Organic Gardening in a Hotter, Drier World

 
Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence by
Christian Parenti (Jun 28, 2011)

(Amazon.com product link shortened)
00/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid11984718&sr=1-1
(Available at a library near you.)

172 TROPIC OF CHAOS


Welcome to the hot scrublands of the Nordeste and the tiny village of
Boqueirao in Brazil's Ceara Province.

The Nordeste is semiarid, receiving very little rain. Severe floods
punctuate its frequent droughts.

The majority of climate models find that northeast Brazil
"is expected to experience more rapid warming than the global average
during the 21st century." In more concrete terms, most forecasts predict
northeastern Brazil will be a region of very severe water stress by 2050.

Rio's favelas (slums) are largely populated by people from these dry
lands. Despite its harsh climate, the Northeast is densely populated.43
As climate change grinds down subsistence farmers, more Nordestinos
leave to search for work either in the depressed cities of their nearby
coastal areas, like Fortaleza and Recife, or down south in the
megacities of Sao Palo and Rio. Thus, the social dimensions of the
ecological crisis in the Nordeste (a front-line region for climate
change) are expressed in cities as unemployment, makeshift housing, the
narcotrade and violence.

This community has twenty-seven families, most of them related to
each other. In face of drought and flooding, they have begun to adapt
both technologically and politically. First, they switched from
mono-cropping cotton and beans, which require burning the fallow fields
and using  expensive chemical inputs, to a form of mixed-crop
agroecological farming, agroforestry, and integrated pest management
that uses few or no chemical pesticides or fertilizers. They are also
using inventive forms of low-impact water-capturing and rain-harvesting
technologies.

Osmar and some of his compatriots take me across the road to show me
"the system" and some of their alternative water-harvesting techniques.

RIO'S AGONY 175

One method involves building "underground dams." It goes like this: First
the farmers find a dry streambed or natural area of drainage. At the
bottom of this feature, below and away from the slope of the hill, they
dig a long ditch across the natural path of drainage. The ditch maybe
one hundred or three hundred feet long and deep enough to hit solid
rock‹here, about five to ten feet down. Then, within the ditch, they
build a cement and rock wall‹or dam‹lined with heavy plastic. Then the
ditch is filled in, and the wall is buried. This underground dam greatly
slows the natural drainage and creates a moist and fertile field
"upstream."

The agroforestry crops are a mix of fruit trees, corn, cover crops, and
climbing-vine crops. The fields seem abandoned due to the tangled mix of
plant species. This lush mesh captures moisture and creates a balance of
competing insects, limiting or eliminating the need for chemical
pesticides. During the first three to five years, yields decrease, but
then they increase  as soil health improves. And the produce, as
organic, commands higher prices.

For individual plants that need irrigation, they attach punctured empty
plastic soda bottles to stakes above the thirsty plant. With this form of
low-tech drip irrigation, a farmer can feed an individual plant little
bits of water, allowing the precious liquid to drip out slowly and only
onto the plant that needs it. The farmers' list of ingenious methods is
long and evolving, thanks in part to groups like the Catholic NGO
Caritas, which works to spread knowledge of best practices among the
communities.

Altogether, these agroforestry or agroecological methods, which revive
and enhance old ways, are in use all over the world. The IPCC mentions
them in the Fourth Assessment Report: "Agroforestry using agroecologi-
cal methods offers strong possibilities for maintaining biological
diversity in Latin America, given the overlap between protected areas
and agricultural zones."44

"The system," as the farmers call it, preserves and enhances the land's
fertility and moisture, and because the fields are never left as bare
ground, it helps prevent erosion.

In the village of Bueno, I met Antonio Braga Mota. "The system is a
balanced system. I was really surprised that we actually did not need
fertilizer and pesticides to do this," said Antonio as we tour his vine-
and tree-covered crops. "The traditional method was destructive. Burning
depletes the land. Unfortunately, I did a lot of that. "He said even
tapirs and rare birds are returning. He could be passionate about the
system because he owned his land. He was not rich but had enough land to
make the transition from main-stream methods to green farming.
--
- Billy
Both the House and Senate budget plan would have cut Social Security and
Medicare, while cutting taxes on the wealthy.

Kucinich noted that none of the government programs targeted for
elimination or severe cutback in House Republican spending plans
"appeared on the GAO's list of government programs at high risk of
waste, fraud and abuse."
<http://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2011/mar/28/dennis-kucinich/re
p-dennis-kucinich-says-gop-budget-cuts-dont-targ/>

[W]e have the situation with the deficit and the debt and spending and jobs. And
it¹s not that difficult to get out of it. The first thing you do is you get rid
of corporate welfare. That¹s hundreds of billions of dollars a year. The second
is you tax corporations so that they don¹t get away with no taxation.
 - Ralph Nader
<http://www.democracynow.org/2011/7/19/ralph_naders_solution_to_debt_crisis>

 Billy wrote:

  all very interesting.  in other arid climates with
no severe drains/gullies you can line rocks across the
ground and they will act as a water catch when it
rains to slow down the water so that more soaks in.
within a few years these rocks will become a line
of plants and then small trees (if you can keep
the goats/sheep from grazing it down).  a tree line
that gives shade and harbors birds/wildlife all
from a simple thing like a line of rocks on the
dirt.


  songbird

 
Standard practice in permaculture and other forms of land management but
usually it's contour forming on farmland using a tractor/dozer and uses
earth.  They're called swales.

 FarmI wrote:

  ah, the usage i'm familiar with for those
is a sometimes marshy ground, not a particularly
made structure -- though i can see how the term
would be adapted/adopted for them too.  the
made structures i would call dams.

  here i call places seeps are catches where i
gather water from a harder rain.  i wouldn't call
them swales because they are not marshy.


  songbird

 
Absolutley not a dam.  They are just earthwork contour gutters (for want of
a better word to describe them).


But swales don't have to be marshy and in fact I don't think I've ever seen
one that could be called marshy.

  The function of swales is to slow down rain run off and let the water soak
in and recharge the soil with moisture.  Thus swales work  well in both arid
and dry temperate zones where the rainfall can come in fast and furious
bursts (like from passing storms) but where the rain is not sustainedfor a
long time.  They probably also work in high rainfall areas to slow the flow
of water across a clandscape but where they arent' necesarrily needed to
give much needed soil moisture.