True Left
Politics => Issues => Topic started by: guest5 on August 12, 2020, 08:22:00 pm
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Next Gen Farming Without Soil and 90% Less Water | GRATEFUL
Aeroponics grows fruits and vegetables faster, cheaper and better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ww2TP_tU7o
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Growing Up: How Vertical Farming Works
Shedding the restrictions of seasonal weather patterns, overcoming transportation challenges and enhancing yields, vertical farming could be the future of food production.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT4TWbPLrN8
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"Is Self-Sufficiency Possible?"
A call to return the everyday economy to the spirit of the Greek Agora, as well as using modern tech to simplify life. Namely, making it so that people can make what they need - tools, ovens, furniture, etc - on their own or at the most local level. Alfred Rosenberg talked about this in Myth of the XX Century in his own (and more directly NS) way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObFtEC-gm7g
Link to what the vid refers to here:
https://www.corbettreport.com/is-self-sufficiency-possible-questions-for-corbett-070/
Most interesting link:
https://www.opensourceecology.org/steam-camp-sept-2020/
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(https://i2.wp.com/marketbusinessnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Autarky.png?ssl=1)
(https://image.slidesharecdn.com/politicalinterference-191010064610/95/political-interference-10-638.jpg?cb=1570690001)
(https://d65im9osfb1r5.cloudfront.net/thesaurus.net/autarky_thumbnail.png)
(https://image.slidesharecdn.com/autarky-160328170555/95/autarky-proponents-opponents-examples-4-638.jpg?cb=1459184962)
Best proponent of autarky that ever existed since the creation of western civilization? NATIONAL SOCIALISM!
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World's Biggest Vertical Garden & Curious Plastic Bottle Village | Mystery Places | Free Documentary
Mystery Places: World's Biggest Vertical Garden, Curious Plastic Bottle Village & Journey to Chernobyl | Lost Places Documentary
Mystery Places - Dangerous Mining Work in Indones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fx9pmiwQgQM
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OLD CONTENT
The intellectuals in the food sovereignty movement can be overly-theoretical fops at times, but in practice food sovereignty is about plain and simple local autarky.
It is sometimes said that most hunger crises around the globe are due to logistics problems of transporting food, rather than inability to grow enough food. In reality, they are caused by the anti-autarkic practice of wasting a third of all food that is grown (thanks to consumerism), and the huge-scale machine-reliant Western methods of farming which make local-scale and subsistence farming increasingly economically infeasible in many nations (hence the need for food to be imported in the first place!).
This is recognized by the food sovereignty movement:
The Green Revolution is upheld by some proponents of food security as a success story in increasing crop yields and combating world hunger. However, many in the food sovereignty movement are critical of the green revolution and accuse those who advocate it as following too much of a Western culture technocratic program that is out of touch with the needs of majority of small producers and peasants.
Even in the US, with its huge transportation network and highly-productive mechanized farming industry (which is only economically possible due to government subsidies), countless communities do not have access to fresh and non-processed food at all. These are called food deserts. In simplified terms, they exist because it is not profitable for companies to ship produce into poor communities. As an additional problem, few cities would be able to feed themselves in the event of a large-scale disaster that disrupted the transportation network.
This raises the question, can bringing back subsistence farming or intensive small-scale farming within urbanized areas solve these issues? I think, increasingly, the Left is realizing the answer is not only yes, but that such a shift must occur in order for society to be able to abandon consumerism and the fuel-machine-reliant way of living.
Communities which have been the most strongly exploited and damaged by the industrialized consumer economy are at the forefront of reshaping local economies and food systems. To give one example, Detroit, which knows first-hand how destructive anti-autarkic economic practices can be, is a leader of food sovereignty in the US:
Mission
DFPC is committed to nurturing the development and maintenance of a sustainable, localized food system and a food-secure City of Detroit in which all of its residents are hunger-free, healthy, and benefit economically from the food system that impacts their lives.
Vision
We envision a city of Detroit with a healthy, vibrant, hunger-free populace that has easy access to fresh produce and other healthy food choices; a city in which the residents are educated about healthy food choices, and understand their relationship to the food system; a city in which urban agriculture, composting and other sustainable practices contribute to its economic vitality; and a city in which all of its residents, workers, guests and visitors are treated with respect, justice and dignity by those from whom they obtain food.
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Values
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Justice - To actively work for racial equity and healing. To challenge institutional and structural systems that perpetuate injustice of all kinds and do not take into account those most adversely affected by inequities in the food system.
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Inclusion - To actively develop leadership and seek participation from Detroiters, especially those who are most impacted by the lack of access, justice, and sovereignty in the local food system.
detroitfoodpc.org/who-we-are
Autarky facilitates folkism and builds resilient communities, which is perhaps one of the reasons why 'the powers that be' (who benefit from divided and distrusting communities) have been quick to dismiss it.
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This is an important issue for leftists (see next paragraph), but I would first like to clarify that this is not an exclusively leftist issue at least in theory, as I know many rightists who would support food sovereignty as part of their anti-globalism. Certainly a rightist community would benefit from food sovereignty just as much as a leftist community would under equivalent circumstance. In practice, however, food sovereignty may well be more pertinent to leftists at the present time:
few cities would be able to feed themselves in the event of a large-scale disaster that disrupted the transportation network.
Voting and other statistics show that in some countries (including the US) large concentrations of leftists live in urban habitats whereas rightists are more likely to live in rural habitats. In the event of civil war, this would put leftists at a critical disadvantage if urban habitats still depend on rural habitats for food (which rightists could cut off, thereby besieging us), at which point - unless we are receiving food aid from abroad - we would lose the war even if we possessed superior combat ability. This scenario has already been discussed in rightist blogs etc., which are hence confident of winning a hypothetical civil war against us. Urban food sovereignty would be an obvious precaution as part of our preparation for Left vs Right civil war.
On the other hand, is urban farming the kind of food sovereignty we should solely focus on, or should we also try to acquire rural farmland where large-scale food production already occurs? The difference is that the latter would take existing food production facilities away from rightist control at the same time as it supplies us with food, whereas the former would not reduce the rightist food supply, but merely increase our own. Therefore, while I doubtless support urban farming, I advise that we also look into strategic acquisitions of rural farmland.
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In the US, the Driftless Area of Wisconsin, and really, most of the upper Mississippi valley is left-leaning. These areas are some of the core of rural US farmland.
Here is a map showing results of the 2012 presidential election. Notice that in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, even the counties which voted 'red' voted it by a lower margin than states like Kansas and Nebraska. As a bonus, these areas actually have more fertile soil which requires less irrigation than the firmly red states in the same longitude as Kansas. I believe the blue areas in the South are also largely rural and suited for agriculture.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ab/2012nationwidecountymapshadedbypercentagewon.svg/1280px-2012nationwidecountymapshadedbypercentagewon.svg.png
Problematically, the average age for farmers in the US is quite old, and as they die off within the next decades, a lot of that land will go up for sale or lease. But land prices have risen so high that without significant funds, it will be difficult for anyone except large corporations to acquire it.
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From what I have read about urban farming, it is very difficult to make a living doing it. Food prices are so artificially low (both due to governments keeping food prices cheap to keep discontent low, and because of subsidies for mechanized farming--which, due to economies of scale, out-competes small non-mechanized farmers). However, if an urban or small-scale rural farmer is efficient and understands their local market they actually can make a living by farming useful food crops (as opposed to "specialty artisanal" yuppie **** like herbs).
Although there are a number of different authors, practitioners, and approaches on the topic of urban and small-scale farming, many people who are currently having success fall under the umbrella of "SPIN" (s-mall p-lot in-tensive) methods:
spinfarming.com/whatsSpin/
With this being said, farming is barely economically-feasible for rural farmers either. Apparently over half of US farmers have to work a second job to make ends meet (and remember, they are getting big subsidies from the government too!):
“Part-time farming is pervasive and it appears to me to be permanent, and I think there’ll even be more reliance on off-farm income,” says Paul Lasley, a professor of sociology at Iowa State University, who studies farm communities.
Lasley says 50 to 60 percent of farmers in the U.S. have some kind of second job – off the farm. Maybe they drive a school bus, or sell insulation like Bob Lilienthal.
www.marketplace.org/2015/03/04/business/why-more-half-farmers-have-second-job
Additionally, food is rotting in the fields because farm owners can't afford to pay laborers (and because non-immigrant Americans, accustomed to a life of luxury, seem to be too lazy to work the agricultural jobs which rightists claim are being "stolen" by immigrants).
More than half of U.S. farm workers are undocumented immigrants, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Yet, that pool of workers is shrinking.
A recent Pew Research report found that more Mexican immigrants are now leaving the U.S. than coming into the country, citing tougher enforcement of immigration laws and the slow economic recovery here in the U.S. (The report accounted for both documented and undocumented immigrants).
With fewer workers, farm owners say costs are rising and they often must leave unpicked fruit to rot in the fields. Many producers are even opting to leave the U.S. for countries with lower costs and fewer regulations, said Tom Nassif, CEO of Western Growers, a trade organization that represents farm owners both in the U.S. and abroad.
money.cnn.com/2016/09/29/news/economy/american-farm-workers/index.html
few cities would be able to feed themselves in the event of a large-scale disaster that disrupted the transportation network.
This source is not necessarily True Leftist, but this quote is a good reminder that it doesn't, and shouldn't, have to be this way:
As a reality check, I'd like to remind everyone that in the 1850's, prior to refrigerated transport, New York City supplied all its food for a population of over a million from within 7 miles of the borders of the city. (It wasn't worth the cost of horse feed and time to go further than 7 miles to export food into the city). No one would discount a system of community food security for one million people as non-commercial.
www.whale.to/a/blume.html
Another insight from the article:
The reason why monocultures are favored by corporations EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE THE LEAST EFFICIENT WAY OF PRODUCING FOOD in pounds of food per acre is that it can be done with the least amount of labor. To harvest the three sisters you would need a digital harvester—i.e. two hands—not a combine.
This is a major problem with the Western economic system in general--it prefers a resource-intensive approach rather than a labor-intensive approach. For example, when it comes to repairing broken electronics, it is often cheaper to throw away an entire TV and buy a new one than it is to take it to a repair shop so a single broken capacitor can be discovered and replaced. Pure insanity.
Consumerism would be much reduced if individuals actually had to take care of and repair a finite amount of goods, rather than simply throw away functional but "old" items and replace them with one of the millions of new goods already produced and sitting on store shelves. The "right to repair" movement is one group which tries to run contrary to the "throw away culture" prevalent today.
This actually has implications in farming. Machinery companies are trying to prevent farmers from repairing equipment that they own or lease. For true food sovereignty, a farmer must not merely have the "right" to repair their tools, but have the knowledge to do it as well.
repair.org/agriculture/
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OLD CONTENT contd.
I had a question relating to food: Before I found you guys; I was interested in Entomophagy as an alternative to conventional livestock; requiring less feed, water, and space. I know what you've said about veganism and sustainable evils, but until carnivorous human bloodlines can be phased out, if the First World transitioned to raising bugs instead of cows like much of the third world, it could stave off the food crisis and buy us some time for activism. Also it might open people's minds to other aspects of non-western cultures. So, should I continue to promote Entomophagy to those who would never embrace veganism, or should I forget it?
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I remember one of my old school teachers saying that one day there would be a cow shortage and we'd have to get our protein from crickets. Why can't we get our protein from nuts, seeds and legumes? I am aware of some people having allergies, but I'm not aware of anyone being allergic to ALL protein-rich plant-based foodstuffs.
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The obvious problem with entomophagy is that it results in a much larger number of victims of violence for the same quantity of food.
From your link:
Crickets, the most commonly farmed insects, have a smaller environmental footprint than beef. But when fed with poultry feed and kept alive with the help of an energy-intensive heating system, their environmental footprint may be on a par with chicken.
OK. An average chicken - one individual victim - weighs roughly 2kg. How many crickets - individual victims - is 2kg of crickets?
"So, should I continue to promote Entomophagy to those who would never embrace veganism, or should I forget it?"
I try to encourage those who would never embrace veganism to practice flexitarianism. Eating vegan one day per week reduces the problem by 1/7, so if seven people do that it is equal to one person eating fully vegan. (In rare cases, flexitarians also transition to full vegan as their bodies eventually realize that vegan diet is better for it.) I suggest flexitarianism would be a better approach than entomophagy for inferior people.
www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/what-flexitarian-diet
greenmonday.org/
Speaking of inferiority, time to post these maps again:
chartsbin.com/view/12730
chartsbin.com/view/1491
(https://trueleft.createaforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ffile%3A%2F%2F%2FF%3A%2Ftl%2FIssues%2FFood%2520sovereignty%2520-%2520autarky%2520in%2520action%2520True%2520Left_files%2Ffeed-vs-food.jpg&hash=996a2e7dad7707815e646175cc4342eadbf0a672)
Also:
www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-03/uoia-wpe032719.php
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Yeah, that definitely seems like an easier sell. Besides, if someone's one of those hard-line, 'veggies-are-for-virgins', 'fruits-are-for-fags' carnivores, they're probably beyond reasoning with anyway.
Hey, my home state's in the light blue. so is my birth state.
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"'veggies-are-for-virgins', 'fruits-are-for-fags'"
And this brings us back to the field of aesthetics again. The vegan community needs to embrace the vegan stereotype (actually racial type) of low sexual dimorphism, instead of trying to prove it wrong. I personally have never even understood how "virgin" is an insult! "Fag" is indeed an insult, implying slavishness:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fagging
but "virgin" implies dignity, idealism, romanticism or at the very least high standards. On even the most rudimentary level of consideration (we might have to start a new topic for the higher levels), how unlikely is it that the two individuals (out of an entire world with its ridiculously large population) meant for each other manage to actually meet each other? Are we supposed to believe that all non-virgins have found the one meant for them? Of course they haven't! I would guess only an extremely few pairs have genuinely been fortunate enough to do so. What is actually going on with the remainder is that (with the exception of **** victims) they have disgracefully settled for the sub-ideal, in the process betraying the one (originally) meant for them who might still be waiting for them (now in vain).
This was implicitly understood in late 20th century pop culture:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slasher_film#Common_tropes
The final girl trope is discussed in film studies as being a young woman (occasionally a young man) left alone to face the killer's advances in the movie's end.[7] Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), the heroine in Halloween, is an example of a typical final girl.[8] Final girls are often, like Laurie Strode, virgins among sexually active teens.[10]
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"This is a major problem with the Western economic system in general--it prefers a resource-intensive approach rather than a labor-intensive approach."
Here is a good example of the alternative approach:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kx3cfoPjyR4
Of course I utterly condemn ultimately selling the ducks to be slaughtered, but this is still way better than using chemicals on the rice and raising the ducks in factory conditions; you can see how much the ducks enjoy farming! (Back in the Golden Age I am sure the ducks were allowed to stay on the Neolithic subsistence farm their whole lives.)
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Related:
psmag.com/news/the-usda-gives-fewer-loans-to-women-and-minority-farmers-a-government-watchdog-finds
It's been more than a decade since a group of African-American, Latinx, indigenous, and women farmers first sued the United States Department of Agriculture for its discriminatory lending practices in several class action lawsuits.
For years, the department that provides financial support to farmers denied loans to women and people of color at higher rates than their white male counterparts. This discrimination helped ensure that the most profitable producers would be white and male, and nearly drove African-American farmers off their land: Between 1910 and 2007, black farmers lost 80 percent of their farmland, in part because they lacked access to loans or insurance.
According to a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, very little has changed. Congress' non-partisan investigative agency found that women and minorities—who already comprise a disproportionately small share of U.S. farmers—have a harder time obtaining loans and credit from private lenders and banks regulated by the USDA, and from the department itself. Often, these loans make the difference in whether a farmer can afford to keep an operation running, or whether beginning farmers—often recent immigrants—can break into the business.
John Boyd, a Virginia farmer and the founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association, says he was denied a farm operating loan this year for the first time in 17 years, meaning he'll now have trouble farming his 700 acres of grain. "It's tough—it's hard," he says. "Right now I'm farming off credit cards."
Boyd is one of many black farmers who have had this experience, and now there's the data to prove it: From 2015 to 2017, farmers defined by the USDA as "socially disadvantaged"—Native Americans and Alaska Natives, Asian Americans, African Americans, Pacific Islanders, Latinxs, and women—represented 17 percent of primary producers, but only 8 percent of total outstanding farm debt.
Although the USDA provides only a small portion of direct payments, it also oversees loans from commercial banks, which have historically courted white men. "The top 10 percent of large-scale farmers, corporate farmers, they're very clearly white men—they aren't women, they aren't people of color," Boyd says. "That's who's been getting the service. That's who's been getting the loans."
For Boyd, whose organization represents more than 109,000 farmers in 42 states, these findings validate what he's known for decades. "It's new information for a lot of people who have been denying it for so long, especially the top 10 banks," he says.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLf3NB2SRA4
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The best solution to rising water levels (and looks good too!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5MKlSoubOY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CONfhrASy44
Trivia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Bengal#Etymology
Other accounts speculate that the name is derived from Venga (Bôngo), which came from the Austric word "Bonga" meaning the Sun-god.
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OLD CONTENT contd.
www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/young-asian-americans-turn-farming-means-cultural-reclamation-n1072036
De Leña is one of several first-generation Asian American farmers who left their more traditional career paths for full-time farming on the West Coast. De Leña, who once worked at environmental justice nonprofits, found new meaning in growing food as a means of cultural reclamation.
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The United States Census of Agriculture shows that Asian Americans made up less than 1 percent of the farming population in the United States in 2017. More than 95 percent of the full-time operators in the U.S. are white. These numbers stand in contrast to the 19th and early 20th century, when Asian American farmers were ubiquitous. The drastic demographic shift started with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and later grew in 1913, when the California Alien Land Law prohibited Asian Americans from owning land. Between 1920 and 1930 alone, Japanese-owned farmland dropped by more than 40 percent.
Mai Nguyen, a first-generation Vietnamese American farmer with the National Young Farmers Coalition, said structural racism and discrimination against Asian American farmers and other farmers of color persist today.
“There's high segregation based on race and ethnicity in our rural spaces,” Nguyen said. “While there are large populations of Asian American farmers, they're segregated in a way that they're not as visible as our white counterparts.” Nguyen said this lack of visibility harms older Asian American farmers who are denied access to markets, land and resources as a result.
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Nguyen said that oftentimes, young farmers of color are pushed into “marginal land,” or smaller and more affordable tracts of land, since prime farmland is typically owned by white farmers with several generations of resources and access to capital.
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Alex Jones says he'll eat his neighbors.... Anyone here surprised? Yea, didn't think so....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRRyXYwVQGQ
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A flash of sanity:
www.yahoo.com/news/italy-offer-permits-illegal-migrants-125838378.html
ROME, May 5 (Reuters) - Italy plans to give work permits to thousands of irregular migrants to help farms deal with the Covid-19 epidemic that has cut the flow of cheap labour from abroad, a political source said on Tuesday.
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Agriculture lobbies have warned Italy will have to throw away huge amounts of fruit and vegetables because there is nobody to pick them, worsening the effects of a shutdown costing the food sector 7 billion euros ($7.58 billion).
The influx of seasonal workers to help on farms has been halted by the block on travel into Italy since its outbreak came to light in February. It has so far killed more than 29,000 people.
Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese is ready to offer temporary permits to some 200,000 irregular migrants currently jobless or living in the shadow economy, to work in agriculture, the ministry source told Reuters.
The move is also intended to help in the fight against the coronavirus. "If someone falls ill we need to test them and it's difficult to do this if we don't even know their name," the source said.
What our enemies think:
"They are working on a huge legalization of irregular migrants ... madness, we will try to stop them in any way," League leader and former Interior Minister Matteo Salvini wrote on Twitter.
Salvini probably prefers Jones' approach?
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"Eat your leftist ass"
This is why it is important for leftists to use firearms ASAP
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Korean Natural Farming
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_natural_farming (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_natural_farming)- Use the nutrients contained within the seeds
- Use indigenous microorganisms (IMO's)
- Maximize inborn potential with fewer inputs
- Avoid commercial fertilizers
- Avoid tilling
- No use of livestock waste
In Hawaii, crop productivity increased 2-fold with the use of KNF, while reducing water use by 30% and eliminating the use of pesticides proved to be a superior cover crop on degraded Hawaii fields.
More about this style of farming in Hawaii:
https://naturalfarminghawaii.net/
https://hawaiianparadisecoop.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/the-basics-of-korean-natural-farming-methods/
In South Korea, Natural Farming has been embraced by the South Korean government after one county experimented and every farmer in the county practiced it for a year. These rice farmers not only had bigger yields than usual, but saved money on their inputs and sold their rice for a premium. Where they practice Natural Farming it has had the added benefit of cleaning up the waterways, rivers and even coastal waters.https://web.archive.org/web/20140628024150/http://www.kalapanaorganics.com%3a80/natural-farming-with-indigenous-microorganisms/natural-farming/ (https://web.archive.org/web/20140628024150/http://www.kalapanaorganics.com%3a80/natural-farming-with-indigenous-microorganisms/natural-farming/)
The Basics of Korean Natural Farming (KNP)https://hawaiianparadisecoop.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/the-basics-of-korean-natural-farming-methods/ (https://hawaiianparadisecoop.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/the-basics-of-korean-natural-farming-methods/)
(https://naturalfarminghawaii.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/coresolutions-scaled.jpg)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfchPwv6fbo
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At least Biden does positive things once in a while:
https://www.agriculture.com/news/business/biden-to-sign-bill-with-4-billion-in-debt-relief-for-minority-farmers
President Biden said he would sign the $1.9 trillion coronavirus bill on Friday at the White House. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the package, which includes $16 billion in public nutrition and agricultural aid, “provides historic debt relief to Black, Indigenous, Hispanic, and other farmers of color who for generations have struggled to fully succeed due to systemic discrimination and a cycle of debt. We cannot ignore the pain and suffering that this pandemic has wrought in communities of color.”
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House Agriculture Committee chairman David Scott said the aid was justified because of the oppression Black farmers had endured. “It is important for you to know that our Black farmers were not included in the other pieces,” he said, referring to pandemic relief bills that sent $23 billion to farmers last year, almost exclusively to whites. “So we got them $4 billion just to help them.”
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In 1920, roughly one in every six farmers was Black. Today, less than 2% of U.S. farms have Black operators. Black farms are one-fourth of the size of the average U.S. farm, with smaller sales, and they are located mostly in the South. In 2007, the USDA Census of Agriculture said that a smaller portion of Black farmers than white farmers received federal farm payments and that the amount they received was half the U.S. average.
Advocates say the debt relief program will begin to rectify decades of USDA discrimination against Black farmers.
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/bill-gates-biggest-private-owner-124506756.html
In total, Gates owns approximately 242,000 acres of farmland with assets totaling more than $690m. To put that into perspective, that’s nearly the size of Hong Kong and twice the acreage of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, where I’m an enrolled member. A white man owns more farmland than my entire Native nation!
The United States is defined by the excesses of its ruling class. But why do a handful of people own so much land?
Land is power, land is wealth, and, more importantly, land is about race and class. The relationship to land – who owns it, who works it and who cares for it – reflects obscene levels of inequality and legacies of colonialism and white supremacy in the United States, and also the world. Wealth accumulation always goes hand-in-hand with exploitation and dispossession. In this country, enslaved Black labor first built US wealth atop stolen Native land. The 1862 Homestead Act opened up 270m acres of Indigenous territory – which amounts to 10% of US land – for white settlement. Black, Mexican, Asian, and Native people, of course, were categorically excluded from the benefits of a federal program that subsidized and protected generations of white wealth.
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The Nation’s Corn Belt Has Lost a Third of Its Topsoil
Researchers used satellite imaging and surface soil color to find out how much of the nutrient-rich earth has eroded away
Seth Watkins has been farming his family’s land in southern Iowa for decades, growing pasture for his cows as well as corn and other row crops. His great-grandfather founded the farm in 1848. “He came in with one of John Deere’s steel plows and pierced the prairie,” Watkins recounted. With its rolling hills and neat lines of corn stretching to the horizon, broken by clumps of trees, it’s a picturesque scene.
But centuries of farming those hills have taken their toll on the soil. Now, farmers like Watkins are facing widespread soil degradation that can lower their crop yields and incomes. “In 150 years or so, we’ve lost over half of that rich topsoil—if not all in some places.”
Crops hunger for the carbon-packed composition of rich topsoil. They need the nutrients and water that it stores, unlike the compacted, infertile soils that decades of conventional farming create.
The baseline for soil in Iowa is visible on land owned by Jon Judson, a sustainable farmer and conservation advocate. His farm hosts a rare plot of original prairie grasses and wildflowers. Under the prairie, the soil is thick and dark, with feet of organic matter built up and plenty of moisture. The next field over is a recovering conventional field like Watkins’ farm, and the effect of years of conventional practices is obvious. The soil is pale and compacted, with only a few inches of organic carbon, much less soil moisture, and a lot more clay.
Scientists and farmers know that agricultural soil erosion has been a problem for decades, but quantifying soil loss from a hundred years of farming and across multiple states has proven difficult. Now a study led by geomorphologist Evan Thaler and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in February attempts to answer the elusive question of how much topsoil has been eroded in the Corn Belt, which stretches roughly from Ohio to Nebraska and produces 75 percent of the nation’s corn. The study estimated that about 35 percent of the region has lost its topsoil completely, leaving carbon-poor lower soil layers to do the work of supporting crops. Having thick, healthy topsoil means plants can grow faster and healthier, increasing crop yields and keeping the field’s ecosystem running smoothly. Topsoil loss creates environmental problems, such as when eroded, nutrient-laden dirt degrades streams and rivers, and is estimated to cost the Midwest’s agricultural industry almost $3 billion annually.
“I think it’s probably an underestimate,” says Thaler, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst. “There are areas where there’s probably a centimeter of topsoil left.”
Entire article: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/scientists-say-nations-corn-belt-has-lost-third-its-topsoil-180977485/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
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https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-05-22/Yuan-Longping-the-man-who-fed-the-Chinese-people-10tyyP9ZnMY/index.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2-bsHlnW-Y
Salute and tribute to the man whose life-long dream was to feed the world so there would be no more hunger - Yuan Longping
[/Yuan's biggest dream in life was to develop more hybrid rice varieties and use it to address famine that keeps happening in many parts of the world. Over the past 40 years, Yuan and his team continuously held seminars and courses which taught his methodologies to some 14,000 students from nearly 80 countries. The agronomist, when in his old age, still traveled to as far as Africa to help solve technical failures and boost harvests.
So far, the hybrid varieties he developed have been grown extensively in over 40 countries, including the U.S., Brazil, India, Vietnam, the Philippines, Madagascar among others.quote]
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High-tech vertical farming:
https://youtu.be/AGcYApKfHuY
Transporting water to high elevations would require additional energy than regular farming, but I assume the tradeoff would be greater crop yield per unit land and thus a net energy gain. Of course, rainwater harvesting could eliminate this problem altogether.
Also, it looks like the plants are being grown with U.V. lights, which require electricity and hence energy to power. Solar powered electricity could reduce the dependency on fossil fuels, but the best solution would be using the sunlight itself for biochemical photosynthesis.
Finally, while the technology involved in crop maintenance is impressive, it also requires electricity, and hence energy, to run. The energy expenditure of maintaining the technology must be calculated to determine whether it is energy efficient compared to maintaining the crops with manual labor.
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Grow Weeds with Vegetables for Better Garden Soil Health
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nPILj5Nc10&list=TLPQMjIwNzIwMjEIpMDs9cGqiA&index=3
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/farmers-ease-workers-path-citizenship-050100486.html
Dec. 13—California farmers frustrated with congressional inaction on farmworker immigration and guest-worker reform have settled on another way to nudge their workforce toward U.S. citizenship.
A partnership announced last week between the California Farm Bureau and the Washington, D.C.-based National Immigration Forum gives ag employees access to an online portal guiding them through the naturalization process. The platform also helps with matters like protecting family members facing deportation.
The agreement reflects the worsening shortage of field workers as much as it does industry's cultivation of laborers fueling the Central Valley's economy, with restricted or no legal status.
"Offering farm employees who are eligible for U.S. citizenship a low-cost means to access citizenship puts them on a path to fully share in the American bounty they work every day to create," the president of the bureau, Jamie Johansson, said in a news release Monday.
For years the farm bureau has sided with immigrant rights organizations in promoting a path toward citizenship for farmworkers. The industry also advocates wider access to guest workers.
Farmworker immigration and visa reforms supported by the bureau and passed by the House earlier this year have stalled in the Senate. For the bureau, the partnership represents progress through another channel.
Under the new contract with the National Immigration Forum, bureau members will be able to refer their employees, free of charge, to an online service offering application preparation help, citizenship eligibility assessments and other legal reviews. The service also comes with case management services and noncitizen-related immigration inquiries such as deportation defense work.
NIF said in the news release its mission is to help immigrants eligible for access to U.S. citizenship "and we are grateful to the California Farm Bureau for giving us access to nearly 31,000 farm bureau members whose employees can benefit from the services we offer."
The organization also advocates for pro-immigration policies at the federal level, which is how it started working with the farm bureau years ago, said Bryan Little, the farm bureau's director of employment policy.
Little interprets the partnership as the state's farmers investing in their employees. It deepens the attachment some workers may feel for their employers, he said, and it may help with retention of top talent including supervisors.
"They're going to be key employees in that business so why wouldn't you want to invest (in them)?" Little asked. He emphasized information gathered by the portal will be kept confidential, inaccessible to the bureau or the NIF.
For years Kern County growers have complained of a worker shortage. The state's ag labor force has been stagnant for 15 years and averages 40 years of age, Little estimated, adding, "There are practically no people coming to the United States now to work in agriculture."
In its news release about the new partnership, the farm bureau reiterated its support for the Farm Workforce Modernization Act of 2021. The measure, passed by the House March 18 with bipartisan support, proposes to reform the ag guest worker program and provide a path to legal status for farm employees.
The Kern County Farm Bureau did not respond to a request for comment on the state farm bureau's partnership with the NIF.
The president of the California Fresh Fruit Association trade group, Ian LeMay, called the NIF's portal a "fantastic service" that increases certainty for people who can't afford a lawyer or advocate through the lengthy application process.
It doesn't lessen the need for changes to federal guest worker programs, LeMay said, and comprehensive immigration reform is still needed.
"It's an additional service to help our employees who might be in somewhat of a limbo state to have more confidence in terms of their status," he said.
A spokeswoman for the United Farm Workers Foundation declined to address the farm bureau's partnership with the NIF. She instead invited the farm bureau to add its support to the federal Build Back Better bill, which includes measures that would protect farmworkers and other immigrants from deportation.
But rightists prefer food to be expensive.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78W04nSpxSE
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Why Crop Rotation is a Waste of Time
Timestamps:
0:43 - Time requirements of growing food and excuses
1:46 - Crop rotation purpose and refresh of what it is
3:05 - Gardening techniques have progressed over the years
3:53 - Why crop rotation is needed
5:01 - The important link between succession planting and rotation
6:25 - Observe and interact, inspired by nature
8:17 - Lack of flexibility of rotating
8:41 - My version of crop rotation
9:34 - How I deal with a plant disease
10:44 - Garden examples 1
11:58 - Garden examples 2
12:49 - Weather's impact on yearly yields
13:14 - Importance of creativity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSd-G_o3NGI
"Low dig" and "no dig" methods. Fascinating stuff!
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/farmers-pushing-immigration-reform-counter-110000322.html
Farmers push for immigration reform to counter labor shortages and rising food prices
Farmers across the U.S. are joining a push for national immigration reform that they say could ease labor shortages and lower food prices as surging production costs continue to rock the agriculture industry.
The farm operators say the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, already passed by the House and pending in the Senate, will provide them with a stable reliable workforce by creating a path to citizenship for undocumented agricultural workers and reforming the seasonal farmworker visa program, among other things.
...
Stephanie Mickelsen owns a large-scale potato farming operation in Idaho and said her farm began using the H-2A program for farmworkers, which has “made a huge difference” but because the visa only allows temporary authorization for nine months at a time, finding labor continues to be a problem.
“We have about 60 full-time people that work on the farm all year long, but that is not enough when you hit harvest to be able to get that crop out of the ground, so we need an additional 100 to 150 employees on the farm side, that’s not including the processing and packing facilities,”
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As the country experiences the highest 12-month increase in food prices since May 1979, according to the consumer price index, farmers say this is in part because of labor problems.
A 2022 Texas A&M University study commissioned by the American Business Coalition, a bipartisan group of 1,200 business leaders who advocate for immigration reform, found that having more migrant and H-2A workers were related to lower inflation, higher average wages and lower unemployment. The study also found that “more denied petitions for naturalizations are associated with larger consumer prices and higher inflation.”
...
“It is very important to really pass something because labor shortages in agriculture are getting worse every year,” he said. “It’s very hard to know what exactly is going to happen but at least in terms of the number of workers you have every year it would eliminate some of the most pressing issues like the fact that workers can stay here all year-round so that’s kind of helpful.”
But rightists prefer food to be expensive.
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Returning the ‘Three Sisters’—Corn, Beans and Squash—to Native American Farms Nourishes People, Land and Cultures
For centuries Native Americans intercropped corn, beans and squash because the plants thrived together. A new initiative is measuring health and social benefits from reuniting the “three sisters.”
(https://pocket-image-cache.com/direct?resize=w2000&url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.theconversation.com%2Ffiles%2F370181%2Foriginal%2Ffile-20201118-15-102ilmb.jpg%3Fixlib%3Drb-1.1.0%26rect%3D45%252C0%252C5120%252C3372%26q%3D20%26auto%3Dformat%26w%3D320%26fit%3Dclip%26dpr%3D2%26usm%3D12%26cs%3Dstrip)
Historians know that turkey and corn were part of the first Thanksgiving, when Wampanoag peoples shared a harvest meal with the pilgrims of Plymouth plantation in Massachusetts. And traditional Native American farming practices tell us that squash and beans likely were part of that 1621 dinner too.
For centuries before Europeans reached North America, many Native Americans grew these foods together in one plot, along with the less familiar sunflower. They called the plants sisters to reflect how they thrived when they were cultivated together.
Today three-quarters of Native Americans live off of reservations, mainly in urban areas. And nationwide, many Native American communities lack access to healthy food. As a scholar of Indigenous studies focusing on Native relationships with the land, I began to wonder why Native farming practices had declined and what benefits could emerge from bringing them back.
Side note:
Wild—but not domestic—turkey was indeed plentiful in the region and a common food source for both English settlers and Native Americans. But it is just as likely that the fowling party returned with other birds we know the colonists regularly consumed, such as ducks, geese and swans.
https://www.history.com/topics/thanksgiving/first-thanksgiving-meal
Back to the original article:
To answer these questions, I am working with agronomist Marshall McDaniel, horticulturalist Ajay Nair, nutritionist Donna Winham and Native gardening projects in Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Our research project, “Reuniting the Three Sisters,” explores what it means to be a responsible caretaker of the land from the perspective of peoples who have been balancing agricultural production with sustainability for hundreds of years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSwGxJe4bVs
Abundant Harvests
Historically, Native people throughout the Americas bred indigenous plant varieties specific to the growing conditions of their homelands. They selected seeds for many different traits, such as flavor, texture and color.
Native growers knew that planting corn, beans, squash and sunflowers together produced mutual benefits. Corn stalks created a trellis for beans to climb, and beans’ twining vines secured the corn in high winds. They also certainly observed that corn and bean plants growing together tended to be healthier than when raised separately. Today we know the reason: Bacteria living on bean plant roots pull nitrogen – an essential plant nutrient – from the air and convert it to a form that both beans and corn can use.
Squash plants contributed by shading the ground with their broad leaves, preventing weeds from growing and retaining water in the soil. Heritage squash varieties also had spines that discouraged deer and raccoons from visiting the garden for a snack. And sunflowers planted around the edges of the garden created a natural fence, protecting other plants from wind and animals and attracting pollinators.
Interplanting these agricultural sisters produced bountiful harvests that sustained large Native communities and spurred fruitful trade economies. The first Europeans who reached the Americas were shocked at the abundant food crops they found. My research is exploring how, 200 years ago, Native American agriculturalists around the Great Lakes and along the Missouri and Red rivers fed fur traders with their diverse vegetable products.
Displaced From the Land
As Euro-Americans settled permanently on the most fertile North American lands and acquired seeds that Native growers had carefully bred, they imposed policies that made Native farming practices impossible. In 1830 President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, which made it official U.S. policy to force Native peoples from their home locations, pushing them onto subpar lands.
On reservations, U.S. government officials discouraged Native women from cultivating anything larger than small garden plots and pressured Native men to practice Euro-American style monoculture. Allotment policies assigned small plots to nuclear families, further limiting Native Americans’ access to land and preventing them from using communal farming practices.
Native children were forced to attend boarding schools, where they had no opportunity to learn Native agriculture techniques or preservation and preparation of Indigenous foods. Instead they were forced to eat Western foods, turning their palates away from their traditional preferences. Taken together, these policies almost entirely eradicated three sisters agriculture from Native communities in the Midwest by the 1930s.
Entire article: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/returning-the-three-sisters-corn-beans-and-squash-to-native-american-farms-nourishes-people-land-and?utm_source=pocket-newtab
BONUS:
Three Sisters • Native American Flute Song • Jonny Lipford
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--Rjjny6H1U
Three Sisters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3gnxcpeCj8
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How to Scythe + STOP Weeding, Watering and Fertilizing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVn1kiZnldQ
The company this guy bought is scythe from has been in business for 500 years...
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A rare flash of sanity from Greece:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/19/greece-to-legalise-papers-for-thousands-of-migrants-to-counter-labour-shortage
Thousands of migrants are to have their papers legalised in Greece as part of efforts to curb an acute labour shortage that is hitting key sectors of an otherwise resurgent economy.
In a move that has thrown his centre-right party into turmoil, the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, pushed through legislation on Tuesday regularising the status of about 30,000 unregistered labourers.
Critics of the bill, which was passed in a parliamentary vote with the endorsement of the leftwing opposition, have described it as dangerous. Mitsotakis’s predecessor, Antonis Samaras, who voted against the law, had argued it risked turning Greece into “a beacon of attraction for illegal migrants”.
Defending the one-off measure, the country’s migration and asylum minister, Dimitris Kairidis, told the Guardian that the legislation would help with not only labour shortages but also social cohesion.
30000 is a tiny number (the population of Greece is >10 million), but it is better than none. Why should it be a one-off measure? The workers will eventually move to other EU countries, and Greece will need new workers. It should be regular policy.
Agricultural associations, which depend on immigrants to gather fruit and vegetables, have increasingly complained of their produce rotting, and MPs in rural areas have exhorted Mitsotakis to take action. Fears for this year’s olive harvest have similarly grown, with farmers whose yields have fallen because of the climate crisis voicing alarm over the prospect of reduced pickings on account of the labour shortages.
Under the bill, migrants will be able to legalise their status more easily by acquiring residence permits in three years rather than seven if they can prove they are employed. Greek government officials have been quick to emphasise that by integrating “invisible people”, the measure will help boost public revenue with employment taxes and contributions. Many of the jobs that people from abroad are willing to do are ones that unemployed Greeks will not touch, unions say.
At a time when anti-immigrant sentiment is fuelling far-right support across Europe, the law has been welcomed, with the left seeing it as overdue, if also opportune.
“Simply because it has proven incapable of confronting the big problem of labour shortages, the government has been forced to adopt [our] proposal and has moved ahead with the rapid legalisation of work and residence permits for undocumented migrants,” said Theodora Tzakri, who heads the main opposition party Syriza’s parliamentary group.
Greece still deserves to be made Ottoman again, though:
On Europe’s south-eastern frontline, Greece has long been a gateway to the EU, and the centre-right administration has faced criticism for enforcing self-declared “tough but fair” migration policies that have sought to keep asylum seekers at bay through illegal “pushbacks” at land and sea borders, according to human rights groups.
With ruling party MPs told they would face discipline if they failed to back the bill on Tuesday, cabinet ministers were at pains to stress that the measure in no way presaged a relaxation of the government’s migration management agenda.
See also:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/enemies/hungary-v4/