permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

http://plenty.150m.com/Archives/SANET_Archives/44-0056.html

Micro-Farming nutrient paradigm (was RE: micro-farming in the Philippines)

From: Lion Kuntz (lionkuntz@email.com)
Date: Sat Apr 08 2000 - 18:56:47 EDT

Next message: Lion Kuntz: "Lion's Micro-farming verified websites"

Please visit the World Wide Web site:
http://homepages.msn.com/VolunteerSt/lifesaviors/microfarm5/
for a better understanding of how to think about nutrient
cycles in micro-farming.

By weight, the largest exports are water, carbon, oxygen, and
hydrogen. Microbial miners and earthworms can provide a lot of soluble
plant-ready minerals from
soils where they are currently locked up as insoluble forms not available
for plant intake.

The digestive acids of a rich living soil can etch and dissolve
minerals thousands of times faster than weathering processes. This is a
normal byproduct of a well
oxygenated aerobic soil growing substrate prepared in-situ by vermiculture
and other bioconversion
processes. Vermiculture can lose half or more it's nutrient value just by
moving it and exposing too
much of it to ultraviolet light and the anaerobic conditions of plastic
bagging for retail
marketing. It also loses the wormhole structure when it is screened. Yet
vermicompost has superior
growing characteristics even after this abuse.

Scientific tests at Ohio State University are always conducted with abused,
damage vermicompost
transported long distances to their soil testing laboratory, yet these
damaged vermicomposts have
still proven of exception value in comparison to other growing mediums.
Tests on in-situ
vermicompost should out-perform the market products, but testing has not
ben done on these.

Sincerely Lion Kuntz

Asifo Ajuyah wrote:
>But tell me if you give excess plant produce to livestock as one of your
>preservation or conservation strategies when you get up hill you will run
>into demand and supply problems remember in a place like the Philippines
>protein of animal origin make-up less than 10% of the average person's
diet.
>You also said one system will build the other system, is it possible for
you
>to schematize all or pertinent systems of the 'micro-farm' in a flow chart?
>so that I can understand this excellent concept.
>
>We have heard about the Songhai project in the Republic of Benin, the
>projects in Bali, Nepal, Colombia and now the Philippines what are their
>commonalties? or linkages? can a bridge be drawn across all projects?. I
>will say that we seem to have more questions and less answers or
>more clouds with no rain.

Greetings Asifo Ajuyah:

First, let me point out that I was very clear that the strategy I
described, one that I use successfully myself as a grower as well as a
teacher and designer in this field, was based on the conditions of waste in
the USA, reflected to a lesser degree in other overly industrialized
countries. The USA is a net importer of protein, despite an agricultural
establishment that advertises itself as the most advanced in the world. The
protein we import is by no means "surplus" where we get it. Diversion of
wastes into inputs is the main contribution people in waste-intensive
countries can do to halt the raid of the choicest foods in countries lacking
brute force in the marketplace. My best contribution to the welfare of the
subsistence homesteader in the Philippines or the campesino in Peru may be
taking direct action to intercept the flow of waste in the USA and convert
it
to primary product. There is far more market of food produced for with
concern for sustainability than we can meet, and plenty of opportunity for
hundreds, if not thousands of what I would call commercial gardens in our
small county alone.

The underlying principle, of course, is to tap and develop resources that
are
available at little or no cost. At the same time, if we export food, to
other families, we need to import nutrient in some form. If we import more
nutrient than we export, and know the basics of integrated food systems, we
end up building the fertility of our soil.

Yes, where every scrap of organic matter is already well used, then only the
design of sequences of transformation can increase total yield without a net
increase in external inputs. Use of organisms for reducing manure and
"waste" plant materials to fertilizer extend the food cycle. It has already
been suggested that mushroom production followed by vermicomposting can be
such a measure. Another measure is skilled management of poultry for soil
development and pest and weed control, in additon to primary purposes of
eggs
and flesh.

Furthermore, there are skills involved with developing latent fertility in
the soil, such as the Keyline method developed by P. A. Yeomans in
Australia.
Fungi, poultry, and earthworms all can play a role here by action of
mechanical action (bird and worm gizards) and chemical action (exudates) to
release bound fertility. Sometimes fairly simple and inexpensive pH
adjustments to soil releases nutrient.

Animals such as pigs are useful in producing soil amendments and tillage of
areas. I recal visiting a farm in Paraguay in which the pigs were confined
to one area which had been entirely denuded, producing no plant growth, and
which which slipping down slope through sheet erosion. Meanwhile adjacent
land on the same farm was wooded and produced a variety of products that
would supplement the pig food. Rotation of the pigs through several pastures
would enable the growing of high yield crops in the areas so fertilized.
Generally when pigs are fed offal, they get a certain amount of bone that
they grind up, treat with hot acid in their digestive systems, and excrete.
Meanwhile, they have provided cultivation energy. Completely controlled
weeds, and produced a better meat product. This farm was a bit larger than
the parcels we are discussing in the Philippines, but there is the option
for
collaborative livestock operations which could cycle through farms of
several
families, in turn, for example.

Yes, generally meat is more expensive than vegetable foods and so is a small
component of diet where people have very small cash incomes. So long as
protein is supplied in good quality somehow, this is unimportant. However
if a family can produce more plant crops AND more meat through an integrated
system, obviously it is to the family's advantage to do so. By meat I mean
flesh, which I hope is obvious, since aquaculture, snail production, etc.,
can have a role depending on specifics of the site and the preferences and
resoruces of the family.

Apparently my comment that there are no universal recipies was not clear.
Reductionist approaches such as flow charts, etc., will never optimize the
capacity of the people, interacting with the landscape, to support life.
Objective knowledge, including some kinds that we can exchange via email, is
important as is awareness of potential strategies for integrated food
production. However the design process itself is principally creative.
Attempts to reduce the process of design to analytical terms only
impoverished and limits the effectiveness of the design. Analysis and
quantification are important, not as creative tools, but as checks to see
how
well the creative process has done. It seems to me that on a discussion
forum such as this we can discuss general models, assorted strategies,
specific facts, etc., and be thus better prepared for the creative process
if
interacting with specific sites, cultural conditions, economic conditions,
and particular family needs and aspirations. If we insist on a
one-size-fits-all formula, I am sure that whatever we come up with, we will
do more harm than good.

The real experts about any place and the social context and the family
situation are the people who live there. We can help them design their
situations better by asking the right questions and providing suggestions
regarding the design process itself. When we have in place "development"
efforts that help people take responsibility for their lives and the impact
of their lives on their environment, we have a chance at solving some large
problems.

Dan Hemenway