Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:

fascinating but expendable conversation snipped


Top soil can be regenerated. Joel
Salatin is doing it at the rate of 1"/year.
http://www.acresusa.com/magazines/archives/0104saveworld.htm

i've read most of what he's published.

he is not building topsoil, he amends it
heavily with organic materials that he brings
in by the truckload. they get run through
the cow barn, the pigs, chickens, before they
get scattered on the fields.
....
Thanks, but why do you say he's not building topsoil. He has picked up
the pace, but this is how soil is built.

he is taking materials from other places.
these materials are what would eventually become
a part of the topsoil in those locations. he's
mining topsoil components from other locations.


http://grist.org/sustainable-farming...e-new-york-tim
es-re-sustainable-meat/
While its true that at Polyface our omnivores (poultry and pigs) do eat
local GMO (genetically modified organism)-free grain in addition to the
forage, the land base required to feed and metabolize the manure is no
different than that needed to sustain the same animals in a confinement
setting. Even if they ate zero pasturage, the land is the same. The only
difference is our animals get sunshine, exercise, fresh pasture salad
bars, fresh air, and a respectful life.

It has been charged that Polyface is a charade because it depends on
grain from industrial farms to maintain soil fertility. First of all, at
Polyface we do not assume that all nutrient movement is
anti-environmental. In fact, one of the biggest reasons for animals in
nature is to move nutrients uphill, against the natural gravitational
flow from high ground to low ground. This is why low lands and valleys
are fertile and the uplands are less so. Animals are the only mechanism
nature has to defy this natural downward flow. Fortunately, predators
make the prey animals want to lounge on high ground (where they can see
their enemies), which insures that manure will concentrate on high
lookout spots rather than in the valleys. Perhaps this is why no
ecosystem exists that is devoid of animals. The fact is that nutrient
movement is inherently nature-healing.

But, it doesnt move very far. And herein lies the difference between
grain used at Polyface and that used by the industry: We care where ours
comes from. Its not just a commodity. It has an origin and an ending,
start to finish, farmer to eater. The closer we can connect the carbon
cycles, the more environmentally normal we will become.
Second, herbivores are the exception to the entire negative nutrient
flow argument because by pruning back the forage to restart the rapid
biomass accumulation photosynthetic engine, the net carbon flow
compensates for anything lost through harvest. Herbivores do not require
tillage or annuals, and that is why all historically deep soils have
been created by them, not by omnivores.
-------
So, the Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic's
system isn't quite closed, but it is creating topsoil (soil with the
highest concentration of organic matter and microorganisms), which other
meat producers don't.



i still give him high marks for what he
does compared to many farmers. he at least
does understand the importance of topsoil.

he loses marks in that he could be using
organic corn for his meat chickens (he
complained that his source had too much
chaff/cob in it, well duh, get a different
supplier or grow your own).

So he is really just attenuating the impact of conventional farming. I
wonder what we would do differently, if we made the decisions. I mean
profit isn't the sole motive, or he'd be running a CAFO.

well, that is the problem with any sustainable
farming effort, that it must work within the broader
society and economics to keep going. his farm has
to make enough money to support him and his wife and
children and the interns that stay there. he can't
afford to not have money for taxes and the other
basics needed that cannot be provided by the farm.

if i were claiming to be a sustainable farmer i'd
be working with a supplier to fix the problem.

returning to my more local issue as one with a
limited amount of land in trying to be as sustainable
as possible i cannot raise both enough veggies in
the current gardens and sell them to raise enough
money to cover the taxes on the land let alone
the other expenses of having this place.

for some people property and other taxes are reasons
behind extractive agricultural practices. if property
isn't taxed then it takes some pressure off people to
exploit it.


....
Corporations are obligated to make a profit for their investors. Any
action that reduces earnings is considered illegal. They may be able to
argue that some actions will avoid legal consequences which in the long
run will increase earnings.
In other words, being a good neighbor costs a corporation too much.

an action which loses money is not illegal
as if it were there would be no corporations
for very long. i think you are confusing
what would be considered corporate malfeasance
and misuse of corporate resources, but even
some of those actions would also not be
considered illegal, just inadvisable...

Under eBay v. Newman, the law is as Franken said: "it is literally
malfeasance for a corporation not to do everything it legally can to
maximize its profits." Just ask Jim and Craig; no one disputes it's
their company, but they're legally prohibited from taking steps to
preserve the profit-alongside-community-service mission that's served
them well. Maximize profits, or else.

i think that is a case where the company should be
taken private or turned into a non-profit. if their
social aims are broader than being a business then
i think that is a more accurate classification for
them anyways.


The impact of this duty-to-maximize-profits stretches far beyond mere
investments. Under Citizens United, corporations now have the First
Amendment right to influence our fragile democracy however they want,
since they're "people," just like you and me, albeit profit-maximizing
zombies who care not for truth, justice, or the American way.

i still think you have a bit too jaded a view of
corporations. not all are as bad as Monsanto or
whatever the devil of the moment is.


Non-profits are a different animal, except for where earnings are
channeled into the managements pockets as compensation. When non-profits
do try to mitigate a social problem, which reduce corporate profits, the
corporations have more litigation power. Take farm cruelty for example.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/us...y-is-becoming-
the-crime.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

yeah, i saw that one. somehow i suspect when it
gets challenged in court it will get thrown out.
some laws passed are not enforceable when put before
a jury and a judge.

Like The Supremes? Good luck. Clarence Thomas used to be counsel for
Monsanto.

it will be interesting to follow how they
talk about "free speech" in one aspect (campaign
funding) yet have this other limited speech in
another aspect. they might try to justify it
but i think the judges and juries are a bit more
able to see through this. likely it won't ever
see the Supreme Court. too obvious a bonehead
law that deserves a spanking.


...
Terra preta
should be encouraged to invigorate soils, and sequester CO2.

in some areas it is fine, but it is not a universal
answer. remember that albedo plays a role in climate.
if we covered the earth with dark materials soaking up
the sun's radiation we'd bake. so it cannot be used
in areas that are left bare for long periods of time.
once an area is put into perennial or permaculture
then it's a great thing to have.

But anything that grows will have a better chance with
terra preta. What could Joel Salatin do with charcoal
in his soil?


Turns out he does (see above)

i didn't see any mention of charcoal or
biochar in any of his books. he does claim

He doesn't. My error.

it happens.


to sequester carbon in the soil, but it is
more the kind of sequestering that happens
when creating humus. i.e. if he stops
adding composted manures and organic materials
then his topsoil will gradually compress down
as the organic materials rot faster and turn
into humus. if he keeps grazing cattle without
amending then his soil can only grow as fast
as the bedrock will produce nutrients along
with what the rain and dust in the air provide.

this will not be an inch a year. i can
guarantee that.

Just reporting what I read.
http://www.acresusa.com/magazines/archives/0104saveworld.htm

ok.


don't get me wrong, he's not stupid and he
takes care of his fields well enough to have
improved them from their previously degraded
state. just that he's doing it along with
using extra organic materials brought in from
outside areas. he also cuts down trees and
chips them to use as bedding material.


sequester some percentage of carbon for a longer
period than the current method he's using. probably
also increase some of the nutrient cycling because
of the higher bacterial count in the soil. depending
upon how he gets the carbon source would make me rate
it better or worse...

I suspect that the benefits of lignified wood comes from the amount
surface area exposed.

i'm not sure what lignified means and can't
look it up at the moment. do you mean pyrolized
instead? lignified to me would mean wood with
added lignin and as far as i know wood already
contains some amount of lignin...

lignified
Botany
make rigid and woody by the deposition of lignin in cell walls.

ok, haha, good to know i wasn't far off in
what i thought lignin was involved in.


if you do mean pyrolized then yes, as it is
pyrolized it creates more surface area. the
temperature and type of feed stock and several
other factors (moisture content, rate of heating,
etc.) also influence how much surface area there
is in the resulting material along with the
percentage of carbon and the amount of leftover
compounds are not released.

Yes, that is what I meant. I doubt, though that Amazonians put such a
fine point on their charcoal.

they may have. hundreds of years experience and
tradition of making terra preta they might have had
a fairly sophisticated knowledge. unfortunately, we
don't have any of their writings. a modern analysis
of the layers at an undisturbed site would be very
interesting.


....food wastage...
very rare i have to feed anything to the wormies
other than trimmings from cooking.

which makes me wonder what a worm thinks of
a piece of chocolate.

Great source of tryptophan! Tryptophan is the amino acid that our brains
use to make serotonin, which is the neurotransmitter that provides us
with our basic feelings of well-being and self-esteem.

it's one of several tree crops that i'd like to
grow and can't because of the climate.


(another snip)

I think this is where corporate greed comes into the picture again. If
we stop consuming, they lose potential profits. Notice how many ads in
the media pitch an image, and say very little about the product? PR
works. Edward Bernais proved it. Lies can become reality.

Noam Chomsky used to write some very
interesting things too, but i haven't
seen anything from him lately. he might
have retired or given up in disgust.
i haven't looked either so i just could
have missed what he's done.

You've just missed what he's done, probably because the corporate press
is afraid of him. Most recently he's been agitating for human rights for
Palestinians. Pretty amazing considering that he was born in 1928.

he's one of my heroes. i wish him many more years
of cranky intellectual poking.


....
...CO2, biochar and pyrolysis...

How much cellulose would you have to char to heat
yourself during winter
with H2?

no, that's a waste as the heat directly from
burning the cellulose would be what you want. not
a loss from another layer of processing. also the
gas given off and condensed if using the cellulose
to produce both heat and charcoal can be stored
and used just like gasoline. no need to turn
anything into H2.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas
Wood gas is a syngas fuel which can be used as a fuel for furnaces,
stoves and vehicles in place of petrol, diesel or other fuels. During
the production process biomass or other carbon-containing materials are
gasified within the oxygen-limited environment of a wood gas generator
to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide. These gases can then be burnt
as a fuel within an oxygen rich environment to produce carbon dioxide,
water and heat.

What is your reference here?

check the wiki under pyrolysis, but i have a list

Wiki: While the exact composition of bio-oil depends on the biomass
source and processing conditions, a typical composition is as follows:
Water 20-28%; Suspended solids and pyrolitic lignin 22-36%;
Hydroxyacetaldehyde 8-12%; Levoglucosan 3-8%; Acetic acid 4-8%; Acetol
3-6%; Cellubiosan 1-2%; Glyoxal 1-2%; Formaldehyde 3-4%; Formic acid
3-6%.

I'll withhold judgement.

bio-oil is a different topic. i'm not going
there as i don't have petrochemical or specific
refinery knowledge in detail (i do know something
about refineries, distillations, catalysts and
such, but that's about it).


....
...HERE...
....
I hope to have early ripening, mid ripening,
and late ripening tomatoes, i.e. a long tomato
season.

good luck! so far this has been the
most normal spring we've had in several
years. we actually got rain yesterday and
a few minutes ago it was raining again.
happiness! that will green up the plants
and wake up the wormies. three dry days
now would be perfect as i could get things
spread and dug in and perhaps even some
planting done.

now it's looking like it will be too wet
for a while longer. days and days of rain.
my water catches have gotten a good workout.


last year for us the Roma tomatoes were ok
for adding to the salsa to give it some more
thickness, but they didn't do much for juice.

That's why they're good for making sauce. You don't have to reduce them
as much.

have you ever tried the viva italia?

No, I grow the Juliet which is similar to the viva italia, but about a
third the size.

smaller works out better for ripening in
uncertain times too as far as i'm concerned.


do you have a favorite tomato?

Probably the "Striped German". A little lower acid than the Brandywine,
but is very perfumed, at least it is when grown here. Whether it is
location, or nature, I don't know. I was reading, when the perfume of it
struck me. I looked up, and my wife was slicing them.



as we put up most of the tomatoes we grow we need
a regular acid tomato.


...
i've wanted to go back and look at his book
on germs and steel, so those will be the next
books on the list.

You may want to look at
http://www.livinganthropologically.c...lture-as-worst
-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race/
too.

i did, finally, and ran away with my nose plugged
and wishing i had tongs. it seems that Jared gets
the anthropologists upset.


without having a chance yet to look at the
article i still can't agree with the gist of
the title completely. i think there are ways
of doing agriculture that are sustainable.

i'm stuck off-line for a while so i'll have
to get back to this later.

Agriculture created class divisions, concentration of wealth and
inequality, and illness. It's a good read.

i don't see agriculture as a cause of things
as i think that agriculture, cities and specialization
came about all together as groupings of humans
got larger. why they got larger is also a combination
of many factors. one of those might simply be
because it's more fun to hang with more people
than to be alone for most people. loners are a
minority. another reason could have also been
for protection from other groups, i.e. weaponization
when stone tools used to be the greatest risk a
person had to face it wasn't quite the same thing
but then slings, arrows, spears, and armor started
showing up and people banded together as armies
then in order to be safe you needed your homies
at your back. out on the range no longer is as
appealing when you might get run over by an army
and your farm ransacked.

so, no, i don't put the ills of modern society
on agriculture.


but back to international waters and
fisheries. we as a world have to get agreements
and enforcements in place to deal with rogue
fleets and overfishing. otherwise it's just
not going to be there later as a food source.

It won't be either if it is poisoned with carcinogenic confetti of
plastic.

if we can decrease production of plastics
that become poisonous and replace them with
materials that safely degrade then that would
help a great deal. i'm very much in favor
of taxing and regulating plastics based upon
how much gets recycled and then using that
tax money to fund cleanup efforts to harvest
and recycle what is floating on the seas.

i'm generally all for any type of program
which taxes products and materials based upon
the percent that is recyclable and making the
taxes both inversely and exponentially tied
to the percentage that is recycled. so for
things that are 100% recycled there is no
additional tax, but for items that are not
recycleable the tax is quite large to offset
the unsustainable costs of dealing with it.

that type of policy would immediately
create some jobs for people to work in the
recycling processes, but also i'd have
bounties for picking up trash that get paid
out of fast food and other waste streams that
seem to be showing up as debris along the
road (or in the air).

if only i were king. people would hate
me, but i'd sleep at night knowing the world
had a more sustainable future.

Right on, but the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre was described as nearly
the size of Africa in 2005, and it is only one of several gyres. That's
a lot of plastic.

well then, clearly time to get started on such
a large project.


The plastic, for the most part isn't poisonous, but it is non-polar, and
attracts things like polychlorinated biphenyls, and dioxin.

incineration or refining could change or
destroy those compounds.


....if only i were king...
the energy could be used to desalinate water
or fuel pumps to move sea water into desalination
greenhouses and condenser setups. i'm not sure
what works better. they'd have a lot of free
plastics to recycle into sheeting to make
covers.

Ah, back to procreating are we?

plant propagation or water desalinization
wise. i mean green house covers.


...the oceans, floating trash...

You have my vote for dictator. Pay everyone a living wage. Enough of
this employment of wage slaves.

what if a person doesn't need that much?
isn't a part of the destruction of resources
by a greedy society the problem that people
don't learn moderation? or that they aren't
allowed to adjust their own demands because
the system has a one-size fits all mentality
(super-size me bucko)?

i dislike minimum wage legislation. since
when do i want the government telling me what
my labor is worth? what if i want to work for
less for a charity or non-profit? i don't
need a minimum wage. i need the government
to get out of my way.

right now there are a lot of low skilled jobs
that get done by sub-contractors or individuals
and they are being paid cash. so no taxes are
being collected for social security or medicare
for those workers. they may never be in the
position to become a full time worker.


....polyethylene plastic particles...
Or moved up the food chain by its predator.

it if is a particle it passes through
and gets conglomerated and then would
settle out. if it can't be degraded then
it becomes a substrate (just like mineral
grains or humus or other nearly undigestable
materials).

These are poisonous materials that dissolve in fat. Once in the body,
they persist. They get passed from predator to predator, and
concentrated in the top predator, us.

Best get your fish from down the food chain, not the top.

i don't eat that much fish any longer. i used
to eat sardines a few times a week or canned
tuna. then i discovered sashimi and lost my
taste for canned tuna and the price of sardines
went up too and i found out i'd much rather
grow and put up as much of my own food as possible.
instead of buying fish from thousands of miles away
i'm eating more from foods grown a few feet away.


if it is incorporated in the animal
then at some point it settles out and
gets buried. excreted materials are
usually coated with mucous often also
with other stuff like bacteria and
fungi. i.e. also things that tend
to clump and settle.

In the predator.

where?
In the fat tissues. These are unnatural compounds that have no method of
being metabolized. That's why they are no longer produced.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persist...nd_toxic_subst
ances

yes, i know about those.

i've also heard it being a method of cleaning
up an environment by harvesting the bioaccumulators
of such things and then incinerating them too.
yuck.

this sort of problem is why i'm very much in
favor of testing of all materials in use and
recycling taxes. so we have the means for getting
things cleaned up and taken care of.


i don't recall the alimentary
canal having a permanent resting place.
undigestible stuff goes through. the
original claim is that the stuff doesn't
have any way of being broken down wasn't
it?

Maybe not, but if you eat this stuff, you will lose your ass, so to
speak.

i wouldn't eat parts of plastic knowingly.
i try to avoid buying things packed in plastic.

as for pollution and plastic, you know i'd get
on with cleaning it up no matter how much of it
there is or how long it took. a 3000 sq mile
floating mass is unlikely to be thick so perhaps
it would be 3000 trips of a large tanker? get
100 tankers and that becomes 30 trips. processing
and sorting would be a lot of work. yay for real
jobs.


songbird