Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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

Ok, let's put our growing talk in the larger context. Here's some larger
related issues to be considered. 

1. What approach to growing can decrease our dependence on fossil fuels
and/or biomass fuels, and decrease pollution?
2. What can offer growers better income incentives to farm and affordable
places to live and work for millions of unemployed or underemployed?
3. What can produce enough affordable food for all and reverse the crushing
cost of degenerative diseases and health care?
4. What can reduce growers' vulnerability to a distribution system they
have no control over?
5. What can improve rather than deplete the soil for the next generation?
6. What can conserve rather than deplete freshwater or fossil aquifers for
the future?
7. What can offer more community self sufficiency and individual security
and freedom?
8. What can leave more open land and forest for wild ecosystems to return?
9. What can reverse the acidification of the oceans, depletion of fish
stocks, nitrification of "dead zones", loss of critical coral reefs, and
sequester more soil carbon? 

Stay tuned.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

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

On 12/25/2007 at 5:38 AM Phil Bunch wrote:

>It may be helpful to think in terms of effectiveness rather than
>efficiency.
>In either case the context within which one is acting, either effectively
>or
>efficiently is the key to the outcomes. I like effective because it has a
>connotation of having a goal in mind. Efficiency is driven by a short term
>objective of minimizing input and maximizing output. This over
>simplification can divert ones attention from other goals and can become a
>goal in itself.
>
>In my view efficiency has its place as long as it is an appropriate place
>given the full spectrum of needs associated with a process or project.
Like
>any other powerful tool it must be used responsibly. This implies we
>understand all the important ramifications of what we are doing
>efficiently.
>
>