Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Robert Monie <bobm20001@yahoo.com>]

Regarding the Genesis farm in New Jersey: http://www.newfarm.org/features/2005/1205/genesis/sayre.shtml

 

This excellent enterprise of nuns growing their own food recalls the legacy of the monastic orders that managed to be self-sufficient during the turbulent Middle Ages (see the book Monastic Gardens by Mick Hales).  I can't help noticing that large solar cell array covering most of the good sisters' roof that now provides at least half their energy. If the solar cell innovations promised by Honda, GE, Konarka, Nanosolar, Nanosys and an increasingly long line of Silicon Valley startups come to pass, by 2012 an array of similar size and cost could easily provide ALL their energy.   At least one farmer has already converted his tractor to solar using off the shelf equipment--

http://www.motherearthnews.com/alternative_energy/2002_april_may/solar_powered_tractors

 

And two ladies who live in the tiny town of Paradis, Louisiana, drive a solar-charged electric car--

http://www.lses.org/petithome.html

 

The future is not the past; and the future is going to be different from anything the oil economy brought us.  

 

In facing the hard times ahead, we must be on guard against the old generals'

folly of fighting the last war all over again.  Solar electricity didn't exist during the Great Depression. The atomic bomb didn't exist during WWI but it did during WWII and, for better or worse, brought the war to an end.   Cuba may not have the capability to develop solar technology but we do, and this time we have Japan on our side, as an equally powerful

solar electric developer.

Bob Monie,

Using an inexpensive Carmanah solar electric system (literally something new under the sun) for three years now and finding no bogey-man "problems" in it.

.



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