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Why Local is Best
Monty Don, Gardeners World magazine via Transition Culture
I might be accused of bias, but I tend to think that gardeners are the nicest and best people there are. Find someone who cares for their plot and you’ll find a decent human being. But the simple truth is that gardeners guzzle gas. We might be organic, love and care for all the wildlife, and recycle all our waste into perfect compost, but most of us still leave an ugly footprint in our wake. It’s not just about oil, but let’s start with that. Of course, there’s the petrol we use to fuel our lawn mowers, hedgecutters and so on. It may not amount to a great deal, but it’s the easiest to cut back on. There’s also the fuel we use scooting to and fro from garden centres, when in the past we took more cuttings, collected our own seeds or swapped divisions with our friends and neighbours within walking or cycling distance.
Then there are endless deliveries thanks to the internet, using a huge van to bring us a pair of gloves or a few packets of seeds. But even this is just the tip of the iceberg. All garden centres are supplied by a stream of lorries ferrying plants and materials around the motorway system from central warehouses and distributors. Most of the plants are produced using extra light and heat to keep the supply constant or even against the season. Many gardening products are flown in from overseas.
And if all that’s not enough, there are the plastics that we use in almost everything. All plastics, fertilisers and pesticides, polyesters, most packaging, even the ink you write your labels with – as well as the pen and the label itself of course – are made from oil. There are two reasons why this is not very clever. The first is that oil is running out, and the second is that its consumption is the key factor in climate change.
…We are a consumer society, eager to be seen to spend money on the newest bit of kit and jettisoning it once there’s a slight problem with it or a newer model comes out. We must relearn to value objects, not for their newness but for their age, utility, simplicity and ability to last. But gardeners instinctively know how to do this. Where else do you see a collection of trusty old tools, repaired endlessly, but in a garden shed?
We just have to have the confidence to take it a step further. One of the ways we can do this is by helping each other. Local is the key. ‘Local’ will vary from person to person, but I define local as where you can walk or bicycle there and back in a day. Parish may be an old-fashioned concept, but it’s very apt. We all know what it means. We need to develop local garden clubs and societies. This will make it easy to share plants, equipment and skills. One man’s waste is another’s need. All of us produces an excess of something, be it cabbages, grass cuttings or nicotiana seed.
If we don’t share this locally then it’s waste. But it can almost certainly be bartered locally for something that we genuinely need. We should set up local networks where you can advertise items that others would gratefully use, but which you’d otherwise throw away. As soon as a culture of care and longevity becomes established, people will hunt out good, reliable old tools and kit rather than be fobbed off with shiny new versions.
All of this means a radical rethink of how we live our lives. I must admit that I’m one of the worst culprits – I love gadgets and use machines a lot, and I’m always short of time, so tend to take the line of least resistance. No one needs to change more than I do. The garden centres, oil companies, horticultural industry and all those who depend on the current way of doing things to earn a living won’t thank me for any of this. But we really have no choice.
It’s already too late. We can’t undo the harm already done, but we have to radically change the way we all live, and make the future a sustainable, resilient place for our children and grandchildren to live in. And that begins at home – in the garden.
Monty Don is the presenter of BBC’s ‘Gardeners World’ programme, as well as a prolific writer on organic gardening, including the book ‘The Complete Gardener’. Recently he heard the talk [Rob Hopkins] gave at the Prince of Wales’ Food and Farming Summer School, and was quite moved by it.
(31 October 2007)
Study Reveals that Nitrogen Fertilizers Deplete Soil Organic Carbon
Debra Levey Larson, University of Illinois.
URBANA – The common practice of adding nitrogen fertilizer is believed to benefit the soil by building organic carbon, but four University of Illinois soil scientists dispute this view based on analyses of soil samples from the Morrow Plots that date back to before the current practice began.
… To understand why yields were lower for plots that received the most nitrogen, Khan and his colleagues analyzed samples for organic carbon in the soil to identify changes that have occurred since the onset of synthetic nitrogen fertilization in 1955. “What we learned is that after five decades of massive inputs of residue carbon ranging from 90 to 124 tons per acre, all of the residue carbon had disappeared, and there had been a net decrease in soil organic carbon that averaged 4.9 tons per acre. Regardless of the crop rotation, the decline became much greater with the higher nitrogen rate,” said Khan.
Mulvaney says that the findings have troubling implications for corn production due to the widespread use of yield-based nitrogen recommendations since the 1970s. “The one- size-fits-all approach was intended to minimize the risk of nitrogen deficiency as insurance for high yields. Unfortunately, the usual result is over-fertilization because of the assumption that the fertilizer supplies more nitrogen than the soil. The opposite is true in most cases, and especially for the highly productive soils of the Corn Belt that receive the highest nitrogen rates.” Added Khan, “The rates have been progressively inflated over the years by yield increases from agricultural advances such as better varieties and higher populations.”
Their findings for the Morrow Plots are confirmed in published literature from field studies that included initial soil organic carbon data. “In numerous publications spanning more than 100 years and a wide variety of cropping and tillage practices,” said Boast, “we found consistent evidence of an organic carbon decline for fertilized soils throughout the world and including much of the Corn Belt besides Illinois.”
“We don’t question the importance of nitrogen fertilizers for crop production,” said Ellsworth. “But, excessive application rates cut profits and are bad for soils and the environment. The loss of soil carbon has many adverse consequences for productivity, one of which is to decrease water storage. There are also adverse implications for air and water quality, since carbon dioxide will be released into the air, while excessive nitrogen contributes to the nitrate pollution problem.”
(29 October 2007)
Another problem with excessive nitrogen applications – it wastes energy (production of nitrogen is very energy intensive). -BA
Global warming will impact Oklahoma agriculture, experts say
D. E. Smoot, Muskogee Phoenix (Oklahoma)
An Oklahoma Climatological Survey study that found “overwhelming evidence” of a warming climate could prompt a change in state agricultural practices, experts say.
State climate experts released an official statement Monday, stating “the vast majority of scientists that study climate change believe that warming will continue for the foreseeable future.”
Longer growing seasons accompanied by shorter winters, experts say, could elevate the risks of crop infestations due to insects and disease. The chance of crop-damaging late freezes also could increase with a shift toward a warmer climate.
Al Sutherland, Mesonet Agricultural Program Coordinator for Oklahoma State University, said there have been no serious discussions among agricultural experts regarding climate change.
“Insects and diseases will certainly be something that will have to be monitored closely,” Sutherland said, citing soybean rust, a plant disease brought into the United States on the winds of Hurricane Katrina, as an example. “Soybean rust has established itself in green plant material in Florida and Louisiana. As things warm up and the freeze line moves north, we have to monitor its (the disease’s) migration.”
Sutherland said the northward migration of insects like fire ants and killer bees also can be attributed to a warming climate. The changes agricultural producers can expect to see “will be progressive, not overnight.”
(31 October 2007)
