permaculture

[Dieter Brand <diebrand@yahoo.com>]

Larry,
 
in the South of Portugal, yellow lupines (with yellow flowers) are grown for 
N-fixing and white lupines are grown for eating.  Both are sown in October or 
November as soon as there is enough soil humidity after the dry season.  The 
small (black and white) seeds of the yellow lupines can be broadcast into the 
stubble without too much losses, even though farmers usually plough before 
sowing.  The white lupines (with larger white seeds) need to be covered by 
soil or they will be eaten by worms.  Both can be cut for mulching or 
ploughed under as green manure at flowering in May.  For harvesting the 
seeds, you need to wait until about July. The white lupine seeds are pickled 
and eaten as a light snack when drinking beer.  Fava beans are also grown in 
the same time period.  Fava beens need to be sown deeper than white lupines 
(1 to 2 inches) or else black birds and craws will pull them from the soil 
when germinating.
 
Dieter Brand
Portugal


--- On Tue, 12/8/09, Lawrence F. London, Jr. <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net> 
wrote:


From: Lawrence F. London, Jr. <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>
Subject: [permaculture] Lupines and their uses.
To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Tuesday, December 8, 2009, 10:56 PM



I once did a little homebrew literature search on lupines. They
appear to have special uses on a permaculture site (that is what a 
_farm_ should be called), especially for nitrogen fixation and
building populations of beneficial microbes in the soil.

I would like to know more about the lupine varieties grown around the 
world and how they are used and what the benefits are from cultivation 
of this crop.

I noticed a picture of lovely lupine in bloom in the article on Keeping 
Phosphorous On the Farm at: 
http://permaculture.org.au/2009/07/23/phosphorus-matters-ii-keeping-phosphorus-on-farms/


On another note, after looking at the robust, beautiful, finely crafted
Permaculture Research Institute's website, http://permaculture.org.au,
I am impressed with the fact that the Australians, and New Zealanders & 
Tasmanians (ex. Bill Mollison and the Soil & Health Library) are way 
ahead of here on the North American continend in the arena of
development of the permaculture movement, networking within that 
movement, development of information resources for the public and 
possibly educational resources to include practitioner and certified 
designer training. I think they are way ahead of us in the Scandinavian 
countries and the UK and in much of eastern and western Europe. Of 
course there is great potential for the spread of the Permaculture 
movement and its methodologies in Russia as well.

I think we need to get with the program on this side of the big pond.
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Subject: [permaculture] The Tragedy of the Himalayas By BRYAN WALSH/Times
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The Tragedy of the Himalayas
By BRYAN WALSH / LEH Friday, Dec. 04, 2009
NEXT
ttp://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1929071_1929070_1945667-1,00.html


The Indian town of Leh (altitude 11,500 ft.) receives almost no
precipitation and depends on Himalayan glaciers to supply most of its
water.



The road to Khardung La begins in the Indian town of Leh on the
northwestern fringe of the Himalayas. Exhaust-spewing army trucks
rattle up the side of dry rock, past Buddhist monasteries clinging to
the craggy mountainside and alongside small farms barely scraping
fertility from the earth. Khardung La, the highest motorable mountain
pass in the world, is more than 18,000 ft. above sea level, the air
so thin that just standing there a few minutes leaves you feeling as
if your head might lift off like a balloon. But if 65-year-old Syed
Iqbal Hasnain is bothered by the altitude, he isn't showing it. The
Indian glaciologist hops lightly from a car and walks to the edge of
the pass, beneath fluttering Buddhist prayer flags. The rock is
dusted with early winter snow, and there might not be much more this
season or next, he says.
Reports from Leh indicate that precipitation has dropped during the
past quarter-century as temperatures have risen, a possible
consequence of climate change. But the real threat is to the heart of
the greater Himalayas and the vast Tibetan Plateau, where more than
40,000 sq. mi. of glaciers hold water in the largest collection of
land ice outside the polar regions. "These glaciers are central to
the region," says Hasnain, looking over Khardung La. "If we don't
have snow and ice here, people will die."
(See pictures of Himalayan glaciers under threat.)
Scientists call it the third pole - but when it comes to clear and
present threats from climate change, it may rank first. The
high-altitude glaciers of the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau -
which cover parts of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan and China - are
the water tower of Asia. When the ice thaws and the snow melts every
spring, the glaciers birth the great rivers of the region, the
mightiest river system in the world: the Ganges, the Indus, the
Brahmaputra, the Mekong, the Yellow, the Yangtze. Together, these
rivers give material and spiritual sustenance to 3 billion people,
nearly half of the world's population - and all are nursed by
Himalayan ice. Monsoons come and go, filling the rivers at times and
then leaving them lethargic, but the ice melt has always been regular
and dependable in a region where water - or the lack of it - defines
civilization. "This isn't like the polar ice caps," says Shubash
Lohani, an officer with the Nepal program of the World Wildlife Fund
(WWF). "You have a huge population downstream from the Himalayas who
are dependent on it."
(Watch TIME's video "Creating New Land for Climate Refugees in Bangladesh.")
It's a population that is stressed for water, even if the ice doesn't
disappear. According to the International Water Management Institute
(IWMI), most of South Asia is already in a state of water scarcity,
as is much of China. At the same time, the population in this part of
the world is set to expand, even as economic growth increases
competition for water used in agriculture and industry.


Regardless of the impact of climate change, there is a widening gap
between water supplies and needs. In fact, a new report from the
international consulting group McKinsey & Co. estimates that by 2030,
India alone will have only 50% of the water that it needs under a
business-as-usual scenario. Nor is Asia the only region that will
grapple with water scarcity in a warmer world: the McKinsey report
estimates that the globe will have 40% less water than it needs by
2030 if nothing is done to change current consumption patterns. "The
countries where water is already scarce are going to be the ones
really vulnerable to climate change," says Colin Chartres, director
general of the IWMI.
)

That makes the security of the Himalayan glaciers all the more
important for the region and their potential loss all the more
threatening. While it's difficult to get a comprehensive assessment
of the tens of thousands of glaciers in the Himalayas - all above
10,000 ft. - independent scientific studies indicate that the third
pole is melting fast, probably because of warming temperatures
brought on by climate change. Since 1960, almost a fifth of the
Indian Himalayas' ice coverage has disappeared, and the 2007
global-warming assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change judged that glaciers in the Himalayas were "receding faster
than at any other place in the world." If global warming goes
unchecked, the Himalayan melt will certainly get worse. This year
Chinese researchers projected a 43% decrease in glaciated area by
2070. If that happens, the impact could be catastrophic. Losing
Himalayan meltwater would only stress the remaining resources
further. High-mountain states like Nepal and Bhutan could suffer
flash floods as glacial lakes gave way under the rush of accelerated
melting. And since the rivers of the Himalayas are shared by nuclear
powers that have engaged in violent conflict over the past
half-century - India, Pakistan and China - the threat of a war over
water can't be denied. "The warming of the past 20 years is getting
more and more intense," says Yao Tandong, head of China's Institute
of Tibetan Plateau Research. "If warming continues, [the impact] will
be even more serious."

Whether the warming will continue is largely up to us. Next week,
representatives from more than 190 nations will meet in Copenhagen,
where they will work to hammer out a new, more equitable - and more
effective - global climate deal. Expectations for the summit have
been tamped down in recent weeks, in part because of sluggishness on
the part of the U.S. Senate, which has yet to act on a bill that
would cap and reduce the country's carbon emissions. There is some
good news: President Obama will be in Copenhagen, and the U.S. is
pledging to cut carbon emissions 17% below 2005 levels by 2020, while
China is promising to improve its energy efficiency. But now is the
time to make the hard decisions that will set the world on a cleaner
path, one that gives us a chance to avoid truly dangerous climate
change. The potential loss of Himalayan ice is by no means the only
threat from global warming, but it's one that can be seen in real
time, with our own eyes. It can be hard to imagine the amount of
energy it takes to melt a mountain glacier; it will take even more
imagination to stop the melting. "We must have a global policy to
reverse this trend," says Madhav Kumar Nepal, the Prime Minister of
Nepal, whose impoverished country will be an early victim of warming.
"This question is one of survival."

Scenes from a Warmer World
There's a saying about Leh that "the passes are so high and the land
is so barren, only a dear friend or a serious enemy will reach here."
That truth overlooks the stark beauty of this town of 27,000 in
India's mountainous Ladakh region, but it accurately captures the
harsh climate. At 10,000 ft. and surrounded by even higher mountains,
Leh is in a cold desert, receiving less than 5 in. of precipitation a
year. Young Buddhist monks in training carry tanks of water to the
towering monasteries poised in cut-rock valleys. The region is
permanently water-stressed, and the growth of tourism there has only
stretched resources thinner. Without snowmelt from the mountains
above and the Indus River, which flows south of the town, it's
difficult to imagine anything living there at all. "Leh has always
been dependent on the glacier for our livelihood," says Nisa Khatoon,
who runs the WWF office in Leh. "When there is less snowfall, less
ice, there is a water problem for Leh."

That's exactly what seems to be happening in Leh, whose people, along
with those in other high-altitude regions of the Himalayas, are the
first in the world to feel the impacts of ice loss. According to a
study by the French environmental group GERES, average winter
temperatures in the region have risen 1C, and snowfall has generally
declined over the past 25 years. Although relatively little
scientific study has been done on the cumulative effect of that
warming on the ice and snowpack in the region - a problem that crops
up repeatedly in research on the Himalayas, where sheer
inaccessibility makes science expensive and dangerous - elders in the
region say the ice they remember from childhood is long gone, having
receded up the mountains, and water isn't as plentiful as it once was.

The community has been forced to adapt in unexpected ways. Chewang
Norphel, a 74-year-old engineer who has lived in the region his
entire life, has been building what he terms artificial glaciers,
stone cisterns that can gather and store what meltwater exists.
Because he keeps his "glaciers" in the shade - and because they're
small, less than 30,000 sq. ft. - the water stays frozen after the
winter and can be tapped in the spring to irrigate the farming
villages that surround Leh. His invention is a way to compensate for
the area's fluctuating water levels, but it's no replacement for
glacial ice, which locals say is vanishing. "I have seen glaciers
disappear in my own life," says Norphel. "I don't need the scientific
data. I am the scientific data."
The ice loss is visible elsewhere too, including on the world's
tallest mountain, in neighboring Nepal. The famous Khumbu glacier,
near the end of the trail to the base camp for Mount Everest, has
receded 5 km since Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary first ascended
the peak in 1953. Sherpas who guide climbers up the mountain today
say the trekking has gotten more treacherous and the trail harder to
predict as warming has stolen the ice. More dangerous are the risks
of bursting glacial lakes and flash flooding because of glaciers
weakened by warming. The early stages of Himalayan melt will result
in an increase of water flow and pressure within glaciers; when
glaciers give way, releasing hundreds of thousands of gallons of
water per second, entire villages could be wiped out in an instant,
as happened at the glacial lake of Dig Tsho in 1985. "This threat is
not theoretical for us," says Dawa Sherpa, a veteran Everest trekking
guide. "This is real, and it will happen more and more. We don't see
a very bright future."

In Nepal it's easy to gauge the threat of warming, where the
vanishing glaciers can be seen with one's own eyes. But downstream,
in the farmland and cities of India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and China,
the consequences are both more dire and less evident. According to
the estimate of an Indian researcher, melt from the glaciers of the
Himalayas supplies the rivers of Asia with more than 300 million cu.
ft. of water every year - as much as 50% of the water flow of some
major rivers (like the Indus, which irrigates India and Pakistan),
according to the International Center for Integrated Mountain
Development, an advocacy group based in Kathmandu, Nepal. Although
more-rapid melting from warming would increase that water flow in the
short term, potentially aiding agriculture, it would be like making
ever larger withdrawals out of a limited bank account: eventually it
will run dry. Given how fickle the monsoon can be - and the
additional risk of climate change weakening those vital rains - the
water tower of the Himalayas becomes all the more important. "It is
the ice melt from these glaciers that sustains irrigation," says
Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute. "The melting
of these glaciers is the most massive threat to food security that we
have ever projected."


It is also a threat to global security. In developing nations such as
China and India, growing prosperity means ever greater demand for -
and potential battles over - water. For countries that have long
grappled with famine, that's a frightening possibility and one that
could trigger international conflict. The rivers of the Himalayas
crisscross international borders, while the mountains are shared by
several nations. Already China has come under fire from its neighbors
for damming rivers that eventually flow into other nations. And while
security experts point out that cross-border conflict over water has
been relatively rare - even India and Pakistan have so far managed to
share the Indus - water scarcity has frequently led to internal civil
conflict. In a water-stressed region with nuclear capabilities, it
could be disastrous to let the most valuable commodity become rarer
still. "Climate change is a real specter that we don't fully
understand yet," says the IWMI's Chartres. "The impacts already seem
to be stronger than we expected, and we could have real difficulties
in the developing world."

The Search for Science
The trouble is that while melting glaciers remain a leading indicator
of climate change, determining exactly how quickly they're melting
has been difficult, especially in the remote Himalayas. Data on the
ground remain thin, and records may go back only a few decades or are
all but nonexistent in the case of many glaciers. Nor does it help
that the nations that share the Himalayas do so jealously. India does
not allow Chinese researchers to visit its glaciers, China is
sensitive because of concerns over Tibet, and India and Pakistan
cooperate little on science or almost anything else.

There is, unsurprisingly, active scientific disagreement about the
impact of climate change on the glaciers. An Indian-government-backed
report published in October claimed that many Indian glaciers are
stable or that the rate of retreat has slowed in recent years,
despite clear warming. Critics pointed out that the report was not
peer-reviewed in a scientific journal and had major data gaps. But
the lack of clarity makes it that much more difficult for
policymakers to craft the right response. "The Himalayan data just
isn't there," says Richard Armstrong, a senior research scientist at
the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., who is
skeptical that the glaciers are receding rapidly. "These glaciers are
at a very high altitude, and what precipitation they get tends to
fall as snow, which can add to their mass. There's a tendency to
oversimplify."

What's needed is cold, hard data in a cold, hard place. That's what
Syed Iqbal Hasnain is after. A senior fellow at the Energy and
Resources Institute in New Delhi, he began his career as a
hydrologist before switching to the more demanding field of
glaciology. For years he and a small band of students have climbed
Himalayan glaciers, like the East Rathong, measuring them and
tracking their changes. It's hard and expensive work - "not something
Indian youth prefer as a profession," he says with a chuckle - but
he's managed to add to the small body of scientific literature on
Himalayan ice. Now he's embarking on a joint project with the eminent
climatologist V. Ramanathan of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography
and Eric Wilcox, an atmospheric scientist at NASA, to determine
exactly how quickly some benchmark glaciers in the Indian Himalayas
are melting. Hasnain's team will do the fieldwork, driving stakes
with global-positioning-system capability into glaciers to let the
researchers know year by year how the ice is changing. NASA will be
able to augment that research with satellite data. The team will also
test Ramanathan's hypothesis that black carbon - the heavy black soot
from diesel combustion and wood-burning that pollutes local air -
could play a large part in the melting of the Himalayas in addition
to more traditional greenhouse gases. "Putting all this together, we
can begin to get a reasonable estimate of the regional melt," says

An Agenda for Copenhagen
For Hasnain, who has devoted his career to studying the dynamics of
Himalayan ice, establishing a firm benchmark will help clear up the
uncertainty that still clouds the subject. But he has little doubt
that the glaciers are melting fast, and he knows saving them will be
vital for India, as well as the rest of Asia and the world. That will
mean reducing carbon emissions. "The debate is over," he says. "We
know the science. We see the threat. The time for action is now."

The place for action will be Copenhagen, the Danish capital, where
diplomats from will meet from Dec. 7 to Dec. 18 to discuss a new
global climate treaty. With the Kyoto Protocol - a flawed deal that
the U.S. repudiated and places few demands on major developing
nations - set to expire in 2012, time is running out to approve a
more effective and equitable agreement, one that could put the world
on the path to a safer future in which water will be more plentiful
and damaging storms and other natural disasters less frequent. Global
CO2 emissions rose 31% from 1997 to 2008, and emissions from China
alone, now the world's biggest emitter, have more than doubled.
Instead of leveling off, as many skeptics have argued, the observed
effects of climate change, including glacial melt and species loss,
have largely accelerated since 1997. "Global warming hasn't paused or
declined or reversed," says Eric Steig, a climatologist at the
University of Washington and a co-author of a just-released climate
science update. "There is the possibility that the climate system
could continue to warm to the highest end of the envelope of climate
projections."

But turning back the momentum of climate change will be a momentous
undertaking. A 2008 study by Ramanathan concluded that even if we
halt the growth of greenhouse gas emissions immediately, we're
committed to 4.3F of warming over the next several decades. While the
global community, including the G-8 in a statement last year, has
agreed not to allow the global temperature to rise more than 3.6F
above preindustrial levels, we're already at 1.37F.

The longer we wait to change, the more carbon we add to the
atmosphere and the greater the chance that we'll be locking ourselves
into truly catastrophic warming. At Copenhagen and beyond, the
mission to halt climate change must be led by the U.S. - though the
major developing nations that will be responsible for most of the
world's carbon emissions must follow closely. "This isn't an
environmental problem. It's a humanitarian problem global in scope,"
says Frances Beinecke, president of the environmental-advocacy group
Natural Resources Defense Council. "The longer we wait to act, the
more expensive those changes will be."

If that's not enough, there are any number of other reasons to cut
carbon: to create clean-energy jobs, to break our dependence on
foreign oil, to cut pollution, to save money through energy
efficiency. But ultimately we need to act because if we fail to do
so, the science tells us that we are committing ourselves to an
unstable and dangerous world in which geographic, economic and
national security - not to mention the health of all earth's species
- may be at stake. There are glimpses of that different world in the
Himalayas, where warming has happened faster than elsewhere on the
planet, where a mountain as immutable as Everest is changing before
our eyes. "To me, continuing down our path is akin to committing
suicide," says Ramanathan. "But for my granddaughter, I'm optimistic
that we're going to solve these problems." If we don't act today, we
will fail to safeguard tomorrow for everyone's children.