Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
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.

Seems like splitting hairs. The claim is that he is conjuring up 1" of
topsoil/year. That's still pretty impressive.

it's an important hair to split if you're
talking about sustainable agriculture over
the long term. if it takes materials from
other locations to keep a farm's topsoil
going then it becomes a larger question
about how sustainably those materials are
grown. as it is pretty sure the soils in
that area are already heavily depleted by
tobacco farming it is a critical question
and one i'm surprised you're just ready to
accept as not really important.

i'm not buying the claim as being true.


(snipped for brevity)
....
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.

I have no familiarity with that. What I have is a marginal growing
environment, and I simply try too get more from what I'm given.
Clear plastic over the mulch, and drip irrigation seem to be a good way
to heat the soil and promote earlier harvests, but if you have a cool
summer, there's not much you can do.

put in some cooler weather plants. peas/peapods
are my favorites here. for arid climates tepary
beans are one possibility, but i'm not sure how
they do with cool weather.


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.

Duh. Federal land is nearly free, but it is exploited by ranchers, and
mineral extractors.

well yeah, our country doesn't care about
sustainable practices enough as of yet. in
time it will be forced to.


...
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.

$$$$$$$$ won't permit.

it happens, companies do go private.


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.

See the movie, "The Corporation", it's on DVD. It's also on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y888wVY5hzw

links don't help, i'm not always on-line,
it is like a rock sitting in the conversational
road.


....
...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.

Our squash are in the ground i.e. 2 Portofinos, 2 Crookneck, and 2
Zucchini Romanescos. There are also some bitter melons, and zucchini
replicante, that aren't ready yet for planting.






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

I only have about 600 sq. ft. for everything.

oy!


....
Similar contrasts in nutrition and health persist on a global scale
today. To people in rich countries like the U.S., it sounds ridiculous
to extol the virtues of hunting and gathering. But Americans are an
elite, dependent on oil and minerals that must often be imported from
countries with poorer health and nutrition. If one could choose between
being a peasant farmer in Ethiopia or a Bushman gatherer in the
Kalahari, which do you think would be the better choice?
(Search for it on the web: mistake_jared_diamond.pdf)

well, i'll say i don't agree with many of
his assumptions and so that won't lead me to
much harmony with his conclusions.


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.

Read above.

i did, i don't agree with too many of his
assumptions.


....
...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)?

You would like B.F. Skinner's book, "Walden II".
People who tended flower beds got one wage. Those who worked in the
sewers got several times more.

no sewers in a compost world.


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.

You would think that since all work deserves respect, that all work
would give at least a living wage.

i think a person deserves more respect
in his stated need and desires far above
any formula that some other person at a
distance has come up with.

if i say i can get by on $2/hr who are
you to say i can't?


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.


....
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/gene...ing_away_the_p
oison

Packing Away The Poison
Genetic mutation allows Hudson River fish to adapt to PCBs, Dioxins
2/17/2011

Some fish in New York's Hudson River have become "resistant" to
several of the waterway's more toxic pollutants. Instead of getting
sick from dioxins and related compounds including some polychlorinated
biphenyls, Atlantic tomcod harmlessly store these poisons in fat, a
new study finds.

oh, so they're not poisons after all?
no, i'm just making a joke. i much prefer
my food to be dioxin free...


....
Compounds that have a charge separation like water
H+ H+
\ /
O -- are called polar compounds.
H H
Chemicals like ethylene H-C-C-H have no charge separation and are
H H
called non-polar compounds. In chemistry like dissolves like. Water will
mix with vinegar, but not a polar compound like oil. Oil will dissolve
grease. Soap has a polar end, and a non-polar end. The polar end will go
away with water, dragging the oil, or grease with it.

Dioxin, and PCBs are non-polar, and will accumulate, and concentrate
these toxins.

i've had basic chemistry.

i don't see any perpetual mechanism
for larger molecules or particles to
hold together in the face of being
soaked up and settled out or being
degraded by the sun, beaten on the
shore, coated by bacteria, fungi, etc.

how can you conclude these compounds
persist indefinitely if we were to stop
making more of them?


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.

That's my dictator ;o)

non-prophet, no-return, rapture free
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redeem...


songbird