Organic // Current

added
25 days ago

Al Gore & Richard Branson Paving The Way To A GreenRoad

Every little bit helps, including the pooling of Gore & Branson's financial resources into an interestingly simple yet... more

sfinfgeld2
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Do you want to see a week of live blogging about permaculture?

Hey folks, A question for you! Every so often I pitch field segments, and something just crossed my desk that I wanted to pass by... more

leahl
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Obesity: Agriculture's Ultimate Externality?

"When strolling through the aisles of the grocery store, most consumers have no idea that they are paying a far greater price... more

lookatmypix
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For Just $1 you can now take credit card payments with your iphone thanks to Square.

The New technology opens up a world of opportunities for places where small cash transactions abound, like farmersmarkets or... more

TOP10PRODUCELLC
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Still Life With Post-Consumer Plastic

Throughout the ages, artists have transformed the most humble objects into veritable works of art that now adorn the walls of the... more

sfinfgeld2
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Why Should I Compost & What Ingredients Should I Use?

It may seem like a no-brainer to people in the environmental community, but it never hurts to get a brief refresher course in why... more

sfinfgeld2
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"Soil is as essential a natural resource as air and water. Yet we’re running out of healthy, fertile dirt at an alarming rate. One man’s odyssey to retrace and reduce his soil footprint.

John Jeavons is saving the planet one scoop of applesauce at a time. Jeavons stands at the front of the classroom at Ecology Action, the experimental farm he founded on the side of a mountain above Willits, in Northern California’s Mendocino County. For every tablespoon of food he sucks down his gullet, he scoops up six spoonfuls of dirt, one at a time for dramatic effect, and dumps them into another bowl. It’s a stark message he’s trying to get across to the 35 people who have come from around the country to get a tour of his farm—simplified, to be sure, but comprehensible: For every unit of food we consume, using the conventional agricultural methods employed in the U.S., six times that amount of topsoil is lost. Since, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the average person eats a ton of food each year, that works out to 12,000 pounds (5,443 kilograms) of topsoil. John Jeavons estimates that using current farming practices we have 40 to 80 years of arable soil left.

If you don’t already know the bad news, I’ll make it quick and dirty: We’re running out of soil. As with other prominent resources that have accumulated over millions of years, we, the people of planet Earth, have been churning through the stuff that feeds us since the first Neolithic farmer broke the ground with his crude plow."

One more excerpt:
"I have been composting my own dung in my backyard. Like many advances in human technology, the hegemony of the flush toilet is not forever, and as the planet has grown increasingly crowded, more people are reevaluating its merits. Every day, millions of tons of potential soil nutrition are sent downstream to treatment plants, where they are mixed with industrial effluent and spent pharmaceuticals, chlorinated, dechlorinated and condensed into a material that the industry likes to call “bio-solids,” but everyone else prefers to call by its old name: “sludge.” Most of this sludge ends up covering over the layers of garbage in landfills, contributing to the aforementioned methane problem. Then there is the dubious practice of soiling and cleaning our drinking water in an increasingly thirsty world.

On top of this, the nutrients contained therein are effectively lost forever. According to John Jeavons, all but a tiny percentage of the minerals necessary to produce a year’s worth of food for one person can be found in a year’s worth of that person’s waste."
http://www.odemagazine.com/doc/69/dirt

Beyond Organic practices, mirroring nature.

Join the Organic Revolution:
http://current.com/groups/organicgreen/"Soil is as essential a natural resource as air and water. Yet we’re running out of healthy, fertile dirt at an... more

lookatmypix
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4 comments

added
26 days ago

Ancient Forest Management in the Chaco Canyon

Two excerpts:
"Deforestation isn't a new issue. In the ancient Chaco canyon region, we can see an excellent example of how the choices ancient people made while managing their forests are still affecting us today. Amazingly, this region provides us with a comparative example of what happens when a group of people decides to clearcut, versus what happens when they practice selective thinning. The results just might amaze you."

"As for the ancient inhabitants of Chaco Canyon, a climate change eventually sealed their fates. Around A.D. 1300, a drought hit the region, causing collapse of many nearby groups, and the Chacoans were also victims of the harsh environmental trap created by an already stressed ecosystem. The canyon was abandoned, and residents there probably moved into outlying communities, not romantically disappearing as many accounts would overzealously exclaim, but instead absorbing into nearby groups and becoming a part of a newly woven cultural fabric.

The lessons of Choco Canyon are plentiful, the most obvious displayed to the viewer as they gaze upon the treeless landscape of the canyon. The choice for our modern society, as always, is: will we heed these lessons? Will we practice sustainable forestry and irrigation? Will we live within the ability of our environment to sustain, or will we overrun that ability and import the material goods that we desire at the expense of ecosystems all over the planet? It’s time to ask these questions of ourselves, and to think deeply before we decide, because we cannot pick up the remains of our environmental disaster and move on anymore. We are reaching the end of our available resources, and have forced the entire planet to perform in an environmental balancing act upon which all of our collective fates are now hanging. We have the opportunity now to make an informed decision, and protect the future of our entire species."
http://tenthmil.com/mission/timeline/ancient_forest_management_in_the_chaco_canyon

This is a very interesting article. More in the responses below.

Join the Organic Revolution:
http://current.com/groups/organicgreen/Two excerpts: "Deforestation isn't a new issue. In the ancient Chaco canyon region, we can see an excellent example of... more