Blog Anniversary Overview

I have been writing this daily column for a full year now. I think that there were only one or two instants that I lacked an obvious topic. In any event, this is as good a time as any to reformulate my theme of the application of agriculture to resolving our perceived difficulties with CO2 in particular and environmental issues in general.

I have always looked for ways in which the small farmer, who represents a likely third of the global population, can adopt beneficial protocols.

My initial postings commenced with the need to restore good husbandry to the maintenance and use of the woodlot in temperate North America. We recognized the need to produce a larger authority than the individual who could be capitalized over the long time spans necessary. We opened discussions on the methods and established practical protocols.

What I am very conscious of is that all protocols must be first properly implemented by some form of collective agency that has access to title creation and enforcement. After all, why are you going to grow a Macadamia nut plantation if after five years I can come in and convert the wood to charcoal?

This form of agricultural barbarism is inhibiting agricultural development in the underdeveloped world. The impoverished and disenfranchised simply do not care if their neighbor’s family is thrown into poverty and this is the selfish foundation of so called ethnic cleansing.

We went on to almost immediately discover terra preta. There was little coverage then but that has since totally blossomed. The power of terra preta is that it clearly answers the age old problem of maintaining soil fertility and I showed how even the original makers used corn waste to make it happen. This can be done today by any subsistence farmer.

Getting that world wide problem behind us was extremely necessary and very timely. Now that we know how to produce highly fertile soils in only a few years, we will be able to at least tolerate poor practices until the current operators are replaced. We actually have the time. I expect to see the ruined soils of Mesopotamia to be fertile again.

Education and gentle pressure will do the rest.

More exciting, millions of acres of tropical forest soils, now been cropped on a slash and burn system can be converted to continuous sustainable agriculture, This actually puts feeding our projected population of ten billion within easy reach.

We talked about the buffalo commons development that is quietly underway with no need to call on government involvement. I expect that in two centuries, that we will have more buffalo ranched than was ever alive in the wild. This particular protocol will also be implemented in the Asian steppes where their brethren were wiped out many thousands of years ago.

Recently we have been made aware of the productivity of cattail culture which allows a wetland protocol that will produce massive amounts of starch suitable for ethanol. This was unexpected and promises to be hugely productive and very low cost. The agricultural protocol can be applied from the tropics to deep in the Boreal forest. Whoever thought that there would be a crop that could prosper in those dismal swamps? Even the moose will be happy. The mosquitoes and black flies will be even happier which is why the work will have to be largely done after first frost.

We also discussed the onset of peak oil conditions in the energy markets. Pricing was shifted from an abundance regime to a chronic shortage regime. This obviously hurts and is now creating a huge immediate market for ethanol. Again, the obvious first step is to impose optional ethanol usage on all new vehicles. Industry and agriculture will sort out how to do the rest.

Many other protocols are now been experimented with and we have reported on these as they arose.

It is very comforting to know however, that almost all global soils in use can be easily restored to full health, that most wetland areas can become massive producers of starch for ethanol and if we care, for human consumption, and that temperate dry lands are best served by buffalo husbandry.

I have also commented on the need to bring the entire ancient hunter gather protocols under proper management. This will not likely occur until the hunters are run out of business. I do not think that it will be too difficult to restore the soon to be extinct salmon fishery or the soon to be extinct blue fin tuna fishery when the so called owners are completely out of business. It did happen to the world’s greatest cod fishery and once they are finished wrecking the ocean bottom so that any other form of fishing is impossible, it should be possible to get agreement with everyone to stay away forever and allow a full optimized recovery.

I welcome my readers to comment and I also welcome new ideas that I have never seen. Feel free to contact me through this blog.

20 billion Population sustainable

When I started his blog, my central thesis was that the global need to reorganize the way we handled CO2, called for nothing less than the terra forming of the Earth. My central tool was the establishment of a well planned global silviculture support system. This was because agriculture and forest management are close enough that it is possible to establish mutual support.

What our investigation has brought home is that our tool kit is much better than anyone imagined and even more invasive than anyone imagined. And I mean invasive in a good manner. We can often help mother nature to maximize results.

The core economic unit is still the private farm. Preferably the village farm, although the family farm will still be important.

I have discussed the need to tie our civilization more directly to our agricultural roots. This will mean that a farm unit needs to be integrated with a condominium tower containing a couple hundred families with rapid access to the urban job market. This supplies the farm with a ready supply of temporary labor as needed to take advantage of higher yield crops and supply labor intensive maintenance.

A single family can operate a thousand acre $200 gross per grain farm. That same family could just as easily operate a high yielding crop worth several times as much on a fraction of the land. Somewhere in between there is an agricultural coop type system as used for centuries in Europe in which all labor was honored and valuable.

The point that I want to make is that part time labor must be available if we hope to harness the potential that we are describing in these posts. And it has to be welcome labor respecting a person's time and place in life and honoring his input. This problem has been well solved in the past, but has been forgotten in the rush to the family farm and the industrial farm.

Our hypothetical farm unit today can be built around several new virtuous cycles.

1 The terra preta - corn culture builds soils and restores full fertility while permanently sequestering one ton per acre of carbon per year.

2 Woodlot management produces forest products and a steady stream of waste wood chips while building up to 25 to 50 tons of sequestered carbon per year. The wood chips make a good feedstock for methanol production, but not as likely for biochar since it requires grinding.

3 Cattle culture produces a waste stream that may now be diverted into algae production. This will produce an oil byproduct that makes good biodiesel and a solid byproduct that may either be used as cattle feed or used in fermentation or both. That is still a speculation, but something like this seems possible. It would be clearly superior to prior practice which has always been unsatisfactory.

4 Atmospheric water production will open up progressively the earth's arid lands. I say progressively since it is all about growing trees that then dump the moisture back into the atmosphere for reuse. The same rainfall can theoretically water the Sahara desert over and over again. Of course it is not that simple and will require progressive tweaking even when the cost of the technology has become cheaper than needed.

5 Woodlot management that produces economic amounts of forest products and also a viable fuel will progressively convert the wildwood into viable farm units, even in the rainforests. Good management will become possible even while maximizing diversity. Again, the main challenge is to eliminate short term exploitation tenures. And the best way to do that is to do that is to tax the resource through a long term partnership that demands a sustained species mix. It is pretty hard to cut all the oak if you are going to be taxed in perpetuity for those non existent oaks at current market value. Inflation alone will bankrupt such a practitioner eventually.

6 Proper wildlife husbandry is completely feasible and needs only the establishment of proper ownership to bring under effective management.

The main business of mankind is to produce enough food and now, enough fuel through sustainable sources. These protocols make a global population of even 20 billion possible and sustainable.

The human element

It is time to take stock of what we have wrought. We live in a modern age that has hugely vacated the role of stewards of the land. At least that is true for the developed West and is rapidly becoming true for the rest of the world. I personally think that this is a mistake that will come back to haunt us.

The force multiplier effect of cheap energy has allowed high volume industrial farming to prosper, but it has been at the expense of a loss of available labor for seasonal agricultural work that should be the full responsibility of the community.

What has happened is that the sale of an hour of time has taken precedence over social responsibility and economic responsibility. This is the cause of most of the unnatural distortions developed in our civilization.

We can look back into the archaic agricultural world we came out off and see examples of best practice, perhaps setting an utopian ideal. We also see plenty of examples of bad practice. Utopia only worked for a couple of months of the year.

Most importantly, everyone's labor was available to some extent for the communal good. It was not every day. But in an agricultural economy, it was there when it was needed. A member of the community owed that community a certain amount of labor each year.

I am saying, however, that a person who has learned to contribute his labor to the maintenance of the agricultural economy and the community will also honor it. This needs to be encouraged. The desire is there. It needs to be channeled.

Right now our available methods for channeling human effort in the community are weak and and in the urban environment terribly insufficient. If anything selfishness is promoted. That is wrong since it is hardly necessary.

The principle reason that I bring this up is that the solution of the global CO2 crisis properly demands a culture of active woodlot management. That finally requires ongoing human involvement in the physical maintenance. Best practice calls for the mixed planting of trees, the clearing of excessive brush and dead wood on an ongoing basis and the harvesting of crops.
And someone should feel it is his responsibility to inspect each tree for health from time to time. After all, most tree pests can be controlled by the simple expedient of pruning them in time.

Right now, both the community and the farmer has abandoned vast tracts of so called waste land. To some degree this can be partially fixed with money and mostly a mono culture approach. It would be much better if willing human labor were readily available to help maximize the performance of the model wood lot.