Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[<pbunch@cox.net>]

I think one thing people forget is that there is no one size that fits all. 
Each region has its own characteristics and needs for adaptations. The UN's 
concern is more focused on the big picture and aggregate impacts. Based on 
other work they are doing on sustainable development they clearly understand 
this issue and encourage locally adapted solutions.

BTW the diet of the pre-Roman Irish may provide clues to sustainable 
agricultural patterns. These may or may not be scalable to the current 
population levels. It also may be that your region is not well suited to 
complete self sufficiency give its current population.

These issues raise very interesting questions about the implementation of 
sustainable methods.

Phil Bunch
Medellin, Colombia  


---- John D'hondt <dhondt@eircom.net> wrote: 
> Sorry to say that where I live in Ireland it is impossible to be a vegan or 
> even a vegetarian and self sufficient both. What grows best here is grass. 
> There are traditional ways to keep farm animals without being cruel or 
> dirty and I can see no other way as long as we are desperately failing to 
> grow climate adapted nut and fruit trees. (we have been working on it for 
> close to 25 years and we probably need another 100 years to succeed)
> john
>   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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