Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Tommy Tolson <healinghawk@earthlink.net>]

There are several studies (please don't ask me to produce them, but I 
recall reading about them) that say organic growing outproduces 
industrial farming at all scales, within five years, and, since organic 
tends the soil so it's better each year, it's really a no-brainer, isn't 
it?  The only thing that's propping up industrial farming is their 
political power through the Farm Bureau, etc, and it appears that 
Monsanto has busted any profit the big boys may have made at one time 
with exports for which they no longer make enough of a crop using GM 
seeds.  When they stop getting paid by the federal government to crash 
the human food production system, they will be gone, and organics will 
be all there is.  Richard Heinberg says a whole lot of people will 
become farmers, because it will take a lot of people to produce enough 
crops to feed everyone by the organic method, when oil gets up to 
$200/barrel and stays there, as it will, maybe sooner than we think.  
Michael Ruppert says by the end of this summer, and others are saying 
the same thing.

Since we took so long to start listening to Richard, I suspect we will 
have a human die-off of some magnitude as we ramp up transition efforts 
so we can choose humane methods to bring our population out of 
overshoot, but, if we're a bit lucky, it will be a relatively low 
magnitude, and we'll have built the resilience to withstand the shock.  
It will be a shock, even though science has been warning about climate 
change for 100 years or so.  Some still can't/won't hear it.

So it's going to have to bite us harder to get our attention off the 
Koch brothers' propaganda campaign and onto saving our butts from fossil 
fuel addiction, as Dubya named it.  The good news is that cultural 
resilience requires full human development so that we are each fit to 
respond appropriately to ecological changes resulting from foolishly 
ruining our stable climate system.  Organically tending the land is a 
critical element of the solution system, certainly, but the complete 
solution system is a functioning ecological culture in the US and I hope 
we keep our eyes on that prize from here on out.

The oil business's Three Mile Island is occurring out in the Gulf of 
Mexico right now.  When those pictures of oil covered critters start 
showing up on TV screens, oil's regulated out of profitability.  We must 
transition off fossil fuels now, ASAP.  Even Obama said so the other day.

As Edward R. Murrow famously said, good night and good luck.

Smiles.
Tommy


On 6/3/10 10:42 PM, Tradingpost wrote:
> Feeding the growing population, in my view, is not so much about organic 
> versus chemical, but about the systems using each approach. I haven't seen 
> this point made anywhere. Organic is mainly small farm, family run and 
> locally consumed with little waste. Industrial or chemical farming is mainly 
> corporate megafarms today. And much is wasted before it ever gets to the 
> store due to natural variations in size or appearance. And much of the store 
> produce has to end up in the dumpster unsold. Question: which is more 
> efficient use of land and resources? And which would feed more people?
>
> paul tradingpost@lobo.net
>
> *********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********
>
> On 6/3/2010 at 9:49 PM Tommy Tolson wrote:
>
>    
> > I'm not certain that "organic" and "agriculture" go together.
> > Agriculture is part of the main reason we've lost so much topsoil.
> > Agriculture is domination of the land by humans lacking the foresight to
> > care for the land.  I suggest that what we do when we grow organically
> > is called "horticulture." It's the last human food production system
> > that was sustainable, as far as I can tell.  How much of the present
> > human population it will feed is, as far as I can tell, unknown.
> >
> > The UN isn't talking about choice, though, it seems to me.  There is no
> > way the US model of meat-eating can continue, and the dairy industry
> > isn't a lot cleaner, so vegan lifestyles are a survival device, rather
> > than a choice, until we get our species out of population overshoot
> > (Earth without cheap oil supports perhaps two billion humans, Richard
> > Heinberg says) and recalibrate from there.
> >
> > Smiles.
> > Tommy
> >
> > On 6/3/10 4:29 PM, Ken Hargesheimer wrote:
> >      
> > >      The vegetarian myth is disproved. It is often stated that meat
> > >      produces one-fourth to one-tenth the food that using that same
> > >      land for a vegetarian diet would produce. That is not the whole
> > >      picture. Animals who transform one-fourth of their food into meat
> > >      transform three-quarters of their food into manures (high value
> > >      fertilizer if properly managed and used) which is transformed into
> > >      humus which is transformed into crops for both livestock and
> > >      people. Organic agriculture recycles everything and transforms
> > >      inert minerals, air, water and sunshine into increased biota
> > >      through feeding the microherd a full diet including animal wastes.
> > >      There is more life created into existence out of the dead
> > >      planetary chemistry than vegetarians are able to account for with
> > >      their tired false myth. [Lion Kuntz]
> > >
> > >      Much of the land in many countries is suitable only for pasture
> > >      which can be used only to produce meat
> > >
> > >
> > >
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