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The Real Dirt on Dirt (PDF)
Dana Visalli, Sustinere (Partnership for a Sustainable Methow – Washington State)
From a plant’s perspective, all the good things in life are temporary. Water falls from the sky only to quickly percolate away through the soil and wash to the sea. The all-important element nitrogen is dragged out of the atmosphere by nitrogen-fixing bacteria, only to become volatile ammonia and evaporate back to the sky. Phosphorus is available only as rock-dust-ground-up mountains-delivered to the soil at geologic speed. Even carbon, the basic building block of plant tissue, escapes to the atmosphere as the gas carbon dioxide when plants decompose. What’s a plant to do?
The only way to create a continually moist, nutrient-rich soil ecosystem is to slow down the escape of these critical nutrients and water from the soil. Nature has chipped away at this challenge for 450 million years-the approximate amount of time that life has existed on land-and has come up with a “living soil” that continually cycles the important ingredients of life in place, rather than letting them escape. The home gardener can emulate nature and create vibrant soil, even here amid the rocky regolith of the Methow Valley.
Take nitrogen for example. This element is critical to plant growth. For better and for worse most of the world’s supply of this element is in the atmosphere, which is 78% nitrogen. It exists there as N2, two atoms that are chemically so tightly bound together that they are useless to plants. Eons ago, when bacteria were the only life on the planet, certain bacterial species developed a method of splitting atmospheric nitrogen apart in order to incorporate it into their own chemistry. We know of these today as the nitrogen-fixing bacteria that live on the roots of the Legume Family (which includes peas, beans and alfalfa) and a few other plant genera (in our area, alder, bitterbrush, Sheperdia and Ceanothus are all hosts to nitrogen-fixing bacteria). There are also free-living nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the soil.
(Spring 2008)
Contributor Dana Visalli writes:
We are going to want to grow more of our own food. Healthy, living soil is a critical element of success in the garden. Other dimensions (composting, seed saving, humanure) are addressed in articles at www.sustainablemethow.org; see Humus, Humility and Humanure at EnergyBulletin. Dana Visalli is a biologist.
BA:
Dana’s article is only one of several in the Spring issue of “Sustinere”. Others include:
Our Experiment with Eating Locally
In Defense of the Clothes-line
Fermenataion
Adapting to Peak Oil: Portlan Leads the Way
Local Good, Skills and Services
Post Harvest Technology – yet another reason there are so many people
Alice Friedemann, Culture Change
Peter Golob, et. al. 2002.
Crop Post-Harvest: Science and Technology. Volume 1: Principles and Practice.
Volume 2: Durables.
Volume 3: Perishables.
Blackwell Science.
Book Review and Commentary
It is amazing farmers can grow anything — crops can be destroyed by drought, wildfire, flood, insects, birds, snails, rodents, fungi, bacteria, viruses, hail, frost, lack of vital nutrients, too much pesticide, and so on.
But that’s only half the story — once a crop has successfully been harvested, how do you keep it from being destroyed by all of the above plus spoilage and silo explosions? Civilization exists because our ancestors figured this out.
Before fossil fuels initiated the Industrial Revolution, 90% of the population was rural, unlike now, where over 80% of the population in the United States is urban. People preserved perishable food like meat, vegetables, and fruit by drying or with preservatives such as salt and alcohol.
… Post harvest technology preserves food after harvest and before delivery. Although transportation isn’t part of the discussion, it’s important to mention that the main reason famines stopped was the invention of the railroad. Areas with good crops could send their surplus to regions where crops had failed.
The length of time and amount of durables that can be stored with fossil-fuel built and controlled food storage technology is amazing. This technology has also made food safer to eat. Fossil fuels allow produce just harvested from the field to be cooled immediately, and kept cool throughout the supply chain, which makes it possible for us to enjoy fresh food year round — often produce that’s come thousands of miles before reaching our plates.
Golob et al’s Crop Post-Harvest volumes 1-3 are heavy textbooks that provide an in-depth look at the continuing war to get perishables to market and to preserve durables. Both the old methods, still used in developing countries, and the amazing energy-intensive modern technology we’ve developed, are explained in great detail.
… Long distance fresh produce will be the first to vanish from grocery store shelves as energy declines, but as Marion Nestle points out in What to Eat, the longer it takes food to reach market, the more nutrition is lost, so locally produced produce will be far more healthful.
So research into durable post-harvest storage is the most important to be funded.
… I hope, but doubt, there is funding for engineers and scientists to figure out the best ways to adapt existing infrastructure each step downward on the energy curve.
Alice Friedemann knew about the energy crisis for decades because her geologist grandfather, Francis Pettijohn, was a friend of M. King Hubbert. Alice has been part of the peak oil community since discussions began on energyresources and attended many ASPO conferences. She’s spoken at U. C. Berkeley on biofuels and published at culturechange, energybulletin, energypulse, theoildrum etc. She has a B.S. in Biology and Chemistry/Physics minor from the University of Illinois, and is a member of the Northern California Science Writers Association. She was a senior-level systems architect and engineer for 25 years in health care, banking, and transportation. Her website is www.energyskeptic.com
(23 April 2008)
Global Hops Shortage / Biodynamics and Microorganisms (audio)
Deconstructing Dinner via Global Public Media
The beer industry is always a fascinating one to take a look at, as beer was one of the first industrialized food and beverage products. The focus for the first segment of this episode will be on the recent global shortage of hops – the key flavouring component of most beers. At the March 2008 Certified Organic Associations of BC conference, Host Jon Steinman sat down with brewer and farmer Rebecca Kneen of Sorrento, BC’s, Crannóg Ales. Crannóg is Canada’s only Certified Organic farmhouse microbrewery and growing on the farm are some of the hops that end up in their beers. In 2002, Kneen published a manual on small-scale organic hop growing and she is extremely excited at the attention the manual has received since the hops shortage hit home.
We also listen in on a workshop hosted at the COABC conference by Biodynamic farmer and egg producer Karl Hann. Biodynamic agriculture is a method of organic farming that treats the farm as a unified and individual organism, emphasizing balancing the holistic development and interrelationship of the soil, plants and animals as a closed, self-nourishing system. Hann’s presentation was titled “The Good, The Bad and The Balance”. He explored the importance of microorganisms in the soil and uses the biodynamic farming philosophy to convincingly illustrate how disruptive and destructive most dominant farming practices are today.
(17 April 2008)
Biographies of speakers at original.
