Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

What we do with the land that sustains us IS the topic of this list.
However, we do need to focus on sustainability, not tax cost theory or corn
substitutes that the government is not subsidizing. We know there are
better ethanol crops than corn, but nobody's pursuing it so it's
irrelevant. It's difficult to face the hard fact that there is no good
substitute for oil, and demand is outrunning supply. I agree absolutely we
need to end our dependence on fossil fuels. But it's not gonna happen.
Crunch time is coming. 

I know, we need to do this and do that, and all the other stuff, but I'm
not fighting the system when the odds are ten thousand to one against
sustainable change. I just do it. 
I grow sustainably with extremely low fossil fuel inputs, and sell locally
direct, the best I can do under the circumstances. 

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

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

On 9/13/2007 at 2:19 PM Pego Rice wrote:

>I am very interested in this discussion and since it
>pertains, do you have to take it off list?
>
>I would add points that are randomly pro and con but
>considering the situation I think each point would be
>interesting and perhaps useful.
>
>A) The tax cost needs to be compared to the tax cost
>of all the other solutions, otherwise it is a
>nonsequiture.  The Tax cost of each gallon of
>petroleum used on the road was $12 per gallon prior to
>the war (according to National Geographic)  So a tax
>cost would have to be sizable to  make it
>impracticable.
>
>B) The cost of production and its efficiency are very
>likely to go sharply down as more effective source
>crops go up than the over-stated corn and beet crops. 
>Water Hyacinth and Duckweed both can be grown with
>increasing efficiency to create Methane and even
>Mesquite is being looked at
>http://www.seco.cpa.state.tx.us/re_biomass_projects.htm
>
>C) LEEDS and ZED standards for communities must be
>adopted. Politicians sold our country's future and
>interests to Petroleum, Automotive and other mega
>lobby concerns and we have to stop it.  We need to
>reconfigure our agricultural prerogatives to long-term
>sustainability and shrink the footprint of our
>national lifestyle.  We need to tear up some of these
>roads to become commuter/cargo train routes and
>community mass transit, not pave over more and more
>farmland to service auto motives and sprawl we cannot
>sustain.
>
>D) Metal shortages are likely to stop or stymie
>several of our current promising technologies.  The
>metals that make our solar cells work, for instance. 
>If we want to do something besides Bio-fuels that
>needs looking at.
>
>
>Yours, Pego
>
>Mark Nagel said:
>"Just signed myself up to be on a discussion panel on
>biofuels. Obviously I'm on the "con" side. ....
>
>Paul said: 
>1. ethanol is not the pollution free fuel 
>2. ethanol produces little energy above manufacture
>3. cropland is being diverted from food 
>4. driving up food prices and fertilizer prices
>5. ethanol requires vast amounts of tax money 
>
>
>Doug added:
>6. Ethanol requires water, top soil and natural gas to
>grow. Do we really want to use up the last.. to keep
>our happy motoring love affair with the automobile
>going? Or more sustainable solutions ... Biofuels
>could be very useful on a small, local scale, ..But,
>trying to keep America's gargantuan auto fleet running
>on biofuels is a disaster of epic proportions, in my
>opinion.
>