permaculture

[trevor william johnson <john2116@msu.edu>]

This past weekend i attended the organic conference in east lansing  
michingan.  the keynote speaker was Tim LaSale who is the CEO of the  
rodale institute.  he presented on research that quantifies the  
amount of carbon sequestered in the soil by using sustainable/organic  
techniques along with a tool called the roler/crimper to create a  
mulch on the top of the soil from the winters cover (i saw vetch and  
rye used).  the crops are then planted through the mulch with a no  
till seeder/transplanter.  the numbers were as high as 1500 pounds  
per acre.  he suggested tat the government should create a program  
that pays farmers to use these techniques and sequester carbon rather  
than sell whatever they are growing for less than the cost of  
production through subsidies.    he was really inspiring and i am now  
going to create my own version of the roller crimper to use in a 2.5  
acre community garden i participate in.

Regarding Pimental,  LaSale quoted him a few times but not for data,  
just for conversations about the roller crimper.  i have found  
pimental to be a double edges sword in sustainable ag.  i have seen  
his ethanol research and read what he has to say in regards to coal  
and it is clearly crap.  However just like an allelopathic plant like  
the black walnut...nothing is all bad or all good and pimentel  
clearly has two distinct faces on sustainability.  does anyone on the  
list know pimental and is willing to comment on his character?

trevor
On Mar 4, 2008, at 9:43 AM, Harmon Seaver wrote:

> Darren Doherty wrote:
>
> > People might like to know that one of my Marin County (CA) clients  
> > has
> > sponsored Dr David Pimental of Cornell University (through CFA) to  
> > conduct a
> > wide ranging monitoring study on a range of different methods  
> > applied by CFA
> > farmers (across the US) that they use to increase Soil Organic  
> > Carbon (such
> > as Managment Intensive Grazing or MIG, Keyline Plowing, Soil  
> > Amendments,
> > Compost/Compost Teas, and just about everything else that we  
> > think, but have
> > not necessarily quantifiably, increases SOC.
>
>    Your clients need to be informed that David Pimental was exposed by
> the investigative journalist Jack Anderson as being a fraud who was
> actually drawing a regular salary from Mobile Oil when he did his  
> phoney
> studies on ethanol production. Pimental even admitted it during a  
> radio
> interview. David Blume, in his great book, "Alcohol Can Be A Gas",  
> which
> is about the permaculture way to energy independence, spends some time
> exposing the fraud in Pimental's "study". It's also quite telling that
> Pimental publishes a lot of his work in a "peer-reviewed" journal that
> is the mouthpiece of the mining and coal industry, and, indeed,  
> Pimental
> says himself that coal is the real answer to all our energy needs.
>
>
> --
> Harmon Seaver
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