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  • From: Tripp Tibbetts <slowfoodguy@yahoo.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] if there were a benefit to deforestation...
  • Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2010 16:43:02 -0800 (PST)

There isn't, but this is pretty cool.
 
"The discoveries have demolished ideas that soils in the upper Amazon were
too poor to support extensive agriculture..."
 
Or maybe not.  The soils may have indeed been too poor for agriculture, but
maybe not for indigenous agroforestry systems.
 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/05/amazon-dorado-satellite-discovery
 
Cheers!



The best fertilizer is the gardener's shadow.
-Chinese proverb
 



>From slowfoodguy@yahoo.com Wed Jan 6 21:20:44 2010
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Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2010 18:20:42 -0800 (PST)
From: Tripp Tibbetts <slowfoodguy@yahoo.com>
To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
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Subject: [permaculture] New advanced pre-Columbian civilization discovered
in the upper Amazon basin
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I'm giving this a new subject heading.



The best fertilizer is the gardener's shadow.
-Chinese proverb
 

--- On Thu, 1/7/10, Tripp Tibbetts <slowfoodguy@yahoo.com> wrote:


From: Tripp Tibbetts <slowfoodguy@yahoo.com>
Subject: [permaculture] if there were a benefit to deforestation...
To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Thursday, January 7, 2010, 12:43 AM


There isn't, but this is pretty cool.
 
"The discoveries have demolished ideas that soils in the upper Amazon were
too poor to support extensive agriculture..."
 
Or maybe not.  The soils may have indeed been too poor for agriculture, but
maybe not for indigenous agroforestry systems.
 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/05/amazon-dorado-satellite-discovery
 
Cheers!



The best fertilizer is the gardener's shadow.
-Chinese proverb
 


     
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>From venaurafarm@bellsouth.net Wed Jan 6 21:23:16 2010
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Tripp Tibbetts wrote:
> There isn't, but this is pretty cool.
>
> "The discoveries have demolished ideas that soils in the upper Amazon were
> too poor to support extensive agriculture..."
>
> Or maybe not. The soils may have indeed been too poor for agriculture, but
> maybe not for indigenous agroforestry systems.
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/05/amazon-dorado-satellite-discovery

I keep hearing that Amazon rainforest soils are not good and fertility
is difficult to sustain, thus slash and burn agriculture. But...the
multinational agribusiness corporations exploiting those lands do not
seem to have much trouble growing forage crops for their cattle
industry, soybeans for export, probably various grains and sugar cane
for food and biofuel. Of course they may well be using conventional
chemical-based farming. There are also delicious Brazilian oranges (I
think a type of Valencia or indigeneous Brazilian variety similar to
that) for export to the US (I wish we could get them around here).
The pictures I have seen show a great looking friable red soil.
So, does it need remineralization? Can it grow nitrogen fixing crops
endlessly in rotation with others? What about large scale heavily
mulched raised bed broadacre farming. Brazil has a very fine machine too
industry with the ability to design and prototype tractor-based
machinery that could create, plant, harvest and maintain miles of these
beds using such a farming system. I would think strip cropping could be
done with this raised bed system. Alternate rows of beds would be
planted, harvested then planted in companion cover+N2Fix crop as the
adjoining bed/row was in the opposite cropping scheme, either cover (for
biomass, increase soil OM, nutrients, N) or crop. This ought to work
great for sugar cane. Build harvesters able to work long rows of raised
beds. Those South American countries have some excellent soil. I know
people with relatives in Venezuela who farm on incredibly good land and
are a major produce supplier for the wholesale market there. So what is
the real potential for the red soils in Brazil. Can they be improved to
make long term permanent notill heavy mulch farming possible, and
sustainable, returning minerals to the soil from deep mining cover
crops. Do any of the permaculture folks in this list know about this
from visits they have made to that region for PC convergences, workshops
or other events? Obviously integrate the livestock industry with the
cropping industry. Return the manure and its nutrients to the soil
as microbially-rich compost tea or thin slurry. Feed the raised bed rows
growing cover crops with this, plow the cover under then plant the cash
crop as monocrop or companion crop. There are many fascinating
possibiities here. Interesting to sit here in central NC and daydream
about miles of raised beds in the Amazon.

From this fascinating article:

"New satellite imagery and fly-overs have revealed more than 200 huge
geometric earthworks carved in the upper Amazon basin near Brazil's
border with Bolivia.

Spanning 155 miles, the circles, squares and other geometric shapes form
a network of avenues, ditches and enclosures built long before
Christopher Columbus set foot in the new world. Some date to as early as
200 AD, others to 1283.

Scientists who have mapped the earthworks believe there may be another
2,000 structures beneath the jungle canopy, vestiges of vanished societies.

The structures, many of which have been revealed by the clearance of
forest for agriculture, point to a "sophisticated pre-Columbian
monument-building society", says the journal Antiquity, which has
published the research.

The article adds: "This hitherto unknown people constructed earthworks
of precise geometric plan connected by straight orthogonal roads. The
'geoglyph culture' stretches over a region more than 250km across, and
exploits both the floodplains and the uplands … we have so far seen no
more than a tenth of it."

The structures were created by a network of trenches about 36ft (nearly
11 metres) wide and several feet deep, lined by banks up to 3ft high.
Some were ringed by low mounds containing ceramics, charcoal and stone
tools. It is thought they were used for fortifications, homes and
ceremonies, and could have maintained a population of 60,000 – more
people than in many medieval European cities.

The discoveries have demolished ideas that soils in the upper Amazon
were too poor to support extensive agriculture, says Denise Schaan, a
co-author of the study and anthropologist at the Federal University of
Pará, in Belém, Brazil. She told National Geographic: "We found this
picture is wrong. And there is a lot more to discover in these places,
it's never-ending. Every week we find new structures."

Many of the mounds were symmetrical and slanted to the north, prompting
theories that they had astronomical significance.

Researchers were especially surprised that earthworks in floodplains and
uplands were of a similar style, suggesting they were all built by the
same culture."

LL






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