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Organic Gardening in a Hotter, Drier World
Derald wrote:
What gets me is that advocates always seem to be so sure of themselves that "unintended consequences" never occurs to them despite millennia of human history that is filled with them. I fail to understand how a 21st-century "educated" citizen cannot recognize narrow-minded, ideological, pedantry and advocacy disguised as science or journalism and give it precisely the credence it deserves: Roughly the same credence we all give to someone else's religion. i dunno, the benefits seem pretty obvious to me. keeps the ground covered more and holds the water better. reduces the temperature as there is more shading. provides a variety of habitats instead of just the one. what are you seeing that is religious here? this is all basic multicropping that used to be done on small scale farms before. it's not particularly new it is more a return to what used to work just fine that was disrupted. i can imagine a few drawbacks, but nothing that cannot be mitigated. the more growth that is about during the wet years means there will be more fuel for wildfires in the dry years. a good design of the homestead using a big enough open space and materials that won't ignite could mitigate that problem. sure the dead stuff burns, but otherwise the ground is protected the rest of the time. selectively cutting and burying the dead stuff to increase the organic content of the soil (to hold moisture better and insulate the soil from the heat even further) could also go a long ways towards dealing with the fire hazard. as it is i think a lot of burning that is currently done is sending a lot of material into the air that could be more useful if buried and burned and turned into charcoal (however, the darker the soil the hotter it will get when exposed to the sun so that's going to be a trade off of sorts in places). unintended consequence of diversity or keeping water from running off too quickly? sure, the downstream folks aren't going to get as much runoff all at once, but they might get a smaller amount over a longer period of time. this is the same sort of effect that forests and prairies provide. invasive species? perhaps some dangers there, but we are talking semi-arid places aren't we? so i can't imagine this being a huge risk as compared to what the wetter areas of the world contend with (kudzu!). songbird |
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