totally dependent - far more than Cuba was - on oil,
not just oil but cheap
oil. Bottom line: we have a lot farther to fall.

I'm sidestepping all the problems with alternative
fuels; there's nothing
that can prop up our fossil fuel economy much longer.
One fact is
undebatable: we're using so much oil because no other
source of energy is
as cheap and convenient. And having to switch to
anything else would
bankrupt people, business, and government.

I will point out that enough solar to power a typical
house here costs as
much energy to manufacture as it takes to build a car,
and you'll pay the
same for it as a car. And if you've got a few hundred
trillion to burn you
can start rebuilding our cities and suburbs with 800
sq ft houses. What
you'll do with millions of existing houses I have no
idea. BTW we're
already into a severe - or disastrous - construction
slowdown and it's
getting worse by the week.

Now as for converting much of our cities to
sustainable farming, or any
kind of farming, good luck. Just because people have
been to college
doesn't mean they can master the learning curve in one
season (I have and
it's taking me a lot longer). They'll eat anything
they can get. No, I
don't believe we'll all turn into raving lunatics as
depression sinks in;
there are always noble and heroic people who go beyond
the call. History is
full of precedents for what's coming, only never on
this scale. In the
Great Depression and Dust Bowl most families still
lived on the land. My
great aunts and uncles had no money but with a garden
and root cellar they
never missed a meal. Not anymore.  But the crystal
ball grows cloudy ...


paul tradingpost@lobo.net