This is interesting, to say the least, and bears out what many of us
are discovering and know.... that healthy soil and organic methods
*can* provide more food than "they" say is possible.
Another section talks about the nutrient density and makeup of organic
compared to factory farmed food.
Biotic means organic, in this article.
Posted to aus.gardens also as David was asking about perma/polyculture
and sustainability recently, and because those of you in Oz seem to be
a bit ahead of us here in the US........in regard to this matter, at
least. ;-)
Charlie
Full article at:
http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/465/
and
http://www.counterpunch.org/goff04242008.html
excerpt:
Another Agriculture is Possible
Many well-substantiated studies show that intensive biotic polyculture
-- that is, the cultivation of many species of food plants in a small
footprint, using biotic soil amendments and nutrient recycling --
produces far more food per hectare than factory farming; uses far less
water; and builds, rather than destroying, topsoil.
Although more human ingenuity, care, and attention are required, the
adoption of permaculture principles and techniques reduces the drudgery
of food production considerably; the permaculturist is assisting food
to grow rather than forcing it to grow (or more hubristically,
"growing" it), which is much less work all round than our cartoon
cultural memory of dawn-to-dusk backbreaking peasant labor (which
became backbreaking to pay "tribute" and debts to people with weapons
and ledgers, not survive).
What intensive biotic polyculture does not do is maximise money
profits, minimise labour inputs, or facilitate large-scale extractive
cash-cropping.
For these reasons -- not for any failure to produce food for eating --
it is derided by industrial agribiz "experts" as impractical,
inefficient, inadequate, etc. In fact, poly/permaculture's abundant
success in producing food for eating is one of the things that makes it
a frightening prospect for those who control people by controlling
people's access to food.
What they don't want us to know is that it works. Eisenia hortensis --
the European nightcrawler (earthworm) -- under ideal worm-farming
(vermiculture) conditions double their volume through reproduction
every 90 days. Each individual worm can eat approximately half its body
weight each day. A pound of E. hortensis, then, can consume a
half-pound of non-oily, vegetable kitchen scraps each day. The majority
of that mass is excreted as an extremely high quality compost, with a
bit of fluid (worm tea) left over (considered by many to be the organic
uber-fertilizer). So, potentially, one pound of worms can convert
around 180 pounds of kitchen scraps each year into the highest quality
organic soil additive. Every five pounds of worm-castings can convert
one-square surface-foot of soil into a super-producer for a four
months. So one pound of worms can sustain 12 square surface-feet of
garden throughout the year for the highest levels of productivity.
My own [Stan's] anecdotal evidence, without using worm castings but
using simply composting mulch on organic compost over non-compacted
soil, is that in 12 square surface-feet, one can grow three species of
food, with six plants each... producing okra, tomatoes, cucumbers,
peppers, peas, bush beans, etc. Mixing them, and adding a couple of
marigolds and aromatics (like mint or parilla) seems to keep the little
critters from taking more than their share. Last summer I had one
cucumber vine that produced around 50 mature cucumbers, totalling well
over 20 pounds of food, for around three months. By rotating seasonals,
it is easily conceivable to take a 12 square-foot plot in a temperate
zone and raise 100 pounds of food a year... being very conservative.
Neither Syngenta, nor Cargill, nor Archer-Daniels-Midland want you to
know this.
They want to sell you mass-produced food, for money... which you have
to work for. Let us not forget that Enclosure (forcing people off the
land, or separating them from their land) was the method used to compel
people into the monetized industrial economy in the first place. A
12-foot garden bed is three-feet by four-feet. How many of these can
you build on a half an acre? The key is always in the design.
Posted by Billy on April 28, 2008, 3:53 pm
> As the referenced articles point out, this is a labor intensive way of > producing food. I come from a part of America where that type of practice was > still common in my chidhood. Know, however, 95%+ of the population is not > dedicated to sunsistence farming, but rather lives in urban environments. One > real big change is this chamge in demographics, which makes locally produced > food (some organically grown) much scarcer in most places here.
I didn't see any reference in the article to organic farming being more
labor intensive. Perhaps it is with weeding, but then it is a trade-off
between paying for poison to pour on the ground or having healthy food.
Since I seem to be ripping-off authors today let's take another look at
"Omnivore's Dilemma".
Corn adapted brilliantly; to the new industrial regime, consuming
prodigious quantities of fossil fuel energy and turning out ever more
prodigious quantities of food energy. More than half of all the synthetic
nitrogen made today is applied to corn, whose hybrid strains can make
better use of it than any other plant. Growing corn, which from a bio-
logical perspective had always been a process of capturing sunlight to
turn it into food, has in no small measure become a process of convert-
ing fossil fuels into food. This shift explains the color of the land:
The reason Greene County is no longer green for half the year is because
the farmer who can buy synthetic fertility no longer needs cover crops
to capture a whole year's worth of sunlight; he has plugged himself into
a new source of energy. When you add together the natural gas in the
fertilizer to the fossil fuels it takes to make the pesticides, drive
the tractors, and harvest, dry, and transport the corn, you find that
every bushel of industrial corn requires the equivalent of between a
quarter and a third of a gallon of oil to grow it--or around fifty
gallons of oil per acre of corn. (Some estimates are much higher.) Put
another way, it takes more than a calorie of fossil fuel energy to
produce a'calorie of food; before the advent of chemical fertilizer the
Naylor farm produced more than two calories of food energy for every
calorie of energy invested. From the standpoint of industrial
efficiency, it's too bad we can't simply drink the petroleum directly.
-------
People moved off the land, peoples can move back. In part, this was due
to the idea that economies of scale required that a farmer only grow one
crop and then sell that crop to a middle man. The new (old) paradigm is
to grow multiple crops and sell directly to the consumer. In this
manner, the family farmer who lives near an urban center may have a
chance. Otherwise, we should return to the old system of crop
guarantees, where the government supported the price of a commodity by
loaning the value of the crop to the farmer. If he couldn't sell it, he
kept the money and the government kept the crop, which was used to feed
the hungry of this country.
As far as the scarcity of organic crops, it is the fastest growing
segment of food production. As people know more about the food they eat
and how it is being produced, they are asking for better.
--
> Asthma, > > psoriasis, > > allergies etc, because they were incredibly rare. Now they seem to > > be > > almost the norm rather than the exception. Something has sure > > changed since > > I was a kid. > > The question is "were the diseases rare or were they commonplace and > the diagnosis of them rare"?
Fair question. I hope someone can answer it. Another fair question is
does the out break of some of these diseases have any thing to do with
the "Body Burden"?
http://www.ewg.org/featured/15
All those unnatural chemicals that our environment seems to be awash in
these days. (DDT in Antarctica? When did they have trouble with insects?
We live in a closed biosphere. What goes up in one place in the world,
comes down in another.) Is it just a coincidence that type II diabetes
began to spread after the introduction of high-fructose-corn syrup?
It seems reasonable to question what appears a correlation between the
introduction of a new farming paradigm and food production and the
sudden concurent onset of health problems.
--
> > > Asthma, > > > psoriasis, > > > allergies etc, because they were incredibly rare. Now they seem to > > > be > > > almost the norm rather than the exception. Something has sure > > > changed since > > > I was a kid. > > > > The question is "were the diseases rare or were they commonplace and > > the diagnosis of them rare"? > > Fair question. I hope someone can answer it. Another fair question is > does the out break of some of these diseases have any thing to do with > the "Body Burden"? > http://www.ewg.org/featured/15 > > All those unnatural chemicals that our environment seems to be awash in > these days. (DDT in Antarctica? When did they have trouble with insects? > We live in a closed biosphere. What goes up in one place in the world, > comes down in another.) Is it just a coincidence that type II diabetes > began to spread after the introduction of high-fructose-corn syrup? > It seems reasonable to question what appears a correlation between the > introduction of a new farming paradigm and food production and the > sudden concurent onset of health problems.
<http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/summary.html>
Contains
Historical Summaries of Notifiable Diseases in the United States
1975--2006
Not an easy read :))
Bill
--
Garden in shade zone 5 S Jersey USA
Posted by Charlie on April 29, 2008, 10:36 am
wrote:
>Its interesting to note that some enlightened people are no purposely >sending kids to kindergartens with the express purpose of allowing them >to be infected, and getting antibodies to the diseases kids should be >exposed to.
Heh heh......we often have young folks organizing chicken pox parties
to avoid the vaccine. Who ever though chicken pox vaccine was a good
idea!
XML site map
> producing food. I come from a part of America where that type of practice was
> still common in my chidhood. Know, however, 95%+ of the population is not
> dedicated to sunsistence farming, but rather lives in urban environments. One
> real big change is this chamge in demographics, which makes locally produced
> food (some organically grown) much scarcer in most places here.