Peak Oil and Permaculture: David Holmgren on Energy Descent

EnergyBulletin.net | Peak Oil and Permaculture: David Holmgren on Energy Descent | Energy and Peak Oil News:
by Adam Fenderson -- June 2004

Holmgren: One of the biggest limiting resources in agricultural productivity is phosphorous. It's critical to plant nutrition and animal health, and it's in limited supply. All ecosystems work to maximize to hold phosphorous and recycle it. It's one of the non-renewable mineral resources that humans have dug out of the earth at a few key places around the world in the last hundred years with the aid of fossil fuels and have spread over large areas of agricultural land. Interestingly enough, it's one of the few elements that doesn't get leeched away readily. It's been estimated that in some parts of Australia's farmland that's been intensively farmed for potatoes in a cool climate, that there's enough phosphorous tied up in the soil, locked up, for a hundred years of farming�if you could actually make it available.

Now making it available requires the work of a healthy eco-system. Because nature is used to actually breaking apart this locked up phosphorous in the form of aluminium and iron phosphate. So permaculture systems--especially tree systems, as well as forms of organic agriculture that husband the soil micro-organisms can mine back out some of that resource. That's one of the positive stories agriculture hasn't just left a legacy of toxicity and degradation, it's left a legacy of unused abundance. It's been technically difficult to get at, so it's not just like people have pointlessly thrown away fertilizers: it requires more sophisticated soil ecosystems.

Vegetable Farming with Less Energy

EnergyBulletin.net | Maverick methods work just fine for both produce and the planet | Energy and Peak Oil News:
by Mia Stainsby -- Aug 24, 2005

"Agriculture, he says, uses 80 per cent of the world's freshwater resources with only 20 per cent of it reaching the plants and animals because of inefficient transport and application systems. 'Precise planting depths, timely cultivation, ancient dry-farming techniques, increased crop variety, drip tapes and hoses are ways of using water much more efficiently.'

The same goes for energy, he says. 'If you look at the relation between food and oil, one of the greatest services is to begin to show that food can be produced without intensive input of energy. My goal is to be 80 per cent fossil oil-free in the next couple of years,' he declares. He has solar systems set up to power his farm.

Manure Converted to a Variety of Products

Manure Converted to a Variety of Products:
ABCNews.com -- July 18, 2001

If you thought cow patties were just something to avoid stepping in, consider this: In the future they could help make plastics, antifreeze, cosmetics, and even deodorants.

Costs Push Oklahoma Farmers Away From Corn

KOTV - The News on 6 - Costs Push Oklahoma Farmers Away From Corn:
AP -- Aug 9, 2005

GUYMON, Okla. (AP) _ Many corn farmers in Oklahoma's Panhandle say the high cost of natural gas is causing them to shy away from growing corn.

They say the high natural gas prices make watering the crop too costly. Texas County farmers use the fuel to power engines that tap the Ogallala Aquifer, which is used to water crops.

Can This Fruit Be Saved?

This fascinating article tells the story of the bannana and how researchers are racing to develop new varieties before disease wipes out cultivated production.
Can This Fruit Be Saved? - Popular Science:
By Dan Koeppel | August 2005

The banana as we know it is on a crash course toward extinction. For scientists, the battle to resuscitate the world's favorite fruit has begun -- a race against time that just may be too late to win.

Economists Study Implications Of High Diesel Prices on Farming

Economists Study Implications Of High Diesel Prices on Farming 5/23/05:
Kansas State University -- May 23, 2005

MANHATTAN, Kan. -- Historically high diesel prices have producers thinking no-till farming looks better every day, but two Kansas State University agricultural economists studied the diesel price outlook and possible long-term impact on machinery and whole-farm costs.
Based on data supplied by Kansas Farm Management Association members, those members can expect their total fuel costs, excluding irrigation, in 2005 to increase by more than $3,000 compared to what they paid in 2004, said K-State Research and Extension farm management specialist Kevin Dhuyvetter.

Essential Steps to a Sustainable Agriculture

This article includes eight solid principles farmers can use to increase long term productivity. They are the guiding principles of the Kerr Center in Oklahoma.
Kerr Center: Essential Steps to a Sustainable Agriculture:

What is a sustainable agriculture? And once you know what it is, how do you practice it?
These are the questions my staff and I first addressed in the mid-80s. There are dozens of definitions of a sustainable agriculture. But I'll go with a simple one: A sustainable agriculture is a system of agriculture that will last. It is an agriculture that maintains its productivity over the long run...

Reducing Fossil Fuel use through Sustainable Agriculture

Sustainable agriculture practices can help make agriculture a major net contributor to the energy equation. This article gives some sensible steps toward this goal.
The Health of Our Air: Toward sustainable agriculture in Canada | Reducing fossil fuel use:
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada -- Aug 27, 2003

Farms rely on energy from fossil fuels to power machinery, heat buildings, dry harvested crops, and transport goods. Energy is also used to supply materials employed on the farm, such as fertilizers, pesticides, machinery, and buildings. Most of these emissions are not attributed to agriculture in the national inventory of greenhouse gases. Even so, using less fuel on farms would reduce Canada's total CO2 emissions.

Herbicide Resistant Pigweed Found in Georgia

NCGA - News of the Day:
August, 2005

...Dr. Stanley Culpepper of the University of Georgia, who is investigating the pigweed case with Monsanto, collected seed from a field in 2004 and tested the seed in three greenhouse studies this spring. The results revealed poor performance of Roundup herbicide applied at normal label rates. Monsanto and Culpepper are now conducting heritability studies to confirm resistance...

Students flock to campus organic farms

CNN.com - Students flock to campus organic farms:
CNN.com -- July 22, 2005

Corvallis, OR -- ...In the last decade or so, student-run farms have cropped up across the country, at almost 60 schools in 27 states. Foodies call it the latest sign of the seasonal, regional food movement's influence, even on a collegiate landscape that's virtually paved with Hot Pockets, Pop Tarts and leftover pizza...

GM crops created superweed, say scientists

This news is very serious for two reasons. First, scientists promoting genetically modified crops were sure it couldn't happen. "Jurassic Park" had it right -- "life will find a way." What else might happen despite assurances? Secondly, these superweeds will cause tremendous damage if they multiply -- for conventional and organic growers. This story details instances in Canada and elswhere where superweeds are a real problem. In some of these instances, it's not even genetic modification causing the problem -- it's just the selection pressure from repeatedly using powerful chemical pesticides.
Guardian Unlimited | GM crops created superweed, say scientists:
Paul Brown, environment correspondent -- The Guardian -- July 25, 2005

Modified rape crosses with wild plant to create tough pesticide-resistant strain
Modified genes from crops in a GM crop trial have transferred into local wild plants, creating a form of herbicide-resistant 'superweed', the Guardian can reveal.
The cross-fertilisation between GM oilseed rape, a brassica, and a distantly related plant, charlock, had been discounted as virtually impossible by scientists with the environment department. It was found during a follow up to the government's three-year trials of GM crops which ended two years ago.
The new form of charlock was growing among many others in a field which had been used to grow GM rape. When scientists treated it with lethal herbicide it showed no ill-effects.

EM bokashi composting

Bokashi is a mixture of effective microorganisms in a substrate of bran. This article describes how to make it and layer it with household garbage to quickly make a superb compost.
EM bokashi composting:
by Brian Smallshaw -- cityfarmer.org -- Feb 25, 2004

I'll give you a brief overview of how we use EM bokashi in composting, together with a few photos.
We have been using bokashi to treat our kitchen compost for about six or seven years, beginning soon after we cleared a spot for our garden here on Saltspring after moving from Tokyo. I won't go into the details of preparing bokashi, except to say that we mix up 100lb batches every summer, or every other summer, and store the dried mixture in a couple of large plastic barrels. We then keep a smaller bucket of bokashi in the kitchen handy for daily use.

Effective Microorganisms for Organic Farming, Gardening

Soil high in organic matter will naturally have a better level of beneficial microorganisms, but this article tells of a method to introduce an ideal population of photosynthetic, nitrogen fixing, and other microorganisms that maximize crop yields by maximizing the ability of crops to use available nutrients.
BENEFICIAL AND EFFECTIVE MICROORGANISMS:
Dr. Teruo Higa and Dr. James F. Parr -- 1994

EM is not a substitute for other management practices. It is, however, an added dimension for optimizing our best soil and crop management practices such as crop rotations, use of organic amendments, conservation tillage, crop residue recycling, and biocontrol of pests. If used properly, EM can significantly
enhance the beneficial effects of these practices (Higa and Wididana, 1991b). Throughout the discussion which follows, we will use the term 'beneficial microorganisms' In a general way to designate a large group of often unknown or ill-defined microorganisms that interact favorably in soils and with plants to render beneficial effects which are sometimes difficult to predict. We use the term 'effective microorganisms' or EM to denote specific mixed cultures of known, beneficial microorganisms that are being used effectively as microbial
inoculants.

Effective Microorganisms for Composting

Microbes touted for composting:
by TIM HIGGINS of the Tribune's staff -- Aug 12, 2000

Japanese professor sees boon for environment.
It might look like nothing but a pail of garbage.
Leigh Lockhart is co-owner of The Main Squeeze, the only restaurant in Columbia to recycle food waste with a new process that uses microbes.The restaurant's refuse is trucked to MU's South Farm, where the treatment helps the waste decay faster and without odor...

The creator of the process, Japanese professor Teruo Higa, is in Columbia speaking at MU this weekend. Higa kicked off the series of seminars, sponsored by Sustainable Community Development, yesterday morning by talking to a group of roughly 25 scientists, farmers and environmentalists from around the state and country about his process of composting and neutralizing food waste, trash and feces...

Higa touts the treatment, which he calls EM - Effective Microbial - as a cure-all for environments damaged by pollutants. He said the treatment can be used in lakes, rivers and fields. 'It begins to clean up the sludge and other pollutants,' he said through an interpreter...

Eating a Truly Local Diet for a Year

Living on the Hundred-Mile Diet:
by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon -- TheTyee.ca -- June 28, 2005

In a jam? Eating a truly local diet for a year poses some tricky questions. First in a series.
It's strawberry season. James and I are at the Ellis Farms u-pick on Delta's Westham Island, crouching between long rows of the bunchy green plants, plucking the big berries and dropping them gently into small buckets. We imagine their future with cream and in pies. I lick the sweet red juice from my fingers. 'If I make jam we can have strawberries all year,' I say. James asks with what, exactly, I plan to make the jam? Sugar? One of the planet's most exploitative products, shipped in from thousands of kilometres away?
'But what,' I reply, 'will we eat all winter?'
This may seem like a peculiar question in an age when it's normal to have Caribbean mangoes in winter and Australian pears in spring. However, on March 21, the first day of spring, we took a vow to live with the rhythms of the land as our ancestors did. For one year we would only buy food and drink for home consumption that was produced within 100 miles of our home, a circle that takes in all the fertile Fraser Valley, the southern Gulf Islands and some of Vancouver Island, and the ocean between these zones. This terrain well served the European settlers of a hundred years ago, and the First Nations population for thousands of years before...

Anti-Ethanol Study Roasted

Colorado experts doubt authors' methods :
By Gargi Chakrabarty -- Rocky Mountain News -- July 19, 2005

Colorado experts on Monday debunked a new study that says alternative fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel burn more energy than they produce.
The study, by researchers at Cornell University and the University of California-Berkeley, said 29 percent more fossil energy, such as oil or natural gas, is required to turn corn into ethanol than the amount of energy the process produces.

The study also said it takes 27 percent more energy to turn soybeans into biodiesel fuel and more than double the energy produced is needed to do the same with sunflower plants.
'Ethanol production in the United States does not benefit the nation's energy security, its agriculture, the economy or the environment,' said the study by Cornell's David Pimentel and Berkeley's Tad Patzek. They conclude the country would be better off investing in solar, wind and hydrogen energy.
Those results raise important issues for Colorado, where investors are pumping millions of dollars into two new ethanol plants in Weld County and a new biodiesel refinery in Monte Vista...

Pimentel and Patzek included in the study such factors as the energy used in producing the crop, costs that were not used in other studies that supported ethanol production.
The study also omitted $3 billion in state and federal government subsidies that go toward ethanol production in the United States each year, payments that mask the true costs,"

Organic Crops Produce Same Yield with Less Inputs says Cornell Study

Organic farming success:
by Susan S. Lang -- Cornell Press Release -- July 13, 2005

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Organic farming produces the same yields of corn and soybeans as does conventional farming, but uses 30 percent less energy, less water and no pesticides, a review of a 22-year farming trial study concludes. David Pimentel, a Cornell University professor of ecology and agriculture, concludes, 'Organic farming offers real advantages for such crops as corn and soybeans.' Pimentel is the lead author of a study that is published in the July issue of Bioscience (Vol. 55:7) analyzing the environmental, energy and economic costs and benefits of growing soybeans and corn organically versus conventionally. The study is a review of the Rodale Institute Farming Systems Trial, the longest running comparison of organic vs. conventional farming in the United States.

Training programs booming for organic professionals in India

Organic farming's latest buzz for GenX:
by PRABHA JAGANNATHAN -- The Economic Times -- July 12, 2005

NEW DELHI: The genNext Indian farmer is busy reinventing the Jai Kisan tag. And the makeover is focusing on organic farming and farm produce, which spin money as well as environmental feel-good in developed countries. New professional courses in organic farming are drawing agri-professionals by droves who, in turn, are being snapped up by national and international agencies.

Cashing in on the new trend and its hunger for trained professionals, specialised study courses have begun grabbing eyeballs in the sector compared to conventional courses available in agricultural universities. Mainstream farm colleges have, in fact, now begun structuring new courses so that India can carve out a presence in world trade.

Globally, trendy sectors like organic farming now face a major constraint of trained professionals. But introduction of agriculture education here coincided with the development of chemicals. Therefore a de-learning process is required before the induction of agricultural professionals in a market crying out to be tapped, a farm specialist points out.