permaculture

["Dylan Ford" <dford@suffolk.lib.ny.us>]

Scott and Scott,

        Re: corn monoculture: Using sustainable techniques such as organics,
biodynamics, radionics, Maynard Murrays Sea Energy Agriculture, Ormus, etc.,
corn can be grown (partnered with legumes) as a soil improvement crop. There
is certainly nothing in the corporate chemical factory-farming that can lead
us back
from the eve of destruction. But corn does not have to be a  soil-raping,
nitrogen-junky crop - only the corn grown the way they grow it.

It is promising to see that after thirty + years big business has caught on
to
the potential for making alcohol from waste products. A dear friend of mine,
the Artist and Naturalist Don Eckelberry used to say that when they found a
way to meter the sun, nationally we'd have solar in a year.

And it is
promising that of the 4 or 5 hundred billion dollars pissed-away by these
clowns in Washington, 7 billion went out as a corporate welfare bribe to get
these corporate creeps interested in this old alcohol technology. I'm still
glad it's happening. As someone once said, "Hydrogen is the fuel of the
future, and it always will be."

And as the article says, Ethanol does not need to be manufactured from
 corn anymore (petrochemical corn which has been planted, fertilized,
tended, poisoned,
harvested, processed and distilled using petroleum guzzling machinery). All
of the old studies on ethanol-economics have been conducted by corrupt
corporate entities looking to pick some more pockets. Find a study that
includes using solar stills. You won't.

I remember an article that appeared in Mother Earth News about thirty years
ago, about a farmer who could not get a bushel price for his corn that
equalled what it had cost him to grow it. He decided to try to make alcohol
at home, refined with a primitive solar still. He demonstrated that his
cars, tractors and other farm machinery (those with carburetors) and other
internal combustion machines (including his oil burners) could be run on an
alcohol/water mix of 60 or 70% percent alcohol to 30 to 40% water.

These machines usually had to be started using a standard fuel, and some had
to be refitted with different nozzles, tanks, etc., but as soon as the
engine was hot it could be switched over to to the alcohol/water mix.
(I don't know if this remains true with fuel injection, catalytic converters
etc. Probably why the cars were switched over.) And after he had strained
the liquid off his mash, he was able to sell the mash at a superior profit
for pig feed, as it not only was super digestable and nourishing, but it
kept the consumers docile. At any rate, he was arrested and had his
fuel-making
equipment seized by the ATF revenooers, charged with boot-legging.
Eventually he got permits. (He also eventually began to sell solar
collection units. When skeptics would ask him what he would do when there
was no sunshine, he'd say, "I use moonshine!)

Only ethanol that is to be mixed with gasoline must be super-distilled to
100%, and the companies that did the studies in the past had no intention of
letting consumers know that they could produce an adequate fuel for cars or
oil burners that could be made at home, or locally, out of garbage starch
and sugar.

Any organic material that includes sugar and starch may be processed to make
alcohol. This country discards countless tons of spoiled (and edible) food
each day
(along with yard trash, ) valuable organic material that must be stuck into
landfills after lumping it in with all manner of non-biodegradable and toxic
trash. If it were separated out and collected and taken to small local
depots it could be made into alcohol without the help of agribiz, and then
the dregs municipally composted or vermicomposted. And even sold and
returned to fields that grow corn. We collect the garbage anyway, and it has
been demonstrated that people will separate their trash if they are
encouraged or compelled to. A website and some figures from there:

http://www.metro-region.org/article.cfm?articled=5563

Twenty-seven percent of the food produced for human consumption in the U.S.
is thrown out as waste, equaling 48 million tons annually.

Fifty-three percent of disposed food is fresh fruits and vegetables, grains
and milk.

When counting only the uneaten portions of meals and waste from food
preparation (such as produce trimmings), Americans throw away an average of
163 pounds of food per person per year.

Putting this good, usable food into landfills costs Americans $50 million
each year.

Over 190,000 tons of food waste was landfilled in 2002, constituting 16
percent of the total waste stream.



Little wonder the corporate folks finally saw the potential here, for making
the people pay once more for this material.

There was a time in this country when travelling by train was a real choice,
before (as legend has it) the automobile and petrol companies bought up the
railroads and scuttled them. People will use mass transit if it is safe,
clean, convenient, and affordable. But rebuilding our railroads to reduce
auto- and truck-emissions would require electing folks with the will and
drive to do it, farsighted environmentalists who's IQs rise above room
temperature, conservationists with the imagination and vision to begin
offering sane options to citizen consumers and shippers.

 And locally salvaging the resources and commodities out of our vast waste
stream for the public good.

If I may quote from my web page,

    "Alcohol is not the answer, bio-diesel is not the answer, windpower is
not the answer, hydro-power is not the answer, solar energy is not the
answer, geo-thermal is not the answer, hydrogen is not the answer; It is
only all of these things together that begins to be the answer."

We must stop looking for the silver bullet, and as a people take second and
third advantage of every loose calorie of energy we are currently spending a
great deal of money to squander or turn into additional pollution. Even if
that
means (for now) that corporate middlemen are part of the deal. dylan





Dylan Ford is the author of the proposal at www.ideaforpresident.com , a
website devoted to an idea that could provide an avenue to address pollution
issues, food safety, social justice, prison reform and healthcare.