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Old 10-04-2013, 10:21 PM posted to rec.gardens.edible
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Apr 2012
Posts: 243
Default OT but a welcome bit of brightness

In article ,
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.

i don't think he's much wrong in what he
does, but some aspects are not sustainable
in the sense that he is using inputs from
other areas.


Bird, can you reference this? Where do the amendments come from,


i've read most of the books he's published
(all but two) in a short period of time all
together so i can't tell you which of the
books mentioned what he does, but i think it
is in more than one book he mentions that he
hauls in whatever organic materials he can
find for cheap. straw, ruined hay, sawdust,
wood chips, expired sweet potatoes are some i
specifically recall. i can't give book or
page numbers.


and
what do you mean they get run through the cow barn, the pigs, chickens?
Are we talking feed, or soil amendments?


he uses a deep bedding system for the cows
during the winter when he keeps them off the
pastures (he doesn't have the mix of grasses
in the pastures which resists damage like the
folks in the _A Farm for the Future_ segment
had... could be climate is harsher and such
so they wouldn't grow or he's not gotten into
it, dunno.). so he puts down bedding until it
gets full of cow poo/pee and then he scatters
corn on it and adds another layer and keeps
doing that all winter until he can get the
cows back to the fields. after they are out
of the barns then he lets the pigs in to stir
the bedding (they go after the fermenting
corn). when they are done then it all gets
taken out and spread on the pastures.


Thanks, but why do you say he's not building topsoil. He has picked up
the pace, but this is how soil is built.



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.

(snip)

the most informative about the development
and gives interesting info between the lines
is the book which includes at the end some of
the previous newsletters/sales information
that they sent out to their customers. i
think it was the _Salad Bar Beef_ book...

(more priceless banter snipped)


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.

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.



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.


...
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.

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


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.

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.

( Great digression into the "dirty deed"; snipped)

i'm not, i'm stating facts that are well
known. when it comes down to the final
equation where each calorie is critical
does it matter who eats the one that tips
the balance for another person in another
place to starve? you may never actually
be able to point to any one situation in
that fine a detail, but i think you
understand that the carrying capacity is
a hard limit that once passed is going to
take it's due one way or another.


War drought, or floods come to mind. I've read that we throw away 30% of
the food that we buy. 30%!


i saw that quoted recently at 45%. i know
here we don't come close to that. perhaps 1-3%.
we're very careful with what we do as i consider
it a primary fault to waste food. i grew up on
the poor side, so i'm more like my grandmother
than my neices or nephews. Ma is the same way.
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.


(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.


Religion has meaning for many people, but for the fundamentalists, it is
still manipulation. No more go forth and prosper, but waiting for the
good ship "Rapture".


yeah, i really have a difficult time around
people who don't care about the world they are
in currently because they are more intersted in
where they are supposedly going (and also the
amount of effort they spend in trying to figure
out where everyone else is going too along with
making sure to evangelise). if they put 1/10 of
the effort into actually helping others and took
better care of themselves the world would be a
much better place. but then don't get me
started...


...a biochar harvester...
The charcoal needs to be where the roots are, and plowing the soil isn't
good for it. The charcoal will be covered by the crops, and the
non-harvested part of the crop would cover the charcoal after that.

around here the non-harvested part is not
enough to cover the soil, it's stubble for
the most part. this is where i do like some
other source of production than annual crops.
perennial forms of the same crops would be
an interesting change. in some ways i do
that already via the alfalfa and birdsfoot
trefoil green manure and forage crop, but
it's not quite the same as a blueberry bush
or a beet tree. i'm very interested in what
might eventually happen with genetic
tinkering, but we're a long ways from that
tinkering being really systemically smart.
i'd love to do a Rip Van Winkle for about
500 years...


I thought you turned the soil. Good for you, if you don't. You're near a
forest aren't you? Can't you gather leaves for mulch? Either way it
would get the char out of sight.


yes, i do turn some gardens using a shovel.
i'd do a lot less digging if it was just me
running things. unfortunately, i'm not the
manager, i can make suggestions, but i get
overruled at times.

we are a half mile from the woods but it is
a park (not a place that i can harvest materials).
the past few years i haven't needed to do that
sort of thing anyways as i have a friend in a
nearby city who is bringing me the leaves from two
lawns plus the shredded bark and wood scraps from
their wood cutting. they just had two large trees
come down in the neighbor's yard so they are
cleaning that up for free which means i might be
getting several more yards of stuff to use. they
brought a load last week and i'm champing at the
bit to get it out on the gardens. along with some
wood ashes from their wood stove.

whatever i can't use for top mulch or mixing in
the clay will be used to raise up areas to help
keep the garden above the flood stage. i dig a
deep trench and then pack it half full of material
then pile the dirt on top. eventually it may rot
but that is years in the future. in the meantime
i have better drainage and higher ground. later
if i need materials and don't have any i can
excavate this stuff and use it like peat or leaf
mold.

(snip)



...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.

of products from the Biochar book (_the Biochar
Solution_ by Albert Bates) along with a few other
thoughts that i've been compiling for further
reading/research:

- pyrolysis, cellulose and lignin broken down into
phenols, aromatics, methane and CO2

- volatile gases
- wood vinegar
- char 80% carbon

- temperature and feedstock dependent,
also the pH varies by feedstock and temperature

- 300C, 300-500C (wood vinegar), 500-700C (90% carbon
and higher surface area)

- heating rate, particle size, moisture content

- other outputs mentioned: ethanol, dimethyl ether, heat,
steam, hot water, CO2, carbon monoxide...

- biomass smoke contains: benzene, butadiene, dioxin,
formaldehyde, styrene and methylene chloride (to name
a few), so clearly should be made in a closed system
where those things can be captured instead of emitted.

- 1 gram of soot warms atmosphere as much as 1500watt
space heater running for a week (what about the kicked
up dust from a dark soil if it was amended with biochar?
comparable at what percentage? equivalent to percentage
of carbon? or?)

- dust settling on snow and ice, makes it melt much faster


I just think that if we can seriously cut the amount of CO2
that we're putting into the atmosphere, and encourage reforestation, and
the production of charcoal, we have a chance of turning this barge
around. Otherwise, when the methane hydrate that lines the Atlantic
seashore goes of goes off, the tide will roll in to Raliegh, N.C., and
Harrisburg, PA. Of course this will aversely affect the profits of some
major corporations, but so will having New York go under water.

yeah, the hydrates and the methane from thawing
arctic tundra and permafrost are also feedback
additions that we have to worry about and counter.
add more decomposition of carbon compounds in
northern soils as they warm...

there is a possibility that the northern areas
will grow more trees as a result so the feedback
cycle might be very interesting. i still think
we need to reduce CO2 below what we are adding
so the oceans can recover and increase the pH.
corals and shells are important parts of building
shoreline erosion breaks.


They'll have to grow fast to make up for all the forest that is being
cut in the tropics.


considering how thinly populated much of the far
north is it might be enough if the trees are not
cut. however, it also has to offset the trees of
the northern forests that are dying off due to
disease and climate change. like most of these
things it is hard to be sure what is going to happen.


it can be a source of fuel for cars/trucks/industry
too. my ideal for a farm combine would be that
it could use a portion of what it harvests (stems,
stalks, cobs) to create the fuel on the fly and
leave a trail of buried biochar behind it as it
goes. add to it a chopper, disk, and cover crop
planting on the same pass and you've almost got
a sustainable industrial agriculture.

Uh, now you've lost me, monoculture, discing the soil?
More food come from interplanting.

it could be a mix of planted species, but
the result is still the same. we get a portion
of buried charcoal from each pass of the
harvester/planter and that adds up over time to
a significant amount of sequestered CO2. if you
have to spread something on the soil wouldn't
it be best if it were done by using fuel derived
right there instead of from fuel transported in?

if we can go perennial plants for cereal
grain production (corn, wheat, rice) and
also perennial legumes (i ain't giving up
my beans bucko ) for adding some nitrogen
that still does not get charcoal into the
ground. there would still have to be some
method of harvesting and spreading the charcoal
and it makes the most sense to me if it were
to happen as a part of the same process be
it from burning the fields once in a while
(bad idea as all that energy is then wasted
where it could otherwise be used as a food
source or a fuel -- not counting the air
pollution aspect).



My only doubt is with the conversion of the wood to fuel/char.


without having worked on anything like this
directly i can't say, but you could not do it
well as a combined process in one chamber instead
you have to divide the materials and one path
goes to the burning for fuel/heat/steam and the
other is for char and gas production so that the
gas can be condensed and then burned or if it is
extra it can be saved for fueling the next years
tasks, used as winter heating or sold.

or to keep the thought experiment running,
perhaps just digging a deep enough trench as
the harvester goes, burying the dry materials,
firing it and piling dirt on it as it goes.
so in that way the actual firing chamber is
the earth itself and that keeps the smoke,
soot, volatiles and some of the CO2 right in
the soil. sure it ****es off some of the soil
food web for a while, but as soon as it cools
off and there is some settling, rains the
critters will invade and colonize. with each
pass as the years go by it will build the
biochar and soil organic materials as you would
have some that aren't burned/charred.


...
consider for a longer term project where
fast growing trees could be planted, then after
a few years (seven or less for some poplars
i've seen grow here) they could be chopped
and left to dry and then chipped and burned
on the fly and the charcoal buried at the
same time. no crop needed to harvest but
there might be a wood gas surplus that could
be stored and then used later as fuel. not
sure about that though as wood chipping might
need a lot more power than dragging a single
blade through the soil and spinning some blades
and a fan.


Europeans plant lots of poplar for firewood. Forests are so thick that
you can't see 5 feet into them.


i'm sure plenty of it is planted here too.
i know the university forestry department has
a lot of research going on using them. in
some cases trying to breed trees with less
lignin making it easier to process for paper
products and similar aspects of changing the
trees for industrial reasons.

...
...HERE...

...
that's a lot of tomatoes!

which do you like the best or the
least? do you put them up or freeze
them?

Eyes eats them! It's only about 10 vines in the soil, and 2 in
containers. If I was going to put them up I would be planting romas, or
San Marzanos. Between salads, sandwiches, and gazpacho there won't be
any left over, especially now that I know that I can use green tomatoes
in making salsa verde for enchiladas.


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.


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.

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.


...
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.

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.


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.

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


money and capital after all are figments
of the imagination, so if you can get enough
people convinced that CO2 sequestration has
value then some kind of market forces will
be created along with that determination of
value.


now though, i think that value needs to be
set higher and immediately to get the whole
process going.


Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.
-Lucy Parsons
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Parsons


who said anything about voting? i'm a
benevolent dictator. first order of business
is governmental reform and rewriting the
constitution to change election laws (there
wouldn't be elections any longer it would
be representation by random selection).

second order of business would be environmental
reforms would be to make the USoA the first
nation to go 100% recycling, get off oil
completely and outlaw *cides and restore the
grasslands, wetlands, rivers, to hold back water
instead of the current policies which exacerbate
the flash flooding and drought low flow patterns.
plant more trees, restore marginal lands by using
keyline water traps and stacking rocks and then
planting trees to help keep things more stable
and shaded. soak up CO2, more trees that can be
planted in city parks and vacant lots that aren't
otherwise claimed for community gardens.

third order of business is to get rid of
minimum wage laws for unskilled labor. like the
above trash bounty type of program that would
get trash picked up and recycled or incinerated
or turned into biochar. the price can be good
enough to make marine floating trash worth the
effort. mixed in there are likely to be a good
deal of organic materials that could be charred,
chipped or otherwise used.

i think some folks would like to work but can't
because the cost for minimum wages is too much for
what the job is actually worth. let's say that a
job picking up trash along the road is worth $2/hr
and with a bounty on trash that might bump the
effort up to $3/hr. that's a good enough wage to
get some kids out to earn extra money, or a older
or retired person who would like a little extra to
help with bills. good exercise, getting paid for
it and not having to sit at a desk inside. think
about the health benefit from that or even if they
wanted to help out in a community garden or a CSA.
most of these cannot afford to pay a lot but they
might be able to afford a little. subsidized by
trash and fast food taxes it would be the best
health improvement thing that could be done with a
very small shift of money. some of that money
then gets taxes as income and some more people get
back on the payroll and contributing to social
security and medicaide. a bunch of small peanuts
in terms of amounts but it adds up in aggregate.

if i were a poor country with severely depleted
soils in need of an energy source or organic
materials to recondition the topsoil i'd be looking
into buying some old tankers and then sending them
off to harvest a floating goldmine.

sunlight can degrade quite a bit of toxic
compounds, soil bacteria can do a good job on other
and fungi can work on those that don't get taken
care of by the first two.

short of heavy metals or radioactives i don't
think there's much likely to be floating that
i'd worry about once it was sorted and processed.
any plastics that are too toxic to be reused
could be incinerated or cracked into other
molecules. a poor country with a lot of heat
and sun could use mirrors to concentrate sunlight
and cook stuff to dry it and char it.

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?


...the oceans, floating trash...


You have my vote for dictator. Pay everyone a living wage. Enough of
this employment of wage slaves.
Polyethylene is not biodegraded in any practical time scale. There is no
mechanism in the marine environment to biodegrade that long a molecule."
Even if photodegradable nets helped marine mammals live, their powdery
residue remains in the sea, where the filter feeders will find it.

if it is large enough to be filtered out
then it is: incorporated in the animal,
excreted or the animal is eaten before it
has done any of the previous two things.


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.


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

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.

...


songbird


Still in the wild,

- Billy

--
Remember Rachel Corrie
http://www.rachelcorrie.org/

Welcome to the New America.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA736oK9FPg



  #32   Report Post  
Old 11-04-2013, 12:51 AM posted to rec.gardens.edible
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Default OT but a welcome bit of brightness - nature11069.pdf (1/1)

In article ,
wrote:

begin 644 nature11069.pdf
[Image]

end


The report was a mega study. It studied studies, and they get to pick
who they will study. Long story short, you can pull a rhinoceros out of
a top hat with a mega study.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/09/2012998389284146.html
Myths about industrial agriculture
Organic farming is the "only way to produce food" without harming the
planet and people's health.

by Vandana Shiva

Reports trying to create doubts about organic agriculture are suddenly
flooding the media. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, people are
fed up of the corporate assault of toxics and GMOs. Secondly, people are
turning to organic agriculture and organic food as a way to end the
toxic war against the earth and our bodies.

At a time when industry has set its eyes on the super profits to be
harvested from seed monopolies through patented seeds and seeds
engineered with toxic genes and genes for making crops resistant to
herbicides, people are seeking food freedom through organic,
non-industrial food.

Today's hunger is permanent and global. It is hunger by design. This
does not mean that those who design the contemporary food systems
intend to create hunger. It does mean that creation of hunger is built
into the corporate design of industrial production and globalised
distribution of food.

A series of media reports have covered another study by a team led by
Bravata, a senior affiliate with Stanford's Centre for Health Policy,
and Crystal Smith-Spangler, MD, MS, an instructor in the school's
Division of General Medical Disciplines and a physician-investigator at
VA Palo Alto Health Care System, who did the most comprehensive
meta-analysis to date of existing studies comparing organic and
conventional foods.

They did not find strong evidence that organic foods are more nutritious
or carry fewer health risks than conventional alternatives, though
consumption of organic foods can reduce the risk of pesticide exposure.

This study can hardly be called the "most comprehensive meta -
analysis"; the researchers sifted through thousands of papers and
identified 237 of the most relevant to analyse. This already exposes the
bias. The biggest meta-analysis on food and agriculture has been done by
the United Nations as the International Assessment of Agricultural
Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD).
http://www.unep.org/dewa/Assessments...id/105853/Defa
ult.aspx/docs/Global_SDM_060608_English.htm

Four hundred scientists from across the world worked for four years to
analyse all publications on different approaches to agriculture, and
concluded that chemical industrial agriculture is no longer an option,
only ecological farming is.

Yet the Stanford team presents itself as the most comprehensive study,
and claims there are no health benefits from organic agriculture, even
though there were no long-term studies of health outcomes of people
consuming organic versus conventionally produced food; the duration of
the studies involving human subjects ranged from two days to two years.

Two days does not make a scientific study. No impact can be measured in
a two-day study. This is junk science parading as science.

--
Remember Rachel Corrie
http://www.rachelcorrie.org/

Welcome to the New America.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA736oK9FPg



  #33   Report Post  
Old 11-04-2013, 08:01 PM posted to rec.gardens.edible
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Default OT but a welcome bit of brightness

Billy wrote:
....
Besides the BBCs A Farm for a Future, the book ,
Gaia's Garden, Second Edition: A Guide To Home-Scale Permaculture
(Paperback)
by Toby Hemenway
http://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Garden-S...culture/dp/160
3580298/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271266976&sr=1-1
(It's at the library)

is a good introduction to permaculture.


i'll add it to the list, thanks.


songbird
  #34   Report Post  
Old 12-04-2013, 02:07 AM posted to rec.gardens.edible
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Jun 2010
Posts: 3,072
Default OT but a welcome bit of brightness

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
  #35   Report Post  
Old 12-04-2013, 08:21 AM posted to rec.gardens.edible
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Apr 2012
Posts: 243
Default OT but a welcome bit of brightness

In article ,
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.

(snipped for brevity)



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.

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.

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.



...
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.



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



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.

The history of the Supreme court shows it is very susceptible to wealthy
interests. I wish us all good luck.


...
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.

So my wife tells me ;o(



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.

The grain of the wood and the heat applied to it is also important in
making black powder.



(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.


You may enjoy his encounter with William F. Buckley.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbTxLmbCoo4


...
...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.


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.


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.


It sets in about 70 days, a prolific plant, and even though it is a
hybrid, it's off spring are very similar to the parents.



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 only have about 600 sq. ft. for everything.



...
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.

While the case for the progressivist view seems overwhelming, it's hard
to prove. How do you show that the lives of people 10,000 years ago got
better when they abandoned hunting and gathering for farming? Until
recently, archaeologists had to resort to indirect tests, whose results
(surprisingly) failed to support the progressivist view. Here's one
example of an indirect test: Are twentieth century hunter-gatherers
really worse off than farmers? Scattered throughout the world, several
dozen groups of so called primitive people, like the Kalahari Bushmen,
continue to support themselves that way. It turns out that these people
have plenty of leisure time, sleep a good deal, and work less hard than
their farming neighbors. For instance, the average time devoted each
week to obtaining food is only twelve to nineteen hours for one group of
Bushmen, fourteen hours or less for the Hadza nomads of Tanzania. One
Bushman, when asked why he hadn't emulated neighboring tribes by
adopting agriculture, replied, "Why should we, when there are so many
mongongo nuts in the world?"
While farmers concentrate on high-carbohydrate crops like rice and
potatoes, the mix of wild plants and animals in the diets of surviving
hunter-gatherers provides more protein and a better balance of other
nutrients. In one study, the Bushmen's average daily food intake (during
a month when food was plentiful) was 2,140 calories and ninety-three
grams of protein, considerably greater than the recommended daily
allowance for people of their size. It's almost inconceivable that
Bushmen, who eat seventy-five or so wild plants, could die of starvation
the way hundreds of thousands of Irish farmers and their families did
during the potato famine of the 1840s.

Besides malnutrition, starvation, and epidemic diseases, farming helped
bring another curse upon humanity: deep class divisions.
Hunter-gatherers have little or no stored food, and no concentrated food
sources, like an orchard or a herd of cows: they live off the wild
plants and animals they obtain each day. Therefore, there can be no
kings, no class of social parasites who grow fat on food seized from
others. Only in a farming population could a healthy, nonproducing elite
set itself above the disease-ridden masses. Skeletons from Greek tombs
at Mycenae c.1500 B.C. suggest that royals enjoyed a better diet than
commoners, since the royal skeletons were two or three inches taller and
had better teeth (on average, one instead of six cavities or missing
teeth). Among Chilean mummies from c. A.D. 1000, the elite were
distinguished not only by ornaments and gold hair clips but also by a
fourfold lower rate of bone lesions caused by disease.

There are at least three sets of reasons to explain the findings that
agriculture was bad for health. First, hunter-gatherers enjoyed a varied
diet, while early farmers obtained most of their food from one or a few
starchy crops. The farmers gained cheap calories at the cost of poor
nutrition. (Today just three high-carbohydrate plants--wheat, rice, and
corn--provide the bulk of the calories consumed by the human species,
yet each one is deficient in certain vitamins or amino acids essential
to life.) Second, because of dependence on a limited number of crops,
farmers ran the risk of starvation if one crop failed. Finally, the mere
fact that agriculture encouraged people to clump together in crowded
societies, many of which then carried on trade with other crowded
societies, led to the spread of parasites and infectious disease. (Some
archaeologists think it was crowding, rather than agriculture, that
promoted disease, but this is a chicken-and-egg argument, because
crowding encourages agriculture and vice versa.) Epidemics couldn't
take hold when populations were scattered in small bands that constantly
shifted camp. Tuberculosis and diarrheal disease had to await the rise
of farming, measles and bubonic plague the appearance of large cities.

Besides malnutrition, starvation, and epidemic diseases, farming helped
bring another curse upon humanity: deep class divisions.
Hunter-gatherers have little or no stored food, and no concentrated food
sources, like an orchard or a herd of cows: they live off the wild
plants and animals they obtain each day. Therefore, there can be no
kings, no class of social parasites who grow fat on food seized from
others. Only in a farming population could a healthy, nonproducing elite
set itself above the disease-ridden masses. Skeletons from Greek tombs
at Mycenae c.1500 B.C. suggest that royals enjoyed a better diet than
commoners, since the royal skeletons were two or three inches taller and
had better teeth (on average, one instead of six cavities or missing
teeth). Among Chilean mummies from c. A.D. 1000, the elite were
distinguished not only by ornaments and gold hair clips but also by a
fourfold lower rate of bone lesions caused by disease.

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)


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.



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.

(snip)

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.


Awwww. Spoil sport.



...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.

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.

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.

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.

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.


http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...mical-controls
April 2010, Scientific American
p. 30
Chemical Controls
Consequently, of the more than 80,000 chemicals in use in the U.S., only
five have been either restricted or banned. Not 5 percent, five. The
EPA has been able to force health and safety testing for only around
200.


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.


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.


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


That's my dictator ;o)

--
Remember Rachel Corrie
http://www.rachelcorrie.org/

Welcome to the New America.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA736oK9FPg





  #36   Report Post  
Old 12-04-2013, 03:28 PM posted to rec.gardens.edible
external usenet poster
 
First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Apr 2012
Posts: 177
Default OT but a welcome bit of brightness

In article ,
songbird wrote:

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.


Depending on local laws (they are verboten as possible invasives if they
escaped in some places) you might look at tilapia. They do well in
small-ish container aquaculture systems, breed like rabbits (the
invasive if escaped argument is not void - don't let them escape) are
omnivorous and grow fast. Or check with your ag extension people to see
what they suggest and/or what's legal in your state. Hybrid
aquaculture/hydoponic arrangements seem to work as well.

Be sure to eat one before you commit to raising any, but fairly decent
flavor (to most people who eat fish) is part of their appeal.

Trout are fine if you have the conditions, but few people do, and
providing them with happy circumstances artificially is expensive.

--
Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by
Please don't feed the trolls. Killfile and ignore them so they will go away.
  #37   Report Post  
Old 13-04-2013, 04:37 AM posted to rec.gardens.edible
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Jun 2010
Posts: 3,072
Default OT but a welcome bit of brightness

Ecnerwal wrote:
....
Depending on local laws (they are verboten as possible invasives if they
escaped in some places) you might look at tilapia. They do well in
small-ish container aquaculture systems, breed like rabbits (the
invasive if escaped argument is not void - don't let them escape) are
omnivorous and grow fast. Or check with your ag extension people to see
what they suggest and/or what's legal in your state. Hybrid
aquaculture/hydoponic arrangements seem to work as well.

Be sure to eat one before you commit to raising any, but fairly decent
flavor (to most people who eat fish) is part of their appeal.

Trout are fine if you have the conditions, but few people do, and
providing them with happy circumstances artificially is expensive.


i'll pass, thanks, i'm not that much into
aquaculture and even if i were this isn't a
site well suited for it.

i'm much happier not having to deal with
most of the farm animals. worms are good
enough for me. i like that they don't need
a huge amount of care. it fits well with
my keep it simple approach to gardening.


songbird
  #38   Report Post  
Old 15-04-2013, 01:43 AM posted to rec.gardens.edible
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: May 2010
Posts: 46
Default OT but a welcome bit of brightness

On Thursday, April 11, 2013 12:01:24 PM UTC-6, songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:

...

Besides the BBCs A Farm for a Future, the book ,


Gaia's Garden, Second Edition: A Guide To Home-Scale Permaculture


(Paperback)


by Toby Hemenway


http://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Garden-S...culture/dp/160


3580298/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271266976&sr=1-1


(It's at the library)




is a good introduction to permaculture.




i'll add it to the list, thanks.


songbird


That link didn't wrap correctly. here it is as I see it:

http://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Garden-S...6976&sr=1-1%3E

====
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Old 15-04-2013, 02:04 PM posted to rec.gardens.edible
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Posts: 3,072
Default OT but a welcome bit of brightness

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
range nut, all minions adored, this
week's special includes gluten free
t-shirts, just clip this coupon and
redeem...


songbird
  #40   Report Post  
Old 15-04-2013, 10:55 PM posted to rec.gardens.edible
external usenet poster
 
First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Apr 2012
Posts: 243
Default OT but a welcome bit of brightness

In article ,
songbird wrote:

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.


Did the bison poop where exactly where they consumed the buffalo grass,
or was it a couple of hundred yards away? I didn't say that Salatin was
making 1" of top soil in a closed system. Like all other news, I get it
second or third hand, through reporters I trust, or from enough
reporters to make it plausible.

" Their system is based on native pastures, without cultivation or new,
³improved² pasture species. The only input has been the feed for the
poultry. This multi-species rotational grazing system builds one inch of
soil a year and returns the family 15 times the income per acre than is
received by neighbouring farms using a set stocking of cattle."
- Andre Leu
President of the Organic Producers Association of Queensland and vice
chair of the Organic Federation of Australia

The above statement, and the praise from Michael Pollan gives me
confidence that the statement is probably true.


i'm not buying the claim as being true.


That's your prerogative.

My computer's dictionary lists "Make the most efficient use of
non-renewable resources and on-farm resources and integrate, where
appropriate, natural biological cycles and controls", as one of the
attributes of sustainable agriculture.


(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.

Doesn't help if you want to grow sweet corn, or melons. If all the stars
line up, we can grow these things, but we have had cool summers for
nearly a decade now, i.e. only 1 - 3 days of temps over 100F, whereas in
the bad ol' days we'd get 6 - 12 100F days.


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.


Too bad the government can't make federal land available for for
sustainable agriculture.



...
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.

They go private so that they won't have to show their books to the
public.



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.


Wierd, I'm using Firefox, and it goes right to it, as does Safari, and
E.I.


...
...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!


Oy, indeed.


...
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.


Wouldn't want to amplify on that would you? You disagree with what
assumptions?


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.


What, that a division between the people who did the actual work, and
the planners didn't lead to a stratification of society? The word
civilization comes from the Latin civitas, meaning city or city-state.

You saw his argument on hunter/gatherers superior health?


...
...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.

The point was that wages were tied to the desirability of the job. The
more desirable it was, the less it paid. The less desirable it was, the
more it paid. This isn't the only algorithm to arrive a reasonable wage.
The one we have now is individual greed and exploitation of the society
where they are.


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?


If I say you can get by on $2/day, who are you to argue?



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...


?? Yeah, sometimes they work. Sometimes they don't.


...
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.


As was pointed out, they are incorporated into the food chain, or they
can settle out like mercury, only to be methylated and introduced into
the food chain (or web, if you will).

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


Not indefinitely, maybe only 100,000 years, but not indefinitely, unless
they are incorporated into sedimentary rock.


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
range nut, all minions adored, this
week's special includes gluten free
t-shirts, just clip this coupon and
redeem...


songbird


Two for the price of one?

The revolution will not be right back
after a message about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.
-------

So what's it to be, Hinayana, or Mahayana?

--
Remember Rachel Corrie
http://www.rachelcorrie.org/

Welcome to the New America.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA736oK9FPg





  #41   Report Post  
Old 15-04-2013, 10:57 PM posted to rec.gardens.edible
external usenet poster
 
First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Apr 2012
Posts: 243
Default OT but a welcome bit of brightness

In article ,
songbird wrote:

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.


Sorry, I miss conscrewed what you said. Get the DVD.

--
Remember Rachel Corrie
http://www.rachelcorrie.org/

Welcome to the New America.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA736oK9FPg



  #42   Report Post  
Old 16-04-2013, 12:21 AM posted to rec.gardens.edible
external usenet poster
 
First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Jun 2010
Posts: 3,072
Default OT but a welcome bit of brightness

Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:


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.


Sorry, I miss conscrewed what you said. Get the DVD.


can you write a summary for the link so i know
what you're talking about or referencing?

most of the longer messages and replies are
written when i'm offline so i'm not usually going
to follow a link or look at video.


songbird
  #43   Report Post  
Old 16-04-2013, 02:28 AM posted to rec.gardens.edible
external usenet poster
 
First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Apr 2012
Posts: 243
Default OT but a welcome bit of brightness

In article ,
songbird wrote:

Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:


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.


Sorry, I miss conscrewed what you said. Get the DVD.


can you write a summary for the link so i know
what you're talking about or referencing?

???????? Oh, OK.

"The Corporation" is on YouTube in 23 installments.
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFA50FBC214A6CE87

It is the same as the DVD.

I think you'd be better off with the DVD, all things considered.

The Corporation
2003 NR 145 minutes

Filmmakers Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott explore the genesis of the
American corporation, its global economic supremacy and its psychopathic
leanings, with social critics like Noam Chomsky and Milton Friedman
lending insight in this documentary.

Cast:
Mikela J. Mikael, Noam Chomsky, Milton Friedman, Michael Moore

Director:
Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott

Genres:
Documentary, Social & Cultural Documentaries, Political Documentaries

This movie is:
Cerebral, Controversial

Format:
DVD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Corporation_%28film%29
The Corporation is a 2003 Canadian documentary film written by
University of British Columbia law professor Joel Bakan, and directed by
Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott. The documentary examines the modern-day
corporation, considering its legal status as a class of person and
evaluating its behaviour towards society and the world at large as a
psychiatrist might evaluate an ordinary person. This is explored through
specific examples. Bakan wrote the book, The Corporation: The
Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, during the filming of the
documentary.

Film critics gave the film generally favorable reviews. The review
aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 91% of critics gave the film
positive reviews, based on 104 reviews.[3] Metacritic reported the film
had an average score of 73 out of 100, based on 28 reviews.

http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/The-Cor...id=975545367_0
_0&strackid=6395b8cdbaf6f550_0_srl&trkid=222336

MEMBER REVIEW
This is a wonderfully edited documentary about the effects that
corporations have on society. It's highly informative without being
boring. The first point that should be made is that everyone should see
this film because the topics in it effect all of us. It doesn't matter
what your political, economic, or religious status is- if you live on
this planet, you will be directly effected by corporations for your
entire life. Far from being the benevolent providers of goods and
services that make our lives worth living, corporations are by
definition voracious predators who must continually feed their appetite
for more. This movie is not necessarily anti-corporate. It's pretty
objective and presents the truth straight from the CEO's mouth. The
single most important thing that you walk away from this film with is
the understanding of why things are the way they are in America and
other capitalist societies. Most people don't think about these topics
very often, but when you start to put the puzzle pieces together, you
realize that our way of life can't possibly be sustained. This raises
important questions about what we are going to do about it. Further, the
movie gives you a pretty good understanding of the laws governing
corporations. These laws basically force companies to continually grow,
whether or not it is sustainable. To most people, the idea that a
company has to continually grow larger seems to make sense. But what if
that company harvests resources that belong to all people and are in
extremely short supply? You know, things like air, water, trees...the
stuff that the creator gave to all mankind. You will be watching nature
get pillaged to benefit the few until society awakens from it's haze of
denial. This film is the start of that awakening.

Voila, the concise summary.


most of the longer messages and replies are
written when i'm offline so i'm not usually going
to follow a link or look at video.





songbird


--
Remember Rachel Corrie
http://www.rachelcorrie.org/

Welcome to the New America.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA736oK9FPg



  #44   Report Post  
Old 16-04-2013, 03:15 PM posted to rec.gardens.edible
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Jun 2010
Posts: 3,072
Default OT but a welcome bit of brightness

Billy wrote:

....summary please...
"The Corporation" is on YouTube in 23 installments.
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFA50FBC214A6CE87

It is the same as the DVD.

I think you'd be better off with the DVD, all things considered.


...

thanks, i'll put it on the list for next
winter. it's a far tangent from what i'm
getting into this spring and summer.

Mark Achbar has some interesting movie
credits, _Manufacturing Consent_ and another
about water, both are also likely to be
interesting.


songbird
  #45   Report Post  
Old 17-04-2013, 02:08 AM posted to rec.gardens.edible
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Apr 2012
Posts: 243
Default OT but a welcome bit of brightness

In article ,
songbird wrote:

Billy wrote:

...summary please...
"The Corporation" is on YouTube in 23 installments.
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFA50FBC214A6CE87

It is the same as the DVD.

I think you'd be better off with the DVD, all things considered.


...

thanks, i'll put it on the list for next
winter. it's a far tangent from what i'm
getting into this spring and summer.

Mark Achbar has some interesting movie
credits, _Manufacturing Consent_ and another
about water, both are also likely to be
interesting.


songbird


The first one has Noam Chomsky, so you can hardly fail to learn
something new.

--
Remember Rachel Corrie
http://www.rachelcorrie.org/

Welcome to the New America.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA736oK9FPg



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