|
NEWSLETTERS
|
|
Steve Moore, Ecology Action's
colleague in Pennsylvania, recently sent us these
calculations that he had made. Steve is researching
the energy content of food:
If artichokes yield 413 calories/lb
(our tests), and the yield is intermediate: 206
lb/100 sq ft, the caloric yield is 85,078 calories.
If it is Johnny's Stampede 90-day variety, that
is 945 calories/day. If potatoes yield 279 calories/lb,
and the yield is intermediate: 200 lbs/100 sq ft,
the caloric yield is 55,800. If it is a 60-day variety,
that is 930 calories/day-but, with Jerusalem artichoke,
you can also get about 15 pounds of dry biomass,
and, with potatoes, you only get about 5 pounds
of dry biomass.
This information comes from "Pollinators-Let's
Join the Effort to Help," in the May 2005 issue
of The Community Gardener, the newsletter of The
American Community Gardening Association:
"Eighty percent of the food
plant species worldwide depend on pollination by
animals, almost all of which are insects. Worldwide,
approximately 1,000 of the estimated 1,330 crop
plants grown for food, beverages, fibers, condiments,
spices, and medicines are pollinated by animals."
Around the world, populations of pollinators are
drastically declining. Suggested steps to help pollinators:
"Plant wildflowers and native plants...avoid
using pesticides and herbicides...make a home for
pollinators: build bee condos, create bat boxes
and preserve dead branches and dead trees."
The following is taken from "Healthy
Soils Make Healthy Farms", by Jules Pretty
in the July/August 2004 issue of Resurgence:
In Brazil, the southern state
of Santa Catarina, once heavily forested, had been
logged to create farms. These farms had experienced
serious erosion and so the government began a program
to get farmers to adopt conservation tillage. In
one valley, twenty groups of farmers are engaged
in this experiment. One of these converted to organic
production nine years ago, since he "was barely
making a living growing just tobacco and onions"
and his land was severely degraded. Now he grows
more than fifty crops, including vegetables, herbs,
cereals, legumes and fruits. He also raises pigs
and chickens. He uses "zero-tillage, the nitrogen-fixing
beans Mucuna and Crotolaria as green manures, and
cover crops." The farmer stated: After three
years, the soil was much improved and there was
no problem with insect pests. The soil is dark and
rich in organic matter, in contrast to a neighbor's
farm, where more industrial farm practices are still
used." To be able to sell their crops, the
"twenty farm associations in the region with
some 500 members" sell produce directly to
consumers and also make value-added goods such as
molasses, cheese and preserved fruits. Goods are
even sold over the internet, with farmers staying
in touch with customers by email.
These are just a few quotes from a
long article, "New Weapons in the Insect Wars,"
by Robert Gerard, in the March 2005 issue of Acres,
USA. The article describes some of the findings
of Dr. Joe Ellington of the Bio Control Laboratories
at New Mexico State University.
"Insecticide resistance is
genetic and is passed on, and built upon as each
generation is exposed to the same basic chemicals.
This phenomenon of ever-quickening resistance is
now called ‘cross-resistance' and is a frightening
testimonial to the simplicity and adaptability of
the insect's genetic apparatus to insecticides.
Presently there are 500 insect species resistant
to one or more insecticides in the world, and 20
of our worst insect pests are resistant to all types
of insecticides. Ellington spoke of the Mesilla
Valley [in southern New Mexico] as a wonderful subject
of study in itself because it is made up of many
small farms growing a diverse group of crops. The
effects that they have on each other are often significant
when it comes to pest-control strategies, especially
those involving beneficial insects. Of all the crops
grown in this area, one of the best for beneficial
insects is alfalfa. It is estimated that an average
alfalfa field contains 120 parasitoids and two dozen
predators. An innovative planting technique was
developed to control lygus bugs in cotton [in which]
cotton was alternated with blocks of alfalfa. The
blocks of alfalfa were cut separately, 15 days apart,
so that lygus bugs would move into the uncut alfalfa
instead of the cotton. The system worked very well
and was tried on other farms with success."
The May 2005 issue of Agroforestry
News is dedicated to Fiber Plants and has an interesting
article on nettles as food, medicine and fiber.
We include here just a few quotes from this article:
"The stinging hairs on nettles
are in fact rough thin hollow silica tubes containing
a mixture of histamine, acetylcholine, serotonin
and formic acid. When the plant is touched, the
tubes are broken, releasing this chemical mixture
onto the skin, causing at first a strong burning
feeling followed by swelling, a rash and itching.
The cooked young shoots (or tops/leaves of older
shoots with the youngest leaves) are rich in vitamins
A, B2, C, E and K1 as well as various minerals including
iron and calcium. Recent studies have shown that
nettles have a powerful antioxidant activity and
contain very effective scavengers of free radicals.
They also show significant antibacterial activity,
antiulcer activity and analgesic effects. The fiber
is similar to hemp and it served a variety of purposes
in the home from coarse sheets and cloth to sacking
and fishing nets."
This information comes from "Collapse
and renewal on horizon" by Brendan Hoare in
the March/April 2005 issue of Organic NZ. The author
returned to a village in the Philippines he had
last visited in 1991:
"Terraced paddy systems are
actually one large water body, interconnected intimately
through weirs, waterfalls and irrigation channels.
It is estimated that the terraced paddies of Luzon
are over 1500 years old and until now entirely organic.
Malekong's are some of the most productive in the
world; its rice the most expensive. … On arrival,
the two-km walk through the terraces to the central
village revealed that all was not well in Malekong.
The intricate maintenance of the biological and
physical systems was in disrepair and the planting
of rice was late. As I stopped to take in this subtle
collapse, across the valley I viewed bags of fertilizer
being poured into the paddy terraces. My heart sank.
I learned that the reason artificial fertilizers
are being used and the traditional composts not,
was that the energy to hump it across the terraces
made it young men's work. The muscular bodies this
produced is no longer a status. I was told there
is now a measurable decline in the quality of rice.
It becomes susceptible to disease and storage capability
has declined. Mudfish numbers have reduced, costs
increased, along with maintenance needs of the system."
"The collapse of their systems
is similar to those we face. The fate of agriculture
(in its broadest sense) is in the current and next
generation's hands. Who the farmers will be in future
is a local and international concern. In Malekong
the most able of the young work and/or study in
the provincial towns. Those with land have no young
people to farm it. Those who farm have little relationship
with the land."
These estimates come from John Beeby,
a former apprentice and current colleague of Ecology
Action, who said he got the information from a 1995
USDA article which he found on www.ethanolgec.org/corn_eth.htm:
“If you grew 1 bushel of
corn, you could produce roughly 209,000 BTU in the
form of ethanol. It would take 199,000 BTU to produce
that ethanol (farm machinery and fertilizers to
grow corn, drying the corn, hauling the corn to
an ethanol conversion plant, converting corn into
ethanol, and distributing ethanol. It does not include
secondary energy requirements like building the
farm machinery or ethanol conversion plants), so
there is a net gain of about 10,000 BTU.
"I played around with
this to get a sense of what it means. If we assume
an acre of land in Illinois produces 120 bu/ac,
then about 1,200, 000 BTU is produced per acre that
could be used for purposes other than growing more
ethanol. 1.2 million BTU is equivalent to about
10 gallons of gasoline. In 2002 the US had 445 million
acres in arable and permanent crops. If it were
all used to produce ethanol, that would produce
534 trillion BTU, which is only 1/180th the energy
the US used in 2003."
|