Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

I'll just respond all at once :-)

This isn't the piece u referred to but it's recent: http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/11/breakthrough-documentary-exposes-severe-arctic-methane-threat.html
Also Climate Change, Agriculture, & Food Security at http://ccafs.cgiar.org/

Frances Moore Lappe tweeted that In 2013/14 output of grain for livestock expected to grow 4x faster thn foodgrain, tho abt 1.3B people lack calories http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/csdb/en/ . Odd I didn't know I wasn't following her but fixed that quick. I'm @NetNewsBuzz with 3,000 following me. Oh and I agree, we can't feed 7 billion NOW, and Frances originally pointed out years ago that the reason isn't lack of food but the system that makes it too expensive and people too poor. (again Livingontheland)

More on Fukushima (since John is not exaggerating):
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/10430590/Decommissioning-Fukushima-how-Japan-will-remove-nuclear-fuel-rods-from-damaged-reactor.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/11/world/asia/removing-fuel-rods-poses-new-risks-at-crippled-nuclear-plant-in-japan.html?_r=0

I recall reading Seymour a few years ago and he was pretty good.
http://www.bookfinder.com/
Title The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It
Title The Self-Sufficient Gardener: A Complete Guide to Growing and Preserving All Your Own Food
Title The Forgotten Arts and Crafts

paul tradingpost@lobo.net
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]'On 11/11/2013 5:52 PM, John D'hondt wrote:

Hi Paul, comments underneath here

Good discussion! What you're pointing out there, John, is a most
sensible approach to agriculture, which is NOT "one size fits all". Of
course you wouldn't know that from most gardening books and "experts".
Too many variations in soil, climate, location, markets, traditions etc.
And certainly there are places where livestock work best, and I use aged
manure when I can get it. But I join Frances Lappe & many others who
oppose the enormous waste of declining resources for excessive and
unnecessary constant consumption of meat. It may be a lot worse here.
What we have now is CAFOs, confined animal feeding operations, that are
wrong in all the worst ways, and put extreme demands on water and fossil
fuel resources that could instead feed the hungry billion or so. Most of
our corn and grains goes to feed cattle, not people. Which is nothing
like free range beef etc grazing where crops are impractical.

Of course I agree with Farncis Lappe and yourself that the way most beef is 
produced is horrible and wastefull. I also think that the CAFOs are located 
far from the feed producing areas and that the manure piling up there is not 
being returned to the plant growing areas. This makes it much worse.
However, I am not an optimist that we will ever feed 7 or 9 billion people 
sustainably no matter what we do. I think I mentioned that before but as a 
young biologist some few years ago. (It was just the start that computers 
came into use for less than back breaking prices.) A few of us young Turks 
tried to calculate how many people this planet could sustainably feed. The 
figure we arrived at was a lot smaller than the present day population. It 
was oil that allowed our numbers to rise above that. Nowadays we can use 20 
(and often much more) energy units to produce 1 unit of food energy. This is 
only possible by destroying the food producing capacity of the planet long 
term and wiping out other species.

You mention "not smart to get rid of the ruminants, plow up the land and
sow corn or soy." I agree again. Plowing up millions of acres - whole
states - in our Midwest caused the great Dust Bowl in the 1930's. It was
home to endless bison herds before the govt extermination (bison AND
plains indians) in the late 1800's. What was behind all that tragedy?
Wealthy land speculators of course.

And things have not changed. I think there are two enormous problems capable 
of doing us all in a lot faster than most expect.
A few months ago there was an article in Arctic News that gave convincing 
arguments that this phenomenon alone could wipe out most life in the 
Northern hemisphere in less than 20 years. They gave the Southern hemisphere 
another 15 years extra. Are we doing anything about it? Not at all. With the 
arctic getting ice free more drilling is already taking place. And of course 
there are people like the governor of Texas who think that : "Wind is a 
finite resource and if we go in for harvesting it the temperature will 
rise." Funny if it were not so sad.

The second major problem at the moment is Fukushima that you probably don't 
hear that much about on the regular news any more. The whole Northern 
Pacific is already so contaminated with their radiocative waste that it will 
mean the end of all fish consumption from there before long. The worst thing 
is thousands of tons of mox fuel hanging from the fourth floor of a 
collapsing building there. There is talk now of trying to get all those fuel 
rods down before it becomes completely impossible to cool them with the 
building sagging further every day. I don't think there is any expert on 
such matters who for a second believes that is going to end well. The 
corruption there is huge. The actual workers are driven like slaves almost 
with minimal pay. And the workforce has halved since the accident happened 
two years ago.
One mistake and we will have enough plutonium everywhere to kill us all in 6 
months. An individual needs only a micro gram inside him to finish him in 
that time span.

Do we really need to waste time on what politicians are talking about? Or on 
further expanding the drone industry to enable us to bomb more poor people 
faster? The wealthy speculators are still thinking about fast profits only.

On self sufficiency I might add that we don't aim for that ourselves. We
feel that through history humans have been tribal and cooperative, with
some specialization of labor which is far more efficient than individual
self sufficiency. Community self sufficiency - partially - is more
practical. We wish we could do more local barter but this is Tea Party
Central, sorry to say. Total self sufficiency is a myth. We can feed
several markets but we can't build the van to get there .

Self sufficiency is often misunderstood. I use it as defined by John 
Seymour. Of course nobody can be self sufficient. We all need others. But 
that too is not the same everywhere. Where I come from (Belgium) I had many 
friends and colleagues who were handy at many things. I know professors in 
psychology whose hobby is building and MDs who like to weld. Life for us 
here in Ireland would be impossible if we were not fairly handy. We live 
quite isolated. Your car does not want to start in the morning? You better 
try to find out why and fix it for if you try to ring an expert to come and 
do it for you chances are you will not be driving anywhere for days. Hole in 
the roof? No problem if you have six months time and can live with all those 
buckets and pails to catch the drip (this is Ireland!)
About a year ago my wife dislocated a finger in a fall. It was pointing 60 
degrees the wrong way and it was very painful. I could have put her in the 
car and driven to the hospital (half an hour) and sit there waithing for an 
hour or more (up to ten hours has been known) to find a doctor to fix it. 
Her whole hand was starting to swell already when I first saw it. So I gave 
here an hanky to bite on and snapped the finger back in place. 2 seconds 
work and pain gone. And with a bit of home made salve the swelling was gone 
in half an hour. Best part was that we had a reason for a good kiss.
The farming aspect of self suficiency is similar. You better produce 
everything you can yourself for the moment you have to buy something it can 
cost you  a week's or a month's income for something you can do yourself for 
just the time and effort it takes you.
Also if you are into alternative healing as I am there are things you can 
not find anywhere for sale. I bought a good supply of lye just today (I can 
make that myself too if I were really pushed) with the idea to get back into 
ormus (sea milk) making. I have the idea that this might be one of the few 
things that can reduce damage from radioactive contamination. And it might 
also help plants to grow better when sunlight is poor. I don't intend to go 
selling ormus for this would be practising medicine without a license and 
very illegal. But I am wiling to give anybody interested the recipe for 
free. And if anybody comes asking me for some I'll give that away too.

This is hard writing for me that touches on so many critical issues. And
I need to finish clearing the old tomato beds to start repairing that
greenhouse for winter. It won't get done by wishing.

I fully understand we are in winter already and that does not make life 
easier.
All the best,
John