Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Mike <mike.lists@mlxvi.org>]

I just read this morning that the prodcution of nitrogen fertiliser, 
alone, is estimated to account for 1% of the world's energy use.

Mike


Tradingpost wrote:
> I'm about to send out the best article I've ever come across. Here are some 
> excerpts:
>
>
> After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other  
> sector of the economy — 19 percent. And while the experts disagree  
> about the exact amount, the way we feed ourselves contributes more  
> greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do — as  
> much as 37 percent, according to one study. Whenever farmers clear  
> land for crops and till the soil, large quantities of carbon are  
> released into the air. 
>
> Reforming the food system is not inherently a right-or-left issue: for every Whole Foods shopper with roots in the counterculture you can find a family of evangelicals intent on taking control of its family dinner and diet back from the fast-food industry — the culinary equivalent of home schooling. 
>
> As Wendell Berry has tartly observed, to take animals  
> off farms and put them on feedlots is to take an elegant solution —  
> animals replenishing the fertility that crops deplete — and neatly  
> divide it into two problems: a fertility problem on the farm and a  
> pollution problem on the feedlot. 
>
> A decentralized food system offers a great many other benefits as  
> well. Food eaten closer to where it is grown will be fresher and  
> require less processing, making it more nutritious. Whatever may be  
> lost in efficiency by localizing food production is gained in  
> resilience: regional food systems can better withstand all kinds of  
> shocks.
>
> Today in America there is soaring demand for local and regional food;  
> farmers’ markets, of which the U.S.D.A. estimates there are now  
> 4,700, have become one of the fastest-growing segments of the food  
> market. Community-supported agriculture is booming as well: there are  
> now nearly 1,500 community-supported farms, to which consumers pay an  
> annual fee in exchange for a weekly box of produce through the  
> season. The local-food movement will continue to grow with no help  
> from the government, especially as high fuel prices make distant and  
> out-of-season food, as well as feedlot meat, more expensive. 
> ---------------------
>
> stay tuned.
>
> paul tradingpost@lobo.net
>
>
>
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