"Billy" wrote in message
...
Sci Am, April 2010

Breaking the Growth Habit
by Bill McKibben

For the past quarter of a century, despite the rapid spread of
massive-scale agribusiness farming, pesticides and genetically
engineered crops, the amount of grain per person has been dropping.
Serious people have begun to rethink small-scale agriculture, to
produce lots of food on relatively small farms with little or
nothing in the way of synthetic fertilizer or chemicals.


The new agriculture often works best when it combines fresh knowledge
with older wisdom. In Bangladesh a new chicken coop produces not just
eggs and meat, but waste that feeds a fishpond, which in turn
produces thousands of kilograms of protein annually, and a healthy
crop of water hyacinths that are fed to a small herd of cows, whose
dung in turn fires a biogas cooking system.


In Malawi, tiny fishponds that recycle waste from the rest of a farm
yield on average about 1,500 kilograms offish. In Madagascar, rice
farmers working with European experts have figured out ways to
increase yields. They transplant seedlings weeks earlier than is
customary, space the plants farther apart, and keep the paddies
unflooded during most of the growing season. That means they have to
weed more, but it also increases yields fourfold to sixfold. An
estimated 20,000 farmers have adopted the full system.


In Craftsbury, Vt., Pete Johnson has helped pioneer year-round
farming. Johnson has built solar greenhouses and figured out how to
move them on tracks. He now can cover and uncover different fields
and grow greens 10 months of the year without any fossil fuels,
allowing him to run his community-supported agriculture farm
continuously. I'm not arguing for local food because it tastes better or
because
it's better for you. I'm arguing that we have no choice. In a world
more prone to drought and flood, we need the resilience that comes
with three dozen different crops in one field, not a vast ocean of
corn or soybeans. In a world where warmth spreads pests more
efficiently, we need the resilience of many local varieties and
breeds. And in a world with less oil, we need the kind of small,
mixed farms that can provide their own fertilizer and build their
own soil. --
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/2/maude
http://english.aljazeera.net/video/m...515308172.html

Thos wrote:
Are you seriously saying that you support fish that eat chicken shit?
Seriously...
This is just one more reason why I consider you an idiot.




It says:

"a new chicken coop produces not just eggs and meat, but waste that feeds a
fishpond, which in turn produces thousands of kilograms of protein annually"

It is not the fish that 'eat' chicken shit it is the pond. I think you will
find that the manure makes algae and/or water plants grow which in turn
feeds the fish. You seem to be short on basic understanding of how
nutrients are recycled in nature and the benefit that humans can and must
get from coopting such processes.

Manures are some of the best additives for a productive garden. Mushrooms
grow on cow manure, do you despise them? Most of the phosphate that is
found in commercial fertiliser came out of the bum of a bird or a bat, does
the thought of that bother you? Rabbits regularly eat shit, does that mean
they are forever banned from your life?

If the fish did eat chicken shit (they probably wouldn't) why would it be
such a problem? Seriously.

David