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  • From: Marimike6@cs.com
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Poplar trees may be new draw for pig farms
  • Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 17:58:41 EST

In a message dated 12/16/2003 2:06:46 PM Eastern Standard Time, saor@ycbtal.net writes:

WHITAKERS, N.C. — After years of struggling with the dirty disposal
problem of sludge from hog waste lagoons, researchers have come up with
a possible green solution: poplar trees that suck up the waste like soda
straws.

If the procedure works well enough to be approved by state water quality
officials, it could more than cut in half the cost of closing a waste
lagoon, currently done with bulldozers and dump trunks.

"It is a simple method," said Frank Humenik, coordinator of the animal
waste management program at North Carolina State University.


Here in NC we should consider this proposal seriously. I've read your many discourses on how bad factory farms are, and the points you raise are all true. But let's get real. This is the way it's done now and no one is going to replace factory farms with something better-- better in terms of providing as much supermarket pork and making the pork producers as much money. We may not approve of it,  but these folks aren't just going to go away and die on our say so.

Listen to Frank Humenik. This spring I attended his Fourth Annual Wetlands Conference down in Wilmington, where presenters discussed the state of the art on waste conversion methods, covering maybe twenty methods of converting poultry and hog farm waste to either harmless residue or usable product. Poplars are as good a solution as any we were able to come up with..

But we waste our energy if we bark at the moon for being too bright. We could stop mercury and sulfur pollution from coal-fired smokestacks tomorrow, if we just decided to stop using electricity. Of course, that ain't going to happen either.

And to convince large-scale hog farmers they would be better world citizens by scaling back to permacultural methods....  good luck on that.  I've met a few, and that ain't going to happen either. These guys are pretty hard to convince that any new ways at all are worth thinking about, being fairly low on the volutionary ladder themselves. Humenik does as good a job as anyone in the practical research department.

So I'm impressed, if poplar plantings can remediate a decommissioned hog lagoon in only ten years. Besides, as Mr London points out, you end up with a pretty good light hardwood for furniture. I didn't know about the poplar honey, but that's alright too.

And a stand of poplars looks a lot prettier than the average old hog lagoon. They are native around here, and I have lots of seedlings coming up behind my house if you want some.

Mike Elvin
Fuquay-Varina




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