Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[<activism98201@verizon.net>]

Pego and others,

As Paul indicated, we want to keep focused on proper use of land and soils.  
It is primarily for this reason that I decided to participate on the biofuels 
panel.  But for this group I didn't want to bog it down with discussions of 
subsidies and the like (as Paul noted).

I'd like to take the opportunity to thank those that have responded to me 
off-line, especially Ken Hargesheimer who pointed me at GRAIN.org, which just 
released a big special report on agrofuels (see their July, 07 edition of 
Seedling): I'd visited this site before and was thoroughly impressed; there's 
just so much to keep track of that they didn't cross my mind when considering 
this undertaking (again Ken, thanks!).

I do feel that it's worth providing one piece of information from this report 
that I find indicative of what disasters await us down this path:

The Indian government, not wanting to be left behind,
is promoting the rapid expansion of another
biodiesel crop, jatropha: by 2012 some 14 million
hectares are to be planted on what it has classified
as “wasteland”,[10] but reports are already coming
in of farmers being dispossessed of fertile land by
companies wanting to grow jatropha.[11] All of this
amounts to nothing less that the re-introduction
of the colonial plantation economy, redesigned to
function under the rules of the modern neoliberal,
globalised world.


The world needs these farmers!  They posses the real solutions to the 
questions/problems that face us now and in the future.


-Mark Nagel
Everett, WA



=====================
From: Pego Rice <firekeeper38@yahoo.com>
Date: 2007/09/13 Thu PM 04:19:04 CDT
To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] discussion panel on biofuels

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.



      
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