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It's not Just Joel Salatin anymore
"Thos" wrote in message
... Are you seriously saying that you support fish that eat chicken shit? Many vegetable plants 'eat' chicken shit (or horse shit or cow shit or many other types of shit) and they in turn are eaten by humans. Seriously... This is just one more reason why I consider you an idiot. "To each his own" said the old woman as she kissed the cow. "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 |
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