Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>]

At least in the last five years I have put out feelers to people who might 
possibly fit in our almost self sufficient family community. No takers, 
except a few who would sink our communal boat in short order if they were 
encouraged or allowed to stay.
A great many enthusiast who had read John Seymour's books about self 
sufficiency settled independently in West Cork, Ireland in the last 20 years 
to live the "good life". I have seen most of them fail and that was in times 
when one could easily afford to make a few mistakes. We are now coming into 
times where one mistake can upset survival on the land.
I have become seriously pessimistic over the years that a transition back to 
the land is possible for most.
john

>   "Finding a place in the country is central to surviving the next few 
> decades, but the best land for gardening is both crowded and expensive. To 
> a very large extent, where we need to live is not where we can live. "
>
>
> Looking For The Uncrowded Country
> By Peter Goodchild 20 June, 2011
> http://www.countercurrents.org/goodchild200611.htm
>
> A couple of fridge magnets might hold the following desiderata: a place in 
> the country with a couple of hectares of forest for firewood, another 
> hectare for a garden, and a nice muddy beach for clam-digging (well okay, 
> at least one of those three); and a small income or a large savings 
> account as a buffer to the occasional but inevitable need for cash (until 
> all dollars become Confederate dollars).
>
> How fast things will decay is a debatable point. Personally, I would put 
> my money on "faster" rather than "slower." There's a problem with 
> perception: although the world's economy is collapsing rapidly, because 
> it's all on a mammoth scale we don't notice it happening. Yesterday I 
> mailed two boxes of used books, each of which was light enough for one 
> person to carry easily. I sent them from here in Oman back to Canada by 
> the cheapest parcel post, no registration, no insurance. The cost was $180 
> Canadian. Later I may have to use a car to get those books and bring them 
> somewhere else in Canada . The cost of gasoline may be greater than the 
> cost, a few years ago, of the books. Nothing is cheap anymore, even if 
> there aren't many people who register all the implications of that fact. 
> It's true that collapse is not essentially an economic matter, since 
> economists live in an unreal universe, but the economics of daily life 
> should at least act as a signal.
>
> Then one must deal with the enigma of concrete farmland. Finding a place 
> in the country is central to surviving the next few decades, but the best 
> land for gardening is both crowded and expensive. To a very large extent, 
> where we need to live is not where we can live.
>
> Canada 's province of Ontario serves as a good illustration of this bind, 
> although my own years of living there are part of my reason for focusing 
> on that area. Roughly speaking, the province has 13 million people and 1 
> million km2 of area. But the province is commonly regarded as consisting 
> of "northern Ontario " and "southern Ontario ," more or less divided by 
> the 45th parallel. Northern Ontario is about 6 times larger than the 
> south. The division reflects many things, all interrelated. Partly it is 
> history: the south was the area first settled by Europeans. Partly it is 
> geology: northern Ontario is part of the Canadian Shield , mostly barren 
> rock. Partly it is population: in contrast to area, the population of the 
> tiny south is 12 times larger than that of the north. And partly it is 
> agricultural: nearly all the good farmland is also south of latitude 45. 
> To get to most of that usable land, one would have to dig up a fair amount 
> of asphalt and concrete. Yes, there are pock
> ets of farmland still in use, but to buy a few hectares one would have to 
> pay a considerable price.
>
> One of my own favorite computer games, therefore, has been to wade through 
> the online maps of the Canada Land Inventory, created from the 1960s to 
> the 1980s (again, a sign of lost abundance). I compare these maps of 
> agricultural and hunting land to the properties available at real-estate 
> Web sites. I also compare them to various forms of demographic data, in 
> particular to information on unemployment and depopulation; in a sense, I 
> am profiting from the misfortunes of others: parts of Saskatchewan and the 
> East Coast are losing population because of emigration to the relatively 
> wealthier provinces. As a result, however, some usable land becomes 
> available to intrepid "survivalists" with their shovels and hoes and 
> collections of doomsday literature.
>
> A constructive, non-fatalistic response to what I call "the coming chaos" 
> might also include a reading of three particular documents by Ferguson , 
> Lee, and Pimentel, on the topics of foraging, farming, and the social 
> consequences. I prefer them to hundreds of other books and documents that 
> present various viewpoints on those topics.
>
> In "Energy flows in agricultural and natural ecosystems," Pimentel 
> explains, among other things, some of the basic facts that would underlie 
> any practical form of agriculture that does not rely on fossil fuels ? 
> although, yes, any form of agriculture is ultimately destructive to the 
> soil. Much of what he says is contrary to the conventional wisdom (or 
> nonsense) offered by armchair gardeners, particularly in terms of the 
> amount of land needed. Pimentel's article is rather brief and dry, but it 
> provides a good starting point for any realistic appraisal of the limited 
> agriculture that will be possible in the coming decades.
>
> Ferguson 's "Birth of war" is the best response I have seen to Hobbe's 
> dictum that human life in early times was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, 
> and short." I think my recommendation of Ferguson 's article is not on the 
> basis of my own preconceptions or prejudices, because for a long time my 
> reading was based on the assumption that Hobbes was right.
>
> Lee's article, "What hunters do for a living," like those of Pimentel and 
> Ferguson , can be juxtaposed by many writings that make the opposite 
> claim, or at least lead to opposite conclusions. That is to say, there are 
> writers, including professional anthropologists, who basically assert that 
> a foraging (hunter-gatherer) life is one of hard labor and 
> near-starvation. Again, though, I should explain that my own conclusions 
> come after a lengthy examination of the opposing theories. I eventually 
> came to agree with Lee's statement (on his first page) that "with a few 
> conspicuous exceptions, the hunter-gatherer subsistence base is at least 
> routine and reliable and at best surprisingly abundant."
>
> REFERENCES
>
> Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada . Canada Land Inventory.
>
> http://sis.agr.gc.ca/pls/meta/web_maps?mapgroup=all&lang=en
>
> Ferguson , R. B. (2003, July/August). The birth of war. Natural History. 
> http://iweb.tntech.edu/kosburn/history-444/birth_of_war.htm
>
> Lee, R. B. (1968). What hunters do for a living, or, How to make out on 
> scarce resources. In R. B. Lee and I. DeVore, eds., Man the Hunter. 
> Chicago : Aldine Publishing. 
> http://artsci.wustl.edu/~anthro/articles/lee_1968_1.pdf
>
> Pimentel, D. (1984). Energy flows in agricultural and natural ecosystems. 
> CIHEAM (International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic 
> Studies). http://ressources.ciheam.org/om/pdf/s07/CI010841.pdf
>
> Peter Goodchild is the author of Survival Skills of the North American 
> Indians, published by Chicago Review Press. His email address is odonatus 
> {at} live.com.
>
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