Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

Be assured we're not just working on "the soil problem", Dan. Living on the
land is about the land we live on, how we live on it or with it - or
against it. Life begins with the soil, yes, but we can't just take and take
and never give back. Sir Albert Howard many years ago tried to teach us the
"law of return" - that we have to return our organic waste to the soil to
keep reaping our sustanance from the soil. Today we're seeing more to the
equation. We know our freshwater for irrigation is not limitless. We're
realizing the embedded energy cost of shipping food all over the world, and
the cost of eating oil. We're paying a fortune for "health care" to deal
with the nutritional deficiencies of supermarkets and fast food, and the
poisoning of our air and water and food supply. 

Nor are we being defensive - unless you count defending our health and our
future against those who take and take and never give back. We're all in
the same boat, but some are charting a safer course, some are just bailing
water to stay afloat, and some are punching holes in the bottom. Some will
make shore; some won't. 

I think it was Thoreau who said there are a thousand chopping at the
branches of evil for every one chopping at the roots. 

Enough mixed metaphors for now ;-)

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 4/10/2007 at 12:00 PM Dan Conine wrote:

>> Mitch Wrote:
>>
>> I have viewed the video and was perplexed.  I couldn't see the
>motivation for creating it.  It was well produced and dramatic, with many
>people presented as scientists and experts (equally as unknown to me as
>those in pro-climate-change movies).  The best I could come up with is the
>desire that we should continue consuming as much as possible - hardly a
>motive to trust.
>I agree, Mitch. Unfortunately, the Al Gore video is also being used as a
>prop to tell people (not necessarily by Gore) that if we change to
>windmills or funnel money into alternative energy, that everything will be
>OK.
>
>Everything will NOT be OK anymore. There are too many consuming too much,
>and ignoring the warning signs for everything that is going wrong. It
>isn't just the climate. There are problems with how everyone is competing
>for resources, time, and mental acuity amidst an onslaught of CWDN (crap
>we don't need) and nutritional illnesses. As problems arise, we dump more
>energy and money into creating 'systems' to deal with them, rather than
>cutting back on our activities that created the problems. More technology
>means more overhead, which means exponentially increasing energy and
>mineral consumption, with its associated effluents of pollution and land
>destruction.
>
>It took billions of years for chlorophyll based plants to change the
>atmosphere enough to allow animal organisms to have enough oxygen to
>become mobile consumers. We are taking the carbon that these plants
>removed from the air and spewing it back into the atmosphere in a matter
>of decades.
>
>The recent cold spells are not so much a matter of temperature in the
>middle latitudes as they are a manifestation of increased energy at the
>poles, which causes the eddies and air masses to move further south,
>increasing the rate at which energy is exchanged between the poles and the
>equatorial areas. 
>
>The weather is chaotic: sensitive dependence on initial conditions. It is
>unpredictable at certain levels, but our ability to understand it from day
>to day within a state, or year to year on the whole planet, is predictable
>within the limits of our technology and our information. Waiting for
>consensus will never achieve an accurate picture of the future, because we
>are changing the future and consensus ALWAYS requires agreement on
>HISTORICAL data, refusing to have any vision which is based upon theory.
>This is fine if you are figuring out how to make a better cupholder, but
>consensus is useless when it comes to leadership.
>
>I don't know who came up with this idea that what is happening on Mars or
>Neptune is the same as what is happening on our planet, but they should go
>back to Fox news and be throttled along with the "environmentalists" who
>were so eager to jump on the hydrogen car bandwagon.
>
>Paul, I apologize for the rant. I think you and I both should try not to
>get too defensive. I thought I was trying to explain my view of the
>science, but when I proofread what I write, it always comes out as a rant.
>It is frustrating with so many problems to work and no reasonable group of
>people to lean on for help. This list is trying to work on the soil
>problem. We veer away at times, but it comes back to our goal of finding
>methods of living for a future usefulness, rather than simply following
>the consumption path. 
>
>Dan
>
>
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