Economics start with photosynthesis.
— Abe Collins
I feel like getting naked and running though the streets, yelling eureka, eureka! By George, I think I’ve got it. And I wasn’t even looking. It all began a few days ago, when I started on a post about creating soil from scratch. A radical notion in its own right, to be sure. So let’s begin with the story there.
Growing new topsoil
Human future depends on the future of earthly soils. The most meaningful indicator for the health of the land, and the long term wealth of a people, is whether soil is being formed or lost. If soil is being lost, so too is the economic and ecological foundation of society.
— Christine Jones (paraphrased)
I won’t dwell again on the dire facts of soil loss around the world. We all know it’s a serious problem. What is not so clear to many of us is that the major efforts out there attempting to counter this trend merely hope to slow down the rate of loss. The option of growing new soil and actually coming out ahead is only considered by a few maverick soil scientists and small groups of farmers who’ve finally had the courage to forgo conventional ag advice and forge their own path. Most gardeners are familiar with soil-building, but this generally involves robbing Peter to pay Paul, as manures or leaf mold are imported from elsewhere.
The process that forms soil from weathered rocks takes thousands of years. But new soils can form quite rapidly from the soil that’s already there, provided the natural sequence is unimpeded. Here is how it happens:
- In order for new soil to grow, it must be living.
- In order for soil to be living, it must be covered.
- In order for soil to be covered, it must be periodically disturbed.
It makes sense, doesn’t it? Only living things can grow. For soil to grow, it must be a thriving community of microorganisms, fungi, insects, and worms. These need to be sheltered from weather extremes and kept moist. A ground cover of live plants and decomposing plant litter protects the living soil by buffering temperature extremes, improving water infiltration and slowing evaporation.
To flourish, these ground covers need to be fed. This is where soil disturbance comes in. Nature brings in herbivores on the hoof who trample decomposing plant material into the ground, pushing it into the root zone. They break up the soil crust and aerate it, making it more permeable to water. And they crush old dried stalks so that sunlight can reach new growth.
As the herbivores graze and chew off the tops of the grasses, part of the root system dies back and feeds the soil organisms. Intermittent grazing creates cycles of root die-back and regrowth that provides a rich feast for all who inhabit the soil community. And there are a lot of hungry mouths! It is said that a teaspoon of good soil contains almost as many tiny denizens as there are people on Earth.
Well fed soil microorganisms then produce the gums and sugars that build crumbly, porous soil texture which provides spaces for roots, passageways for small invertebrates, and room for rain. Since these gums and sugars need to be continually replenished, a steady supply of food — decomposing plant roots and litter alongside water, air and minerals — must be coming their way.
This simple and elegant process begins to produce new topsoil within the year, with dramatic results reported in three years. The higher the biomass and turnover of plant roots, the faster new topsoil will form.
Here is the recipe for growing new soil:
- seed or plant perennial ground covers known for extensive, deep root systems
- graze or slash new growth intermittently
- then disturb the soil by working decaying plant material into the root zone, whether by hooves, hoes, or disks
- since high levels of biological activity are required, avoid pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers known to harm soil life
- on drylands, predigestion of plant matter (either in ruminant stomachs or via composting) is essential; without adequate moisture old plant matter oxidizes rather than rots
Now I understand why lawns take so much fussy effort. Without the third step — intermittent disturbance — the grasses need to be constantly propped up by chemicals and aerating machinery, while at the same time, the chemical brews depress soil life.
The miracle of humus
Feeding soil life depends ultimately on photosynthesis. Powered by sunlight, plants synthesize nutrients out of water and CO2. They use these nutrients for their own growth and maintenance, and share the surplus by exuding the rest through the roots. This carbon-rich fluid is used in turn by mycorrhizal fungi and other micro-critters as they turn plant remains into humus.
I admit to being woefully misinformed. While the term ‘humus’ does commonly refer to the dark, fertile, friable stuff compost eventually turns into, the real miracle is the substance soil scientists call stable humus. This dark colloidal gel consists largely of water and carbon in many permutations (humic acids, humins, etc.), tightly bound to clay and metal hydroxides. Greatly resistant to further decomposition, it plays an essential role in providing soil structure, increases the ability of soil to store nutrients resistant to leaching, buffers acids and alkalis, binds toxic heavy metals, and can hold the equivalent of 80-90% of its weight in water. It can last in the soil for centuries and perhaps longer, sequestering water and carbon for slow release.
Stable humus is used up en masse by plowing and high nitrogen fertilizers. On the other hand, its formation can be encouraged by following the soil growth generative sequence, and by the addition of chopped roots of grass species (to restore mycorrhizal fungi) or black carbon (biochar). Rotational grazing where feasible optimizes conditions for photosynthesis and humification. And how can we tell we are getting somewhere? Soils with high humus content feel sticky to the touch when rubbed between the fingers.
The soil solution
It would be awesome enough to have access to a simple process that grows new topsoil, and to become skilled in aiding humification to keep these soils highly fertile over the long term. But it gets better.
Is your area plagued by drought and desertification? Is the local aquifer steadily depleting? Did you have endless days of 115°F heat last summer? Are you worried about food security? Maybe your region’s lands have suffered from declining rainfall or salinization. I have some truly good news for you. Growing soil with high stable humus content is the healing treatment for all these ills.
Nature works on the principle that waste (of some) equals food (for others). Civilized humans in our unsapiential wisdom work hard to turn what could be food into waste. We’ve been doing it with human manures for some 150 years, with animal manures for a few decades, and as it turns out, we’ve really done a number on water and carbon, the very stuff of life, spewing them into the air while soils go begging.
After the oceans, the soil is the Earth’s largest carbon sink. But humus depleting agricultural practices have caused soils to lose both water and carbon to the atmosphere where these otherwise life-giving substances do mischief in high concentrations. Perhaps there are enough of us now who appreciate the value of humus-laden soils, ready to turn things around. Here are a few quotes I have pulled from the work of Dr. Christine Jones, Australian soil scientist who has been working with farmers and ranchers for many years to successfully regenerate the soils under their care and sequester large amounts of carbon and water at the same time.
Photosynthesis is a cooling process. Lack of green cover on the land greatly increases heat absorption, causing a dramatic increase in evaporation. Water vapour is a greenhouse gas of greater significance for global warming than CO2. Lower rainfall can also result from groundcover loss.
Of the estimated 3060 gigatonnes of carbon in the terrestrial biosphere, 82 per cent is in soils. That’s over four times the amount of carbon stored in the world’s vegetation… If only 18 per cent is stored in vegetation, why all the emphasis on biomass, rather than soil, as a carbon sink?
1% carbon increase in grasslands and cropsoils in Australia would offset the entire “legacy load” or total rise in CO2 over the last 50 years. Carbon sequestration of farmlands can be higher than that of tropical forests.
Soil loss and soil destruction spread far and wide as domination-based civilization claimed larger and larger portions of the planet. When we fan out, bringing about soil gain and soil regeneration wherever we go, we’ll know that our metamorphosis into viable human earthlings is well underway.
May 10, 2012 at 3:15 pm
Here’s an amazing discussion by Christine Jones to express my exhilaration………….this is big!……………..thanks Vera
Life in a Teaspoon
http://www.audioacrobat.com/play/W0rgXJ7k
May 10, 2012 at 3:36 pm
Hmm, this is a solution that seems win-win for everybody, why aren’t we hearing more about it? I am sure it’s the same old Jokers, Monsanto & Dow & Co, who do not want people to know that not only do alternatives to chemical fertilizers and GMO seeds exist, but they are helpful for the big-picture of AGW as well. The challenge here will be to get biodynamic farming methods to get big enough to make a difference.
I am amazed to hear that cropland is as valuable as a carbon sink as rainforest, frankly. It’s still not as diverse in terms of large life-forms, but the mind-numbing quote, “a teaspoon of good soil contains almost as many tiny denizens as there are people on Earth,” turns our whole conception of biodiversity on its head, doesn’t it.
I have been thinking more lately about the microbes, fungi and other tiny life forms of the planet, which will definitely survive whatever damage we wreak on ourselves and other big creatures (mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, etc).
We have so much to learn from them, and so little time!
May 10, 2012 at 3:55 pm
Tanya, thank you for the link, will listen in. How cool.
Jennifer, everybody seems to be fixated on the emissions side. Time to get serious about sequestration.
About farmland being as good a sink as tropical forests, Christine means by it rotational grazing pastures, and croplands where annual crops are interplanted with the perennials during their dormant period. So the soil is always covered. Masanobu Fukuoka wrote about it long time ago already in his One straw revolution, planting rice among white clover. Win/win indeed!
May 10, 2012 at 10:25 pm
Take a look at Tokoroa Community Gardens on Facebook. This was originally a single men’s campsite with two huts on each square. The huts were removed some years ago leaving the base of packed earth and rhyolite (rock) covered with bark chips. Eight years of working on top of this with grass clippings, woodshavings, horse and chicken manure, green crops and lime, this year we produced our first parsnips about a foot long. We still can’t penetrate that base but grow successfully on top. Earth worms aplenty. Lots of photos to see!
May 11, 2012 at 12:49 am
Thank you so much for helping to disseminate this information. To see some before and after pictures of this type of farming I recommend readers see: http://www.soilcarbon.com.au/case_studies/index.html
May 11, 2012 at 8:23 am
Most of the carbon “solutions” are fixed on the emissions side because that is where the money is. LIke most things in this society, there is nothing so important that it will not be turned into a profit-making venture. The slideshow from soilcarbon.com is excellent. Unfortunately cattle ranching is hard work and not the technological quick-fix that some are seeking.
While our family has been trying to reduce our level of consumption, “closing the circle” in regards to the fertility of our garden and orchard soil is one of the big goals we are pursuing. Since we don’t have livestock to trod and manure the soil (the chickens, bless their little hearts, do help though), we’ve been trying to plant non-garden areas with an eye towards making good compost. Some comfrey that my mother planted 30 years ago has managed to spread in various patches all over the yard, and aside from the medicinal uses, the leaves make fantastic compost since they break down quickly and are high in phosphorus (something that frequently get imported in). They are a very hardy perennial, no matter how often I cut the tops back, they push up new compost-destined growth.
May 11, 2012 at 8:15 pm
You both rocked my world and confirmed my beliefs all at once. I loved this.
May 12, 2012 at 2:47 am
Spooky, weird and FANTASTIC! Man am I thrilled to hear you mention Fukuoka, Leavergirl.
I read One Straw Revolution in a hammock on a Great Barrier Reef island a few months ago. In the 20 years since I’d last visited this little coral cay National Park bush camping outpost – onto which you carry all food, water, everything – the coral has all but died. Some fish are bribed to stay (surreptitious feeding). They’re the last vestiges of a marine garden phantasmorgoria destroyed for ever by pollution and warming. The entire miraculous ecology of the biggest and most stunning living structure on the planet…. wiped…. Yet the tour operators just take down the posters of what was, talk up the fish, and the public oohs and ahhs appreciatively as they glide over graveyards of bleached broken coral. A truly bizarre experience of our morphing into the suggestables Orwell anticipated.
So I was depressed, then read Fukuoka’s book, a neglected permaculture text, in my hammock (bugger sad snorkelling) and smiled. It’s an exeptional book. The island, the offshore humpback wales, the sea eagles, my children and the strange group of other campers who chose to dress as Gilligan’s Islanders (!) were lovely. There’s hope.
So just yay! Put this soil growing stuff out there. Convince the ranchers that they’ll end up spending less on soil amendment if they pressure graze in cells, and grow soil to grow feed. Tell them we need your help, please, hat in hand, we helpless urban liberals, to sequester carbon and save us. Ask them to show us how safely they hold the wellbeing of the planet in their competent hands.
I’m not asking you specifically to try this angle of approach, LG, but generally is this an approach we should try? Instead of the traditional antipathy between left and right, we can turn with gratitude to the redneck frugal homesteader for tips on food growing, preserving, mending, making do, resilience stuff in general. They’re good at it. Better than many a well-read leftie! Maybe, some collaboration would undo old prejudices on both sides. (I’ll leave the prepper’s advice on ammunition stores though.)
Oops. I ranted again. I’ve just been thinking, well, if LG and I can love the same book, can transcend a bit of bitterness, we all can. We can meet over the issue of impending doom and be appreciative of the other and work together. Can we?
May 12, 2012 at 8:47 am
Lovely post, lovely comments. To be cynical (moi?), I’d say the answer to the question
“Hmm, this is a solution that seems win-win for everybody, why aren’t we hearing more about it?”
is indeed mostly that it can’t be “monetised” the way CCS, nuclear etc can be, but also – humans don’t like to admit that they rely on worms. It reminds them too much of the fact that one day soon they will be worm-food.
Ernst Becker “The Denial of Death” – life-changing book.
Hey LG, it’s wonderfulsometimes how you write these posts.
May 12, 2012 at 12:15 pm
Great Post! I wasn’t aware of the intricacies of soil building in actual detail. This makes a lot of sense and is good on every level.
I’m reminded of this post by my friend, Christian Ford: http://www.hogsalt.com/wp-hogsalt/2012/04/hly-sht/
I’d like to bring up a point I raised with him. It dawned on me a while back that we also need to adopt a similar attitude in relation to the ocean and what we take out of it, and how we put back what we euphemistically call “waste.”
Salmon runs are a dramatic example, but the same principal applies to any “fishery.” Fish collect and concentrate nourishment from the sea they live in and then leave it behind when they die. If, as is the case with a natural salmon run, they bring those nutrients inland, they become an important source of fertility for an entire watershed.
A toxic simulacra occurs when we mine the sea of fish and then ship them to cities and then dump our “waste” into watersheds that feed back into the sea.
The salmon-run acts in a fine-grained manner to disperse nutrients and feed them at a scale that the land and waters can use. The sewage scheme robs nutrients from their normal cycles and puts them back into the system as concentrated toxins leading to eutrophication and dead-zones.
The entire concept of “waste” is a cultural fiction we cannot afford. It collides with another fiction, that of safety through “sterility.” We are afraid of “germs” and “bugs,” while our efforts to protect ourselves from icky-ness leads to massive destruction of the fabric of life on which we all depend.
Sanitation does save lives, but misapplied and tossed without any constraints upon a world that depends on micro-flora and fauna to survive, it is a dangerous folly. What will we have gained if we continue to “cure” infections and in the process destroy all life? We cannot live in a microbe free world. We can also only achieve this “ideal” by destroying all life. We need to connect these dots on land and sea if we are to survive.
May 12, 2012 at 5:54 pm
Robyn, welcome! And good luck with the soil building!
Stephen, fab pics. Better than words.
Rade and DT, yeah, profit, but what about the activists? Where are they in the picture, and why are they dwelling on emissions when we need to get sequestering, now?
Joan, welcome! And thank you!🙂
Angie, that is an awful-sad story. They are coming from so many places now… And yes, absolutely, there is no reason why we can’t all come together within the soil story, and other stories. I have written about before, re Tea Partiers, and how we need to put people (and planet too) above ideology. And you know what? It’s not just the ranchers. It’s all of us. There is no reason we all can’t grab a piece of neglected land and get some perennials growing there. So let’s get photosynthesizing, left, right and everywhere. Time to jump the old decrepit ideological fences… you go, grrl.
Antonio, that’s it. The whole waste thing must go. And the attitudes that go with it… not just germs, but tidiness… we pave things over just to be tidy, when something could grow there… I have been feeling guilty about not ripping out the small aspens and thistles behind my house, yet they come back every year even if I do… nature so much wants that area covered and photosynthesizing and soil-growing.
I know a group of very old fashioned Mennonites (well, the English culture calls them all Amish, whatever) whose culture discourages fussing over the front landscape a la House Beautiful. Sensible, no?
May 12, 2012 at 6:09 pm
Oh and one more thing. All you people watching the discussion, lurkers and all, are there any bits I have missed? Is any of it off the mark? If it is, I’d like to know, so I can make the post better. And if it’s right on the money, then what the heck is stopping us all?!?
May 13, 2012 at 2:22 pm
Great post. Thanks for sharing. My response is a quote from Bette Midler that I wish I had said myself:
“My whole life has been spent waiting for an epiphany, a manifestation of
God’s presence, the kind of transcendent, magical experience that lets you
see your place in the big picture. And that is what I had with my first
compost heap. I love compost and I believe that composting can save not the
entire world, but a good portion of it.”
May 14, 2012 at 6:24 am
[…] reference in the title is to this rather amazing article by Leavergirl.) Share this:FacebookStumbleUponEmailDiggTwitterRedditLike this:LikeBe the first to […]
May 15, 2012 at 5:32 am
Since my husband and I came to our less than half-acre and rolled up our sleeves to create a little food forest, of all the joys we have found here nothing, *nothing* compares to that fall-to-your-knees experience of the creation of soil. A few bales of rotted hay, some kitchen scraps, a crop of potatoes and in a single year what was once dead sandy soil covered in lawn is now deeper, richer, stickier and full of worms. We may not be saving the world but we are saving our souls.
Interestingly, the area of Quebec we live in is referred to as “impoverished” as the farms are small and the farmers too poor to buy the more advanced equipment and fertilizers. So the fields are manured in the old fashioned way. Hedgerows remain intact and every farm also has a well managed woodlot. Now we have young people coming from the Universities to learn from these contrary old timers who knew all along that soil is the most important thing.
It gives one hope.
Great blog, just found you, it seems I have lots of reading to do!
May 16, 2012 at 2:26 pm
LG, i had a bit of trouble at first with the claim that in order for soil to be living it must be covered and for that it must be disturbed…but i get the meaning of “covered” now. Only relatively recently have i learned about the importance of soil being best off disturbed in some situations, and best off minmally disturbed in others. Used to think that cattle grazing was nothin’ but a uniformly necessary evil, necessary only due to the evil of raising them. Though the grazing could be done by various other animals as well, at least those cows are sometimes also doing some good while emitting all that methane and losing all that energy in the process of producing food, even if raising (eating) them to begin with isn’t actually necessary.
Learned how to char biochar a couple years ago and was amazed the experiment went so well. Lots of potential there and soil building in general. Has it been noted by all readers that James Lovelock claims that Civ is doomed via climate change unless we resort to mega-scale biochar sequestration of carbon?
Angie, part of your comment really got to me in a pretty powerful good way, and i started a different reply and comment here somewhere. Hope to get back to it.
Pretty inspiring, yes, to read comments like the one above!
May 16, 2012 at 9:22 pm
Welcome, Liz and Christine! So glad it all resonates! How could it not… the very stuff of life. It draws us… it calls us…
Jay D, as far as I can tell, cattle do a lot of carbon sequestration when in rotational grazing. I think when it’s all added up, growing grains on bare ground is the real culprit.
Biochar sequestering can be good too. I have a bagful of it, been wanting to send to Cornell to see if it’s the real McCoy. Soft and almost greasy to the touch, black, you can kinda see the wood fibers in it. Anybody been experimenting with it?
May 18, 2012 at 2:45 pm
I don’t think I could offer anything more meaningful on why the activists haven’t turned towards sequestration except to note the general failure of activism per se as eloquently expressed by Paul Kingsnorth and most recently in a post by John Michael Greer. Too much activism is ego driven, and aims at the heroic rather than the mundane. While a struggle against a real tangible evil can be ennobling, it can also become a drug. There sometimes seems little difference to me between some committed activists and the soldiers one hears of who become addicted to the thrill of combat. The thrill of the struggle becomes it’s own end.
Wendell Berry once remarked that it was perhaps easier to hero in one courageous moment than it was to be a good husband or wife for fifty years. He said that while courage had it’s place, in the longer struggle, skill and perseverance were more important. Our culture, regardless of political philosophy seems fixated on the heroic moment of courage, and less on the long, glamourless road of skill and perseverance.
May 18, 2012 at 3:00 pm
One of your lurkers here…
Good to read this. As someone living in the west of England I can speak for the importance of pastureland and the growth of grass in a mild, maritime climate. It’s particularly unfashionable in this part of the blogosphere, I think, with its bias towards vegetarianism and nuts and berries.
Grassland management is a big subject in itsel;f. What is the geology? What species are you growing? What is the grazing regime? (Horses, sheep and geese being completely different as grazers, for instance).
In my veg garden, even in the raised beds, I have a policy of trying not to leave soil exposed to the rains of winter and use a short-term ley of white clover and ryegrass to hold nutrient and protect the soil from a hammering.
I think we have our own version of biochar, holding carbon in the soil in these parts. It’s called ‘peat’.
May 19, 2012 at 10:07 am
Greasy and soft doesn’t sound like biochar, unless it’s amid decomposition. Guess it could be greasy wood to begin with, which wouldn’t tend to have much human value otherwise. The scheme i read for sufficient sequestration to put a big dent in the CO2 curve would utilize primarily “agricultural waste”, though that somehow doesn’t seem sufficient, does it? But big benefit for the fertility of lands humans use for ag.
My question about the burst of enthusiasm for this here, is how might you see the “get going” on this getting from here to somewhere significant…what would be an actual scenario that might be used to organize activity around, given the limitations of time and money and people power, combined with our inner inertias? With something like this to focus on, can it be used to overcome that disconnect, the crippling limitations which prevent actualization?
May 19, 2012 at 10:10 am
P.S. That question is of course out there for anyone who might come along with a fresh idea or something, not just Leavergirl and other regulars here.
May 19, 2012 at 6:40 pm
Rade, could be. Though heroism that accomplishes nothing falls flat, no?
Welcome, Dave Dann! Not unfashionable in this corner of the blogosphere!🙂 Do clover and ryegrass keep on growing through the winter where you are? Jones says part of the “soil solution” is to find species that photosynthesize during the winter…
Jay D, good question… been pondering it meself…
May 20, 2012 at 3:03 am
Leavergirl. Rye/clover and winter. Absolutely right that you need a solution for your own location. Here winters are generally mild, wet and cloudy though we are getting a weirder climate all the time. It’s very difficult to spot much growth of anything between mid-Dec and mid-Jan, though when you cultivate the soil in spring you will see the winter’s growth. My own main problems with this practice is first to fit it in with a crop rotation. Clover needs warmth for germination (up to first half of Sept here) so I might need to sow it under existing crops. Rye can be sowed in early Oct. Clover more difficult to dig in also. In harsher climates maybe field (fava) beans or agricultural lupins would be better.
I think on first reading I didn’t get the full significance of this posting. You want to create a ‘movement’ around humus? You want to ‘save humans’? Have you considered ‘re-entering babylon’?
Rade. Agree 100 per cent.
May 20, 2012 at 6:13 am
I tried local medics (related to clovers) but my problem was, I did not sow when they were still dormant. So by the time my other crop was getting going, the medics went to work big time and shaded out everything. Had to rip them all out. Excellent green manure though.
A movement around humus? I don’t much care for “movements” but it does interest me whether enthused people could make a difference regarding soil fertility and water/carbon sequestration without it having to be a “movement.” After all, if we (humans) don’t get our crap together around this, not much of a future for anyone. Life depends on the soil water and carbon cycle. Dave Pollard used to want to save the world… not so much anymore. Maybe he should rename his blog, throwinginthetowel.ca? I guess my quest is after a way of life (for us civilization’s expatriates) that harmonizes with life on the planet rather than shreds it. And I think the soil/water/carbon cycle is the crux…
KulturCritic will probably take me to task for seeking solutions. But I am not seeking solutions to save this civ. I am looking for a way to metamorphose.
What do you think?
May 20, 2012 at 8:29 am
‘Throw in the towel’? Such emotive language! That’s surely very naughty of you. There are certainly other options.
Dave Pollard? The first piece of his I read was this http://howtosavetheworld.ca/2005/05/02/the-end-of-philosophy/ . I can go along with that, but I think he has come over all ‘transitions towns’ now?
Save the world? Save all of it? Part of it? Which part of it? What if it doesn’t want saving? If you try to save the world then you risk changing yourself. Becoming self-important. Relationships to everyone else changes. You do things for publicity sake. Then you do things against your principles for publicity sake. Then you go to conferences in preference to digging your garden, because people want to hear you and it’s important. You travel more, for the same reason. It’s all ‘in a good cause’. You publish things for the sake of keeping in the public eye. You raise funds for the ‘cause’ by taking government grants that co-opt you into their economic development programmes. You meet people who were like you 10 years ago and think they are crazy and wild and somehow dangerous. You worry about the competition from rival movements and their leaders.
Believe or not, people do actually share information about soil and humus, at least where I live. Why not do what you are good at, or what really motivates you? What you really like. Apart from digging a garden there are plenty of things to do that are obviously good… keep in touch with your community, increase your skills of all sorts. Personally I’m never going to ‘save the world’ because I’m not priest, politician or salesman. But I know I’ve inspired people to dig a garden, play music, chop wood.
May 20, 2012 at 8:59 am
Indeed, very naughty of me. But Dave P. is fully capable of lobbing back.😉
Yes, I think you nailed it. Activism’s pitfall, in one succinct paragraph. Me, not heading thataway.
May 20, 2012 at 9:36 am
You know yourself! That’s surely the most important thing. (Zone zero in permaculture?).
All this ‘;saving the world’ made me forget the legumes. I had to look up ‘medic’. The only one I’m aware of here is alfalfa/lucerne. Supposed to have very deep roots? Only tried it once and not a success for me in the garden. Nice as sprouts on bread in mid-winter though.
May 20, 2012 at 10:49 am
Moving soil building and carbon sequestration to somewhere significant requires the learning of many new (and some forgotten) things. This process has already begun with blogs and web sites like http://farmingsecretsblog.com/ and http://holisticmanagement.org/.
The majority of farmers in industrial agriculture are trapped inside Babylon; feeling the jack boot of debt, Monsanto et al, and the relentless need for increasing agrochemical inputs as soils die and ecosystems degenerate. Tragically, some farmers exit with suicide and others are forced out through bankruptcy.
The failure of industrial agriculture is the driver of change. The almost throwaway comment, “when farmers convert to biological farming, they fall in love again with the land,” speaks volumes in this (not so snappy) clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6hFFxCScQo&feature=player_embedded.
I think tearing down those ideological fences, learning, listening and spreading the word would be good first steps to move forward. This will not save civilisation as it is now, but it may impart skills and knowledge to give future generations a future.
What surprises me is how fast things can turn around if the biology can get to work.
May 20, 2012 at 11:26 am
Dave D, i’ve never heard of “agricultural lupins”…do you happen to have a Latin name handy, Lupinus ______ (sp?)… you’re talking about non-perennial groundcovers endemic to the UK, right?
Yeah, I’m sure Dave P could lob back the love with precision from his position. A position that’s well articulated, nuanced and slowly morphing over time, as i understand it. I think there’s a certain advantage to/need for a “throwing in the towel” before we can get on with the “saving” of much of anything aside from single issue battles. In other words, layers of denial to be shed, which can’t be shed without a certain “giving up”…and then we see what’s left after the shedding. Sort of a deepening past what DD described pretty well as the pitfalls of activism, because the same old pitfalling won’t do it. Gotta get past the ego-traps and the co-optations. To take the liberty of overgeneralizing to give my paraphrased take on it, Dave P, myself, more and more others, LeaverGirl in her own way as i understand us, puzzle over this sort of Catch-22 of ‘ya’ can’t change the outer till you change the inner; and you can’t change the inner while steeped in the outer; but you can’t get out of the outer without shedding…’ It’s a sort of diving through denial to a depth that i find valuable in its relative rarity, though there’s room for going deeper…it seems there’s always more layers to shed, which takes each of us down our own paths…
LG, seems like you might’ve mis-read Rade’s second comment. Excessive heroism suitably skewered; right on Rade. Seems to me we need some serious courage in the mix too, though, eh? I think that’s why i urge folks to read Mr. Hedges (who’s just co-won the big lawsuit against Obama and Panetta), as he seems to skirt and yes sometimes fall into the hubris of heroism as potential pitfall, those problems with engaging the polarization; yet he has a cut-through-the-crap clarity and fearlessness of focus that is sorely needed by as many of us as can muster our own versions of such semi-selfless courage. Here we eschew stuggling against “Babylon” in favor of going another direction and doing it more quietly. But major courage is nonetheless needed, albeit in a different way.
Such challenges…sigh…So hey, let’s just get together and grow soil and stuff! Who’s got some land at hand?
May 20, 2012 at 1:17 pm
JayD – Lupins – various varieties, see UK govt info here:
http://www.lupins.ibers.aber.ac.uk/Documents/LISA%20Agronomy%20notes%20v3%20%282009%29.pdf and
http://www.lupins.ibers.aber.ac.uk/
Almost certainly NOT endemic to the UK (very little is). Usually grown over winter for ground cover, nitrogen fixing and green manuring. Probably rarely treated as a perennial.
Stephen Simpson. I believe that the average age of UK farmers is over 50. Many may be leaving the industry. As land costs over 6000 GBP per acre few individuals can afford to start farming. The new farmers will be corporations. A steep rise in fossil fuel prices might have some interesting results.
May 20, 2012 at 4:03 pm
Dave Dann, valid points you raise there. If there is no one to hand over the farm to on retirement or the farm goes bust, the land is concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer people. If corporations are doing the taking over that could be the road to a soylent green future. The steep rise in oil prices will indeed bring about many changes.
May 20, 2012 at 9:33 pm
I certainly don’t want to leave the impression that I don’t believe courage is important, it certainly is. However, I’ve always viewed courage as something pertaining to a certain action or situation, not something that is an enduring state. No one would say a firefighter is courageous while walking his dog or eating breakfast, but he is faced with situations where courage is called for. I think the problem lies when someone becomes addicted to the validation they gain by displaying their courage and seeks that as an end in itself. That is why it really bugs me when people say that our backyard garden is a “revolutionary act” or a “form of activism”. it is almost as if some people cannot do an ordinary, mundane, human activity (even if they are doing it for good philosophical reasons) without it being part of some heroic struggle.
Equally disturbing is a sort of implicit utilitarianism that seems to creep in. We need to do this an that to stop (or mitigate) global climate change, or stike a blow against corporate greed. But many of the activities we all engage in, the gardening, beekeeping, community building, etc. should be done simply because they are ethical, moral human acts without concern for their “political” aspect. If we base the ethics of what we do on how many PPM of CO2 are in the atmosphere we will find ourselves blown about to and fro.
I agree with Mr. Simpson that the multi-generational issue is one of the biggest ones we need to deal with in finding a path forward. Without an ethic of rootedness and a willingness to raise children with that ethic. The strength of agribusiness is it’s agelessness, almost immortality. Our strength will have to be the love for our places we instill in our children.
May 21, 2012 at 3:19 am
Reblogged this on integralpermaculture.
May 21, 2012 at 12:34 pm
JayD – Lupins have their own website! http://www.lupins.org/
Stephen Simpson – ‘Soylent Green’ – i remember seeing the film as a teenager! Amazing opening titles http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlVczvB4FQk
I think that over the past year my thoughts have swung away from purely environmental matters towards the conflict between the 1 per cent and the 99 per cent in all its forms.
LG – I’m in favour of ‘seeking solutions’ and was quite impressed by the early Transition Towns literature, but I’m not a very good foot-soldier in that particular movment. Besides, we were doing very similar things in Friends of the Earth groups in the 70s AND being a bit more radical in our personal lives. This raises the issue of ‘timing’. Timing is crucial, both in sowing seed and in social activism. The activist is so involved in their own self that they fail to understand this. The ‘Black Swan ‘ event changes all.
May 24, 2012 at 10:16 am
Long time, no comment, but things have swung back around and: howdy! Good post!
Yes to the biochar, although I only go as far as extinguished brush pile fires…some of the carbonized mass is good, some just carbon. All, at least, sequestered, easy to crush and add to the compost piles. Apologies for the release of water and oils…
I would guess that periodic wild and feral fires add greatly to the fertility of the earth, as well as tamper with the forest populations in ways that, if not what humans call “good”, are at least natural. Here in MA the tornado district is one big tinderbox, awaiting a spark to return to “order”. We think we know so much, and have only scratched the surface of what we lost when we turned to symbolic life.
May 25, 2012 at 7:46 am
davidm, welcome! Vertalio, a pleasure to hear from you again! Friends, I am visiting family, & absolutely overwhelmed and fatigued… The interactive part of me has gone on the fritz. Will be in touch when I recover. Meanwhile… another post. Doing a bit of writing keeps me sane.
May 26, 2012 at 7:08 am
Thanks Vera, undoubtedly a lot of important stuff here, and I will look deeper into Christine Jones’ work especially.
Just one comment for now: I’m not hearing anybody say anything about trees or forests. A personal bias maybe, but do they not also do a rather good job of creating, maintaining and protecting topsoil? The whole world doesn’t have to be like the Serengeti or the Plains, you know… What are you looking at in that picture you posted at the end? Does it seem idyllic to you? What I’m seeing is a monoculture of grass (okay, maybe several species of grass) instated and maintained by the constant nibbling of sheep which doesn’t permit succession to go beyond the first step of emergency-first-aid-after-catastrophe. I see hedgerows in the background to limit their movement and keep their populations manageable by sedentary humans. Oh, and TWO TREES – probably planted and/or elaborately protected from the livestock, if they aren’t unlikely survivors from the forest which would have occupied the same landscape before it was felled and grazed to death. I’m starting to see the ghosts of those trees wherever I go in this country, and that absence is what most struck me about the picture.
But I get the point that herbivores can be used to rehabilitate degraded agricultural land or to reverse desertification (or … yawn … to ‘sequester carbon’), and this seems like important work to do. The element that jumped out at me was the importance of moving herd animals to avoid soil compaction and overgrazing. Wild herbivores are obviously better placed to do this than their domesticated cousins who no longer direct their own lives but must be managed at every step by human herders. (See William Kotke’s discussion in chapter 3 of Final Empire, under the subheading ‘Soil Abuse by Grazing: Herding the Hoofed Locusts’) But those cows are here now, and the most responsible course would seem to be to teach them – and have them teach us! – how to live regeneratively on the land in the way you describe. As long as this doesn’t dead-end in the same old pasture lands stretching as far as the eye can see, count me in!
I
May 26, 2012 at 7:30 am
Not sure if I coded that Kotke link right. Here ’tis in full:
http://www.rainbowbody.net/Finalempire/FEchap3.htm
May 26, 2012 at 7:45 am
Ian, you open a lot of good questions that are not adequately addressed by my post.
First, trees. As Jones stresses, “stable humus” occurs in soils. That was the main message — focus on the soils. Now of course, some of those soils will have growth other than grasses, depending on the climate. And some soils do need to have such growth. As long as the soil is covered in perennials (of any locally-suitable kind) then the soil is happy.
All the same, though, as Savory points out, 2/3 of the terrestrial environment is drylands. For example, the American dry prairie, stretching from the foothills of the Rockies all the way to about 2/3 of Kansas, say around Topeka (then draw a roughly vertical line through all the states adjoining, and provinces). Trees have a hard time in this environment, and only exist as very hardy cottonwoods and a few other species along creek beds and gullies, with some junipers here and there on the hillsides. There are endless miles of land without any trees at all. This land never should have been plowed, and it was kept in great form by roving herds of buffalo, with some pronghorn thrown into the mix. There was no succession here to some other form — the prairie was it.
You are right about the animals “moving”. The key is… lots of animals in a packed herd (predators used to accomplish the packing) who nibble hard, disturb the soil, fertilize, and move on.
As far as pastureland that stretches as far as eye can see… never live in the dry American midwest. That’s all it is — by nature’s design.🙂
P.S. Quickly went over Koetke. His info is in part outdated. Soil can form quickly, and it is not the “number” of herbivores but whether or not they are clumped together and moving on until the grasses regrow. Small groups of herbivores wandering about aimlessly and grazing the same area over and over is the practice we should abandon. Not the herbivores themselves! “Resting” the area does nothing to restore it; bringing in plenty of herbivores and making sure they keep moving will. I am begging ya… watch some of the Savory vids where he shows what is possible to restore rangelands, even during drought.
More later! (Eager to hear about your Italian wwoofing!)
P.P.S. “Soil abuse by grazing” (Koetke’s subchapter heading) is misinformation. Without grazing, the grassy drylands die.
May 26, 2012 at 4:07 pm
Thanks for that.
‘As long as the soil is covered in perennials (of any locally-suitable kind) then the soil is happy.’ – okay, this reassures me somewhat🙂 I’ve just received the wisdom that deforestation clearcuts peoples’ imaginations as surely as the trees – after a few generations they can no longer remember that it was possible to live from them as well as from two-dimensional field crops and grazing lands. Much of the conservation work in the UK, for example, concerns itself with maintaining heathland and wildflower meadows (habitats born from thousands of years of livestock pasturage), resisting the tendency of the land to revert to the primeval forest because letting the trees grow back would be unimaginable. Mark Fisher is good on this.
‘All the same, though, as Savory points out, 2/3 of the terrestrial environment is drylands.’ – it might be now (tho wikipedia says it’s more like 50%) but isn’t this in most cases an outcome of deforestation and agriculture? Not to say the whole planet was covered in forests 10,000 years ago, but common sense suggests they were much more prevalent than the drylands and would be again, given half a chance. I’ve just been reading in Jensen’s Strangely Like War about how forests hold on to water incredibly efficiently and effectively create their own local precipitation. Cut down all the trees and the water runs off or evaporates and soon enough you’ll have your dryland. Writes Patrick Whitefield:
‘As far as pastureland that stretches as far as eye can see… never live in the dry American midwest.’ – yeah, I think I’d hate it! I don’t mean to suggest that pasturing is never the best option, just that in many parts of the world you would have to fight very hard to keep it that way because the land wants to do something else. I don’t think that, underneath the most recent layers of interference, Britain wants to be a patchwork quilt of monoculture farms and livestock enclosures, which I saw represented in the picture you chose. When left to do its thing it looks more like this.
I actually did watch the Savory vid linked in the ag post comments, and was quite impressed. It shows great potential for soil rehab like I said, and it’s nice to see a positive ‘use’ for domesticated livestock (also it felt important to see a positive kind of soil disturbance to correct the tendency – okay, my tendency – to swing directly from the pole of intensive ag to the other extreme of no disturbance whatsoever). My concern is that imagination failures prevent any further stages beyond that in those ecosystems that demand it.
‘“Soil abuse by grazing” (Koetke’s subchapter heading) is misinformation. Without grazing, the grassy drylands die.’ Yes, that seems to be the case in the prairies and wherever it was Savory was operating (Africa? – I forget). In Kotke’s defense he specifies ‘confined’ domesticates as opposed to wild herds which ‘can migrate, sometimes long distances, to crop the most abundant growths’. There does also appear to be a historical tendency to overgrazing and ensuing desertification in pastoral communities, as described in the ‘rangelands of northern Iraq’ quote near the end of that section. So there’s definitely a wrong way to do it. Is there a right way? It remains to be seen, especially where humans are attempting to ‘manage’ the process.
‘ta
I
May 26, 2012 at 5:35 pm
Hurray for trees!🙂
Well, some of the world’s large dry places are not manmade. Like the Sahara. The climate shifts, and they happen. Here in eastern Colorado, we get 12″ of rain per year, if we are lucky. I don’t know what may be some day (the area used to be a shallow sea way back when the dinos roamed)… but right now, nature obviously wants it to be a drylands prairie. Don’t be so Eurocentric.😉
Strangely like war is a great book! Maybe my very fave of Jensen’s.
More later, when I have a chance to look at the links.
May 27, 2012 at 4:16 am
Ian, the term dry lands are a little misleading, as the wiki reference of 50% refers to areas where water limits plant growth. Savory’s estimate of dry lands (or brittle environments) being 2/3 of the terrestrial environment considers areas where water limits plant decay. Without decay, the circle of life is broken and the ecosystem degenerates (the machine of life stops). Thus, herbivores and appropriate soil disturbance are needed to maintain decay in these environments. See, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savory_brittleness_scale
I agree a large portion of dry land was created by deforestation and agriculture, and in non-brittle environments, the forests will return on their own if given a chance. In brittle environments, fixing the process of decay is the key to restoring life and that process starts with rebuilding top soil. Hope this helps to put things into context.
May 27, 2012 at 4:30 am
Trees and topsoil…
there are surely forested environments that are NOT well known for their topsoil? Beech woods in S England… pine woods in many places where the ground is covered with their acidic needles… even oak woods in S England where a thin layer of slowing decomposing leafmould overlies clay.
I suppose the trees trhemselves do not ‘need’ topsoil as their roots directly tap the subsoil and underlying geology.
I certainly agree that trees can help reduce wind speeds and lower soil erosion. The worst erosion I see at present here in SW England comes when maize (corn) is grown on steep land that has been grassland previously. It’s a horrible monoculture when it’s growing but as it matures late it is harvested by machine when the autumn rains have started. You see the topsoil running off the land into the road.
May 27, 2012 at 5:07 am
“You see the topsoil running off the land into the road” – that’s a ghastly image!
Near us there’s an interesting farm that is a bit beyond organic, bordering perhaps on permaculture. We’ve watched as they grew a field of corn (maize), then without tilling, soy – accompanied, I’m happy to say, by rather large numbers of “noxious” weeds. Just now the field is not planted, but lovely specimens of burdock abound. I realize monocrops are not ideal, but soy itself is not inherently evil if non GM, in fact it’s a nitrogen accumulator. Now that burdock is breaking up the hardpan, bringing up deep nutrients. The farmer is healing that field. It’s going to be interesting to see what comes next – he may even harvest the burdock for the herbal medicine market, who knows.
May 29, 2012 at 11:01 am
@Vera – ‘some of the world’s large dry places are not manmade’ – can’t argue with that, though I think many are dryer and more expansive thanks to human activities. Isn’t that the case with the recent advancement of the Sahara? Apparently that whole region goes through phases of ‘greening’ and turning into a more savanna-type ecology. This hasn’t recurred since the ‘5.9 kiloyear event‘, which:
and, wow, this might interest you:
Although scientists are blaming this on an orbital shift rather than agriculture (hmm…) – ‘The model suggests that land use practices of humans who lived in and cultivated the Sahara, were not significant causes of the desertification.’
Okay, you can have your dryland prairie, as long as I can have my wildwood😉
@Stephen – Thanks for that explanation. I didn’t realise he was defining it differently. I’m glad you see a place for forests in the appropriate regions after humans undo the ‘brittleness’ they’ve caused.
@Dave – Ya got me there. I haven’t studied woodland ecology in depth, it just made sense to me that all that lovely leafmould would build a rich, airy soil, given time. I do know that a lot of woodland, especially beech and oak, was planted rather than being strictly native. Also most were intensively managed for thousands of years until only recently. I’ve heard woodland conservationists talk openly about keeping soils as nutrient-poor as possible, the idea being to mimic the old coppice rotations where all the wood was used off-site and precious little allowed to rot. This incidentally gives the rare woodland plant species the edge they need to outcompete the weedier phosphorous & nitrate-hungry plants like nettle and bramble. The point being that the soils of even ancient woodland might not have had adequate time to settle into their climax state.
@Christine – Good ol’ Burdock🙂 I’m jealous of your renaissance farmers and your medicinal ‘erb market (or do Canadians pronounce the ‘h’?) If farmers round here had Burdock growing in their fields I think their ‘thought’ process would last about 5 seconds and go something like this: “Wassis fuckin’ weed doing on my land? Where’s my Roundup?”
Thanks all, appreciating the discussion.
I
May 31, 2012 at 1:19 pm
Thanks for mentioning the importance of ruminants to the land.
I get in trouble with militant vegans when I point out how many voles, mice, lizards, rabbits, and other critters are chewed up and spat out by the fossil-sunlight-intensive machinery that makes their illusion of “animal-free” food possible!
May 31, 2012 at 1:33 pm
Welcome Jan! Heh, that’s par for the course with the vegan crowd. And when one talks about how much annual grains devastate the land… they disappear. At least so far. We have not entered into that scuffle on this blog, so far.🙂
June 1, 2012 at 7:26 am
Fascinating article and discussion. Learned lots and grateful for it. I’m interested, as is Ian M, in the creative tension between the option of grazed grasslands, held in suspended (if fertile) animation and of freely-developing climax forests. Nothing informed to add, except that the less conscious intervention there is by humans the safer I feel, so I’d support natural forest regeneration as a gut reaction.
As for what to do with the knowledge, or how to spread it – perhaps it will come down to opportunity. When non-renewables run out, the advantage will go to systems that build renewable stocks and the people who know how to implement those systems. There is probably some clever futures-based investment model in there somewhere, but it would be a shame to wait until the place is trashed … and an even bigger shame to resort to roping in those Babylonian market forces!
June 7, 2012 at 8:01 am
Hi Vanessa, nice to ‘see’ you again.
I just wanted to post Ran Prieur’s June 5th comment here in case anybody didn’t see it already:
On the first point, I heard similar claims about the N American holocaust causing the Little Ice Age through increased scrub growth after their management practices were discontinued. This seems to support the misanthropic case (as the people crying out ‘ecofascist’ in the comments allude to), suggesting a best-case scenario of mass human die off followed by the recovery of the biosphere… until you remember that it’s also possible for human beings to survive & thrive in forested environments. Remind me again why we’re not all out growing forest gardens? (Oh yeah, cuz I’ve got no feckin’ land😦 )
On the second point, I wonder how many people living in those leafy affluent districts earned their money directly or indirectly through deforestation and other environmentally destructive acts in other parts of the world. It must tear your brain in two to advocate that kind of ‘development’ abroad while claiming for your own home those same benefits you’ve actively deprived others of. At the same time this tacitly acknowledges that it’s best for humans to live among trees – just the only way to do this in our backwards culture is to take that birthright from as many other people as possible.
Possibly I’m going off at a tangent here…
I
June 9, 2012 at 10:41 am
Ian, you always make me think. Sounds like the Mongol invasion healed a lot of soil. But I tend to think that the Little Ice Age was caused by a series of volcanic eruptions… not been identified, mind you, but since the particulates in the atmosphere peaked right around 1300 it seems to me the most plausible hypothesis. Here is one link on it.
I too have been thinking about the environments that feel natural for humans, and why we kill so many trees as we build our houses and so on. I happen to be an adherent of the aquatic ape theory, and think that we evolved (in part) on the beach and in the dappled shade of the near forests and palms. And also, when more inland, in the dappled shade of the trees edging the savannahs. We tend not to like the deep forest, it’s too damp and too dark. And too monocultural. Too many bugs. So we knock out clearings where the edges are, and sun, and the berries and hazelnuts can grow. Also, one of the reasons the eastern Indians burned forests was to encourage game, and to make land more passable for human travel. Same in Australia, come to think of it. (Done by foragers, I might add, or forager/cultivators.)
Did one of your links talk about how hard it is to burn forests? Well, maybe in England… but elsewhere, it was a regular practice — eastern N. America, Australia, Tasmania — aboriginal Tasmanians burned the rain forest so I wonder if the claim that big trees are too big to burn is properly rooted in reality. Also, the inland New Guinea was park-like, discovered by westerners in the 30s… patches of jungle and open clearings. I think they too did it mostly with fire, no?
Anyways, this of course in no way argues reforestation is not a good thing. We humans are in a war against trees, and it will kill us in the end if we don’t stop. (And maybe the steppe restoration and reforestation begun by Genghis and continued via the vast initial destruction of Indian tribes by illness was part of why the LIA lasted?)
June 9, 2012 at 11:03 am
Dave Dann, I think that zone zero in permaculture should not be humans, nor human habitations, but rather the wildest, most green-magicky places on the land. That’s where we need to start, when we really commit to Gaia. And leave such extreme human-centeredness behind.
Not that you are not making a good point about “know thyself.” (#27)
June 9, 2012 at 11:23 am
Why am I not surprised! I’ve also have long had an affinity with the aquatic ape theory. I read the “Descent of Woman” back when it came out in the seventies. It just made and makes so much sense! Of course, that was how I grew up, a third of the year in the water….
I even wrote Elaine Morgan a fan e-mail a few years ago when I found out she was still alive! And this poem: http://antoniodiaspoetry.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/elaine-morgan/
June 9, 2012 at 11:36 am
🙂
Descent of Woman was a high! She wrote Aquatic Ape later to be more scientific, and it’s by far not the fun the earlier book was, with its jabs at the male anthros fantasizing about the power-biped on the savannah (who in reality would be vulnerable prey for any big cats and baboons out in the open. And, hello… sunburn, anyone?). And the savannah theory still hasn’t quite died, as it should have long ago. The science hasn’t supported it since the 90s.
June 9, 2012 at 4:07 pm
Still following the Genghis line of thought. Bringing on the Little Ice Age may not have been a boon for forests in the Euro/Asian environment, though, because the tundra would have moved south and killed some of the taiga. Maybe quite a bit of it. Then also, much of the land conquered by Genghis was really steppes. That’s why the horse was such a deadly weapon.
I bet quite a bit of the boreal forest in Canada receded too… judging by what happened in Greenland.
June 9, 2012 at 7:11 pm
This is how I would go about creating a ground zero. Imagine a troop of humans moving through the landscape with a herd of cattle. A month or so before the onset of the wet season/growing season we corral the cattle at night in ground zero, fertilizing it with their dung. During the day, we move the cattle in a sufficiently large arc around ground zero to give the vegetation enough time to recover before grazing it again. In the wet season, we plant ground zero with annual food crops and pioneer trees and shrubs. Come the dry, it is time to move the herd on and create another ground zero next year.
In a few years time we return to ground zero and witness Gaia’s magic, what dormant seeds have sprung to life. Maybe we plant a few more tree species if the microclimate is ready for them. We impart the knowledge of ground zero to our children, so in years to come our grand children and great grand children will recognise a ground zero and see how the birds and the wind have spread its seeds far into the landscape.
June 9, 2012 at 7:57 pm
I need no convincing. I’m a big fan of pastoralism.
The question remains: could that work for the nine billion projected for mid-century? Could it work for today’s seven billion?
The selfish answer might be, “It works for me.” But time will tell how many people will choose such a future, and whether even those who choose — or are forced into — such a life-style will thrive or even survive.
June 9, 2012 at 8:13 pm
Jan, my thought is, let civ figure out how to feed the hordes it seems hell-bound to keep cranking out. I don’t think it is our job (as unbabylonians) to answer unanswerable questions civ poses.
But just off the cuff, figuring out how to make barren soils fertile again, and how to keep carbon and water in the soil… now that is something that will move us towards the new world we dream about. If anything will.
June 9, 2012 at 8:19 pm
I think my “selfish” reply acknowledges your sentiments.
“The question” that remains is the one that the sheeple use for distraction. The world will have to figure out how to feed itself, as it once did.
I think we’re a net carbon sink. But all of the online models seem so biased for the conventional industrial life. There’s no line there for “planted 200 trees” or “rescues slash piles for forage and soil amendments.”
June 9, 2012 at 8:33 pm
Maybe you should use a measure of (increasing) carbon in the soil, rather than the carbon footprint stuff currently out there? Christine Jones has been working on it. She may have other ideas as well. I tried communication with her again, but I think she is too busy to answer emails most of the time. But maybe she would talk to you about hands-on stuff though.
Selfish? No. To grow soil is one of the best things we can do for future generations, and all life. Maybe *the* best?🙂
And by the by, if civ does not figure out how to feed 9 billion, then there won’t be 9 billion. Here’s to hopin’…😉
June 10, 2012 at 4:09 am
A while since I’ve been here…
I meant to post this link a while back
http://www.forestry.gov.uk/fr/INFD-5WBEZY
… forest soils vary widely.
I don’t quite see this conflict between pastoralism and trees. My model of the good way of life is English ‘Victorian High Farming’
http://www.soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/010136ernle/010136ch17.htm
– the sort of idea promoted in my youth by the writings of John Seymour. Farmsteads should be mixed arable, pastoral, woodland with each supplying inputs to the management of the other. Small fields sizes please and bordered by hedges and copses for shelter and diversity. I have no idea what would work in other climate zones.
Someone mentioned nature conservationists coppicing woods in order to reduce nutrient levels. I have never heard of this idea but they do coppice in order to maintain diversity of the flora and the landscape – the coppice wood providing a patchwork of habitats in a small area and regularly allowing light into the forest floor to keep diversity of the ground flora. I know that nutrient levels are deliberatley reduced on chalk and limestone grassland in S England in order to maintain the flora that that would be overwhelmed by nettles, brambles etc that flourish where nitrogen levels are higher. These habitats would have been lost after the reduction in sheep grazing for economic reasons and the disappearance of rabbit grazing following myxamatosis.
‘Feeding the hordes’? When I was at school the world population was less than 4 billion, I think. How many billion would you try to feed?
@leavergirl… your Zone 0… I sympathise and wouldn’t argue with you, except that you use the word ‘commit’ and that happens inside your head, doesn’t it?
June 10, 2012 at 4:13 am
Vera, this is very weird I thought I typed “zone zero” inspired by your comment # 51. Reading my comment again, I see the word “ground zero”, which now, somehow seems more fitting if you take it to mean detonation point for life.
Jan, I can’t help feeling that struggling to feed 9 billion will be anything other than a dreadful mistake. Access to land appears to be the main problem with today’s seven billion and current civ. I don’t know exactly how this will change, but change it will. As the current civ decays I hope it opens up new opportunities for an age of healing. Unrealistic maybe, but hope is all I have to keep going.
June 22, 2012 at 7:06 am
Hey all – I have a sick day, so can finally get round to responding. Apologies for the delay!
@Vera (comment 50) – Glad to make you think🙂 Yeah, I’m not hanging my hat on the Genghis/ice age theory, but it makes sense to me as a general principle. Hasn’t agriculture / deforestation been identified as the cause for a slow-pace global warming starting 10,000 years ago and extending the Holocene for longer than is usual for an interglacial?
Yeah, that was Mr. Rackham, talking about British woodland. He notes the practice by indigenous peoples in other parts of the world, for the reasons you summarise. Interestingly, one of the acorn papers I dug up (with help from my readers) questions this. Here’s a relevant passage:
(Although the evidence is stronger for burning of marshland reeds – apparently Star Carr is the important site to check out for that.)
@Dave (comment 60) – Thanks for those links. The first, most informative, and I’ll definitely have to find some time to read the second properly (after I get round to Christine Jones – arg!). I’ve been thinking lots lately about this issue of soil fertility. On the one hand we’re living through a period of extraordinary fertility thanks to the nitrates and phosphates in petroleum-based fertilisers – ‘more atmospheric nitrogen is fixed by man (as fertilizer) than by all natural sources combined’ (Ken Thompson, No Nettles Required, p.160) – and all gardening and farming is geared towards maintaining or increasing this. And on the other hand we have a legacy of plant and animal species uniquely adapted to the impoverished soils resulting from hundreds/thousands of years of intensive, organic farming, grazing and forestry; a biodiversity that dies out when the soils get too fertile or specific management practices are discontinued. Here’s Michael Allaby writing in the Woodland Trust’s Book of British Woodlands:
So what direction do we pull in? Obviously the petro-fertiliser era is a blip which is going to end in short order, yet I’m less-than-convinced about the longterm viability of the systems that preceded it. Intentionally working to impoverish the soil? Surely sooner or later that will starve the ecosystem to death (although I’m not aware of any coppice rotations that have been stressed to breaking point in this way, even when supplying charcoal for industrial purposes). I think I agree that we have a responsibility to do right by the species we’ve in effect provided the selection pressure for over all these centuries of domesticating the landscape, whether that’s helping them adjust to the changing circumstances or, if that’s not possible, allowing them to die out with dignity. But I think the conservationists are wrong about greater fertility equating to lesser diversity. Maybe this would be the case in the short term, but after a while I expect it will simply be a different kind of selection pressure leading to an explosion of diversity in the more nutrient-hungry plants. How many different hybrid forms of Bramble, Nettle & Dandelion are there already in existence?
Fire-setting is another case in point. From what I’ve read it sounds like N American Indians burned grasses and forest understory purposefully to release the nutrients locked up in the standing dead plants, changing them into a form that was bio-available to the herbs, shrubs and annuals that would be growing on that spot by the next season. This was also an active selection for plants that provided edible, medicinal and other uses for the Indians (and, I assume, for the wildlife they shared the habitat with). It would be interesting to know the mix of woodland plants in Paleo/Mesolithic NW Europe – whether fire management caused this to differ in a similar way.
Over all it seems to be the case that humans are associated with enriched fertility in soils. That’s one line of archeological evidence for habitation by prehistoric man – at least in Europe you find seeds or pollen grains of Nettle, Plantain, Goosefoot and other associated ‘weeds’. We pitch camp somewhere for the season, eat, shit, do some burning and maybe a bit of gardening before moving on. My best nettle crops have come from places disturbed by people (the very best being where those people fenced off special areas in parkland for their dogs to come and do their business in the times before the ubiquitous small black plastic bags – mmm, dog poo nettles…) Anyway, the main problem with coppicing and other woodland management seems to be the same old civilisational problem of exporting resources far away from their point of origin. If people lived in the woods, building homes, cutting fuel, crafting necessary artifacts from the trees around them, and letting it all rot down on site, I think that could lead to a thriving & enriched ecosystem, supportive of a wide variety of plants and animals.
@Stephen (comment 55) – I like your ‘ground zero’ vision. One question: do you think we could eventually let the cows go, creating their own self-willed migration pattern while we followed and hunted them? Might be less effort over all, as well as being more fun🙂
I’m happy to see so many sane comments on the 9 billion question. To me those humans represent a theft of biomass from the rest of the community of life (including the fossilised remains of prehistoric life). There’s no way to sustain a population that big and, more to the point, no reason to if it’s eating the living planet out of house and home. Any human systems looking for viability from here onwards will have to figure out how to atone and pay reparations for that theft. Greening the deserts and reforesting the breadbaskets seem like obvious first steps in this process.
cheers!
Ian
June 22, 2012 at 7:34 am
[…] and permaculture-style solutions for restoring ecologies impoverished by this culture over on this Leaving Babylon thread. Here’s my most recent contribution on the topic of soil fertility vs. […]
June 24, 2012 at 3:53 pm
Ian, thank you for your contributions to the discussion, I have thought about your question (# 63) and feel it cannot, (no) should not, be answered at this time. I think life develops in response to opportunities in the environment, a niche (or perhaps a need) opens up and species move in to occupy that space and fulfil a need. The “ground zero” vision imagines a degraded and depopulated landscape calling us to bring about restoration.
I like to think the cattle/ human relationship is a symbiotic one, we help protect them from predators, assist in difficult calving and scout ahead for pasture and water. In return, they give us their weak and their sick so only the strong ones breed and they remain healthy. At the beginning of this restoration, the cattle follow our lead, but we must recognise there are times when they know better, and we must follow them. Over time as more and more “ground zeros” are established, increasingly we will find ourselves following the cattle as they establish their migration route.
I think it is for our descendants to decide whether to continue following the herd(s) in a symbiotic relationship, or adopt a different lifestyle – informed by the opportunities/needs of the environment at that time. Thanks again for the discussion.
June 25, 2012 at 1:35 pm
Fair enough, Stephen. I suppose it doesn’t do much good to get ahead of ourselves. I spent most of today in front of a computer for the gods’ sakes – what would I know about herding cattle?? I guess I just wanted to know if you were on board with the general principle of rewilding (it sounds like you are).
Thanks for your contributions too🙂
I
July 3, 2012 at 11:47 am
Carl Sagan said if you want to make an apple pie (soil) from scratch, you will first have to invent the universe🙂
July 3, 2012 at 12:09 pm
Heh. Sounds like Carl Sagan wuz wrong…😯 in the practical sense.
Welcome, levi.
July 4, 2012 at 8:57 am
I just discovered this blog. Wow! Without trying to respond to everything, I want to go to the “What are we going to do about it?” question.
I don’t know. On the one hand, we’re staring at death. On the other hand, if humans would start reviving soil like this, we could move right back to a reasonable life. The people planting trees in Africa, on land they don’t own, have the attitude we need.
The thing I have to do is in the “why don’t we do anything” realm. With a group, I’m making a spiritual walk along the Keystone pipeline (new construction) in North America. Not expecting to stop the pipeline itself; intending to reclaim human consciousness. Derrick Jensen’s Endgame v 2 is on this topic. I cannot rationally claim that this will change anything, but if I don’t do it I’ll never know. http://www.facebook.com/CompassionateEarth.
Meanwhile back home, I’m getting ready to buy a few acres of woods and fields ruined by decades of chemical farming. What to do with those few acres is found above – I just need to make more local connections to find cattle to run and all the rest – and more people to do the work, eat the food, live here. Also will be planting edible forest, of course.
That’s my first note in this group. See you later.
July 5, 2012 at 12:36 am
Hi Leavergirl
Been thinking about soil growing for the vast bulk of us who dont keep keyline plows, or grazing animals in moving cells, on our little patches of land. You are absolutely right, we can’t leave this carbon sequestration in soil exclusively to the farmers. We should all be doing our bit!
So here are a few thoughts for backyard food and soil growers. Forgive the prosaicness😉
Our plant food harvesting should mimic grazing animals. So, maybe we should treat annual veggies like perennials where possible – like grow plucking lettuce varieties. The roots of cos, oakleaf, butter etc all dieback to feed soil organisms as you described, while we enjoy our salad. Over and again. Yay! Much better than ripping out heading icebergs etc entirely. If you really love icebergs, cut the heads and leave the roots insitu. Likewise cut the heads from brassicas like cabbage and caulis, and let the roots die in the soil. Broccoli will live on for a few seasons after we take the head, producing side shoots for us as well as rhizosphere goodies – just pull off most of the foliage to promote flowering. Other crucifers like chard, rocket and bok choy keep giving above and below ground as we harvest leaves. Leave behind roots of all undiseased veggies like corn, curcubits, fruiting solanum and especially legume vines when the plant is finished! The soil structure loves the air channels left by the decaying roots and of course the fixed atmospheric nitrogen of the legume/rhizobium symbiosis. Mulch over the chopped up shoot sytem and,voila, carbon sequestering underway.
I wonder what this means for annual root crops? At least with spuds, yakon, jerusalem artichoke and sweet potato you can harvest what you want by feeling in the soil for fat tubers and leaving the rest of the plant to keep producing food for us and soil biota. But how will the beloved carrot and parsnip redeem itself in a soil growing garden? Oh well… their ubelliferous flowers feed the benificial insects, and they self seed prolifically. I still love them😉.
Anyway, these are probably totally obvious thoughts, not exhaustive at all of the possibilities, and off-topic cos this is not a garden blog, I know. We permies promote perrenials and extending annuals, but not specifically because of soil benifits as far as i’m aware. It’s really refreshing to think that soil growing is one more wee contribution we can all make, so thanks Vera, so much !!!
July 5, 2012 at 11:09 am
Welcome, Shodo Spring. Perhaps with your walk you are aiming to reclaim your consciousness? In that case, it could well work. Best luck with the land! But none of us have to wait to have land, in order to grow humified soil. We can begin anywhere.
Angie, thank you for lots of useful ideas! Absolutely. I used to pull weeds in the old days. Now I just cut them at the soil level. A few resprout, but barely. I been wondering why people are so obsessed with getting the whole root of the dandelion. Why not leave it? Sure, it may resprout, so what? So you nip it again another time… I am wondering if the whole “getting the root out” paradigm that Gene Logsdon just described in his post on hoes (on Energy Bulletin) harkens back to the “heroic war” on the land. I am reminded of the wonderful western novel Shane where the men battle to dig out the last huge stump out of the field. Why not just let it rot on its own and enrich the soil?
July 5, 2012 at 11:49 am
Thank you! And yes, to not getting the roots out. I am doing this right now with Virginia creeper. (However, I remember getting the roots out on euonymus and it really didn’t come back. Think I would do the same for buckthorn – but it’s impossible.) It’s the vines that get you.
I’ve learned a lot from reading here.
July 5, 2012 at 12:51 pm
Dandelions…?
I suppose we all live in different climates. Turn your back on a dandelion here and it flowers and ‘one year’s seeding is seven years weeding…’ (Yes, I know, you love weeds).
July 5, 2012 at 1:02 pm
@Dave Dann, I don’t think anyone is promoting letting weeds go to seed. @leavergirl is referring to the roots when she says “leaver in the ground!”
We just got finished policing our site for dock and teasel. We go through the fields and cut them out to feed to the goats before the seeds mature.
We do the same thing for the greater community with Scotch Broom.
Many of these “weeds” have deep tap roots. They are “dynamic accumulators,” meaning they pierce clay pans and bring up important micro-nutrients, which they then spread on the surface with their litter, where it is available for other plants to use.
July 5, 2012 at 1:58 pm
@Jan Steinman
Yes I know about the accumulator bit. It’s just that I wouldn’t choose dock or dandelion, because basically I ‘d just end up farming dock and dandelion and that’s not my aim.
In the end I want a bit more control over my ground so more likely to think of herbal leys
https://www.cotswoldseeds.com/seedmix/herbal-leys
July 5, 2012 at 2:24 pm
@Dave Dann, the thing about dynamic accumulators is they are self-selecting — the things that come up are the things that need to come up!
Got thistles? You soil is telling you it needs more iron. Isn’t a bit arrogant to spend a lot of time getting rid of the thistles, paying for a soil test that inevitably says you need iron, then planting herbal lays that you think will provide iron? The soil already knows what it needs! And it’s telling you via the dynamic accumulators that thrive there.
Nature tends to laugh at our “aims.” Work with her, instead of thinking you know better. Cut weeds before they go to seed and mulch in place, and within a few years, that particular weed “problem” will be greatly diminished — or replaced with a different one, a different signal you can choose to listen to or not.
July 5, 2012 at 2:34 pm
Jan,
Wonderful!
So much of what passes for horticulture/agriculture is an insistence on staying in one particular phase of soil development when such a stasis is impossible and not sustainable.
All “weeds” are part of a process to heal broken ground. Each generation is followed by another as the soil regenerates and a complex biology replaces a traumatized disruption.
Tony
July 5, 2012 at 4:29 pm
Jan
You’ll have to educate me here. Thistle concentrates iron – OK. Why does that ‘tell me that my soil needs iron’? At the moment I think that it means I have a seed bank of thistles.
July 5, 2012 at 4:48 pm
Also Jan
I don’t do green mulches because that would be farming slugs and snails.
July 5, 2012 at 8:17 pm
Oh Leavergirl. Shane. Wounded hero cowboy riding off into the sunset… Was life simpler in those days, when a stubborn tree stump symbolised the tough guy’s personal demon…or something?… sigh
Dave, I’m trying to increase the snail and slug predator population with bits of rotting wood as homes for predator carabid beetles. Seems that in terms of Integrated Pest Management the gastropod population is peaking (I hope!!!!) as they breed up in my kindly provided shelters :{ . I think need to go and collect carabids to kick start things…
In the meantime, although it’s a commercial input into the system, ahem, iron-based snail bait works really well, and i suppose could help correct soil deficiencies?
Another potential problem with green mulches is the nitrogen draw-down effect while it decomposes. Does anyone know if this is a real problem, or am I just overthinking this??
Thanks
July 5, 2012 at 8:32 pm
Dave, soil that is poor in any given nutrient naturally attracts plants that do not need that nutrient — or that can get it by abnormal means, such a deep tap root.
Slugs and snails! You need ducks! And a pair of geese to protect the ducks from predators!
But I hear you about green mulch. In addition to Angie’s concern about nitrogen drain, it can take months for it to decompose and release its nutrients.
I recommend all weeds be put through a particular composting machine. It goes about autonomously gathering compostable green mulch — garden weeds, viable seeds, branches, invasive exotics, etc., and and produces easily handled, pelletized fertilizer. It’s fairly inexpensive, rivaling the cost of the better-known drum composting machines, except it automatically turns the compost and comes with its own life-time supply of bacteria to digest it. And it does all this in just three days! Compare this to the weeks that the other composting machines advertise!
What’s more, it turns some of this green mulch into a high-protien fluid that you can put on breakfast cereal, in coffee, etc.
The only downside is that these composting machines don’t work well as singles, so you have to get a pair of them. They go by the brand name Capra hircus.
July 5, 2012 at 8:35 pm
Hee hee hee. And do you have a favorite kind of goat?
July 5, 2012 at 10:28 pm
@Shodo Spring, we have a lovely small flock of Nubians, known for their sweet milk and sweet disposition. But they are more talkative than other breeds, which might not be to your liking.
July 6, 2012 at 1:14 am
Hello Jan and Angie
I take the point about C:N ratios and don’t leave woody stuff to rot in the soil (but hey!, wasn’t that partly what this thread was suggesting in the first place?). My own composting machine is my hens. They have a summer compound and a winter one and at end of each season the accumulated material is put back on the land (C:N ratio significantly altered). Works for me.
I’ve considered geese, because there is unused grass in the neighbourhood. My goose predator would have to be me – and I haven’t sorted out the mechanics of goose killing and dressing satisfactorily, or else it would be my Jack Russells, and I’m not going down that path.
Jan, you write in much more mystical (gaian?) terms about the soil than I would. I can understand that a plant that thrived on lack of a nutrient would do well where that nutrient didn’t exist – but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the soil attracted it, implying intention in the soil itself. There must be a massive seed bank of all sorts of plants in my soil at any one time. The plants that I actually see are a result not just of nutrients available but of my own cultivation regime. For instance when you turn over grassland here yiou get one set of weeds in the first year and another in the second year when their seeds have been stimulated to germinate by the light. I think that the reason that I see thistles in my raspberry patch is that firstly there are thistle seeds there and secondly I only try to ‘clean’ that land in the winter and that favours the thistle. I must admit that I’m nowhere near as scientific as you, Jan. Generally I hope that if I work organically then I won’t be significantly short of nutrients. The only exception is that I’m aware that the soil here tends to be rather acid and experiments have suggested that adding lime is beneficial. Also I’d rather not see my lovely nutrients washed away by winter rains, so I favour green manures to try to hold nutrients. Of course they aso help with soil structure and stop the rains battering the soil.
July 6, 2012 at 1:46 am
Jan, be careful with the fiction that a pair of geese will protect ducks from predation. My beloved pilgrim female was foxed on her way back to her pond one afternoon with her husband. She had survived a wildfire and was later found starving on our dam, with burnt feet, among a carnage of charred chook and duck remains. She went on to raise her first brood, and then a freakin fox took her head off….
She was a pilgrim. Is it possible the larger Embdens are fox resistant?
I miss geese….
July 6, 2012 at 6:17 am
I don’t think that anyone in these parts would suggest that geese are fox-resistant. Guinea fowl?
July 6, 2012 at 10:24 am
Very useful discussion, I am learning lots. Out here on the prairie, the Canadian geese hold their own against both the coyotes and the foxes, and manage to raise broods. Which is really quite amazing, since they are out in the open, and the goslings too little to fly. This year, two or three families have teamed up to stay together, in previous years I saw them go it one family group at a time.
As for nitrogen draw down, many years ago, I had the idea to put a whole lot of sawdust on the garden. Killed the fertility for a couple of years…
July 6, 2012 at 10:52 am
@Dave Dann wrote: “the soil here tends to be rather acid and experiments have suggested that adding lime is beneficial.”
Do you heat with wood? If so, wood stove ash is the best way to “sweeten” acid soil. Besides being alkaline, wood stove ash has lots of potassium and numerous micronutrients.
Calcium carbonate (lime) is a purchased input, and it doesn’t do much for your soil besides buffering acid.
Before buying lime, visit the dump and see if there’s any bits of drywall you can scavenge. Look for new construction off-cuts, rather than painted drywall from demolition. That is free, and will put some sulphur in your soil, as well.
You sound like someone who values work over money. If so, forget buying lime, and find some way to sweeten the soil while providing other amenities.
July 6, 2012 at 11:04 am
Angie and Dave, I’m spoiled — we don’t have foxes on our island — so my predator protection needs are limited to racoons, mink, and otter.
I like to use “biomimicry,” trying to implement solutions by following nature’s lead, and I note that wild Canada Geese thrive here. How do they avoid predators? Perhaps it’s just strength in numbers, and a pair of domestic geese of any breed won’t make it, but I’d guess that wherever Canada Geese thrive, domestic geese (perhaps in large enough numbers) have a fighting chance.
Certainly some of them are quite fearless. My Mom was terrified of them — they’d run after her and peck at her legs when she was trying to hang laundry, and they would actually attack strange cars coming up the driveway! They didn’t bother our vehicles, but often the first notice that a car was coming up the drive was the geese squawking and running toward the hapless visitor who wasn’t prepared to fight off geese to buy a dozen eggs!
We went through $90 worth of Indian Runners a few years ago. We called that our “racoon feeder budget.” But we really want ducks for the many services they provide, so we’re going to run them with geese next time. I’ve been looking at “Chinese Weeders” that have been bred specifically for taking narrow-leaved grasses out from among broad-leaved plants.
July 9, 2012 at 7:52 am
Nobody tried guinea fowl then? Maybe alpacas?
Jan – yes I do use wood ash on the garden but concentrate it where I think potash would be most useful – e.g. tomato crop. Also does ash have a reputation for making clay heavier?
Landfill sites would not allow removal of plasterboard.
Canada Geese have a reputation for being good mothers here. I’m not even sure whether it is legal to farm them.
July 9, 2012 at 7:54 am
[…] Soil – rebuilding humus is one of the most important jobs we can do: https://leavingbabylon.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/can-humus-save-humans/ Climate – a brief look at the weather in the US: […]
July 9, 2012 at 12:54 pm
Timely, effusive piece by William Kotke: ‘Our Liberation: A Crashing Empire‘. These paragraphs seem to tie a lot of the above threads together:
Although his ‘we’ chafes against me a bit. With no access to land my role is reduced to one of advising those who do, and they didn’t get into those positions of affluence by passing up the opportunity to make a quick buck. Until there is cultural support (ie: money, at least in our current context) for sane & sustainable behaviour then things are not going to take a turn for the better. The important work will be attended to by volunteers in their spare time, while the destroyers will continue to work full-time and be rewarded for doing so with money, power and social status…
Enjoying the continued discussion!
I
PS – with wood ash I think I heard you need to let it lie for a while before sprinkling it on soils, otherwise it was too intense (? – nice scientific term there!) for the plants to deal with. Maybe diluting it in water would work?
July 9, 2012 at 2:11 pm
Ian M
Wood ash is available in winter see. It goes on with the animal muck or is put on standing green manure.
I can always put something too ‘intense’ through the compost system – e.g. the output of chickens (not eggs) mixing with partially rotted chainsaw shavings or shredded newspaper.
I completely agree with your observations about moneyed people making assumptions about what can be done – it’s really annoying me locally here in N Devon at the moment.
July 9, 2012 at 2:17 pm
@Ian M wrote: “With no access to land my role is reduced to one of advising those who do…”
Have you tried getting involved with a group of some sort?
We have an extended apprenticeship program, whereby 10,000 hours of labour (roughly five years) gets you $100,000 in equity and permanent habitation rights.
I know it doesn’t sound like much, but how many people are in a position to save $20,000 per year to put toward land?
The problem with wood ash is it is highly basic, and will lock up minerals if not used carefully. We put it in our compost tea and urine for fertigation.
July 10, 2012 at 8:06 pm
I thought I would add these thoughts to this discussion…in line with your thinking about being dropped into an unfamiliar place with no prior knowledge about what was edible.
I have talked with several stocker calf operators (that means buy a weaned calf, appx 7 months old, load him in a trailer and haul him 500 to 700 miles from home without his mother and dump him out on a pasture where nothing looks or smells right so he does not know what to eat…he will likely sicken and may die looking for something he recognizes) about how they run their setups. What these guys do regularly is retain older, mature steers to serve as teachers for the new calves in the pasture. The young’uns are attracted to an adult they can follow and the steer (sometimes more than one) shows the calves, by actually eating something, what is edible and what is not. The steer (s) can also serve as the helpers when the stocker man needs to pen the calves…a version of the Pied Piper, if you will.
So we have a current illustration of how animals, including humans, would learn from one who knows. It there wasn’t one who knew, the animals or humans would die of starvation (or the sickness malnutrition enables) or they would eat unfamiliar things in desperation and sometimes these things would kill them.
One year, I turned a group of weaned calves into a field with frosted Johnson grass (which can be highly toxic for several days after frost) but with other grasses they knew. They had never seen frosted Johnson grass…they had not seen late fall yet in their short lives…but they did not touch it until one morning I looked out and it was gone…and none of the calves were dead. Obviously there was something that told them to leave it alone and then told them it was ok…there were still other choices so it was not necessity that made them chose the frosted Johnson grass. On the other hand, this bunch had grown up with a lot of variety in their diets and their mothers had apparently taught them some sort of selection skill that I never identified. This is why I think that many mammals, including humans, died while they learned what they could eat safely from the plant world and what they could not and how to make new selections (maybe).
There is a fascinating article posted on ACRES USA in 2002 about an old cowman who talks about a discovery he made by paying attention to what he was seeing…the drops of moisture on a healthy cow’s nostrils and what that might mean. The name of the piece is Cow Culture: Cowman Discovers Nature’s Treatment for Pasture_. All healthy cows (and many other grazers I have ever encountered) have this, in fact the absence of it indicate the animal is unwell. As this gentleman, Wesley Ervasti, puts it…”Mother Nature made a deal with the cow. She said, ‘I’ll provide you plenty of grass, but you have to give something back. Every bite you take, you will leave this culture in the forage and in the soil’.”
A Dr. Jim Brinks of Colorado State University listened to Ervasti and took samples of the moisture to a botany specialist who ran experiments with it and found that it increased production of treated greenhouse plants by 50%. A complete discussion about what they found and what it means is in the article. Ervasti also describes how a cow deals with calving if she is in charge.
This is an intriguing article and matches much of what I thought I was seeing during my years as an animal husbandwoman. It is insights like this that make the whole plant/animal interdependence so fascinating and fun.
The article link: http://www.acresusa.com/toolbox/reprints/August02_CowCulture.pdf
From the Article Reprint Library in the Toolbox category.
August 1, 2012 at 9:23 am
Thanks Luane (who drops in from this discussion – yay, I got published on Energy Bulletin!), v. interesting stories & observations there. I still stand by my comment about speciation and the untapped resources that make it possible, but I should have said that I’m with you all the same on the ‘collective knowledge of such things, passed from generation to generation’. Clearly that’s the case with human cultures (ours to a much-impoverished degree where we learn little more than the workings of a highly specialised trade) and it seems to hold true for some animals too, as what you’ve written supports. I’m sure I’ve heard about chimps learning how to ‘fish’ for ants with long sticks or break into nuts with stones and then passing this knowledge on to their offspring… A little harder to make the case for those (e.g. ocean-going turtles) who have no contact with adult members of their species from birth and have to rely on what we call ‘instinct’ to show them what to do. Probably direct teaching comes to the fore in highly social animals where ‘learning by doing’ is normally the most efficient way to perpetuate the subsistence strategy. Hefting with sheep strikes me as another example.
I liked the story of frosted johnson grass. So often the assumption is that domestic animals are stupid eating machines who will graze indiscriminately on anything green, even if it poisons them. Recently I was employed to pull some Ragwort out of a gardening client’s horse paddock because he understood it to be poisonous to livestock, as alternate names like ‘Ragweed, Stinking Nanny/Ninny/Willy, Staggerwort, Dog Standard, Cankerwort, Stammerwort and Mare’s Fart’ attest. The horses all came up to me while I was digging the tall, yellow-flowering plants out and some had an inquisitive nose into my debris bag. At first I shooed them away, but after a while it became clear that none of them were interested in eating it after a brief sniff. Looking at the place it was in a rather sorry state, all trampled to mud with practically no fresh grass left. The only plants left standing were docks (very bitter), thistles (v. large, sharp spines) and the Ragworts, all in pristine condition. Some of the horses later forced their way through a fence to graze in the adjacent field rather than touch what was left in their enclosure. As the wikipedia article confirms: ‘Horses do not normally eat fresh ragwort due to its bitter taste. It loses this taste when dried and can become a danger in hay.’
Totally cool about the cow nostril juice. Sadly predictable that the first thing modern people think to do with the knowledge is to isolate & synthesise the chemicals and use them to increase production in crops. It’s a familiar story in herbalism, except the patent that emerges usually benefits pharmaceutical rather than agricultural corporations… I’ll reserve judgement till I read the article you link to though.
Kind regards and apologies for the super-delayed response – internet time has been sporadic for me lately.
Ian
August 1, 2012 at 9:42 am
PS: In response to my bemoaning my landless state Jan asked me if I had ‘tried getting involved with a group of some sort’. The answer is no, not yet, but I’m less interested in playing the game of land purchase than in directly confronting the insane concentration of landed wealth here in the UK, where ‘70% of land is still owned by less than 1% of the population’, and ‘nearly half the country is owned by 40,000 land millionaires, or 0.06 per cent of the population, while most of the rest of us spend half our working lives paying off the debt on a patch of land barely large enough to accommodate a dwelling and a washing line.’ Right on cue I heard that the Diggers have risen up again:
Interesting. Very interesting…
January 5, 2013 at 7:25 pm
[…] to know which plants were safe to use for food or medicine, and for some reason it continued in this Leaving Babylon comment section (from […]
February 22, 2016 at 3:06 am
Nice article on soil and humus. But I think the article should contain simple process of making topsoil to fertile. Also needs an article useful to small and marginal farmers on how to make top soil highly fertile..
February 22, 2016 at 7:44 pm
Sadashiv, I’ll try to come up with a good link. If anyone has one, please pitch in!