ChangeUnderground

This week we look at urban agriculture, converting lawns to gardens and we delve further into John Seymour's The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency

Dealing with thistles, changes of attitude, soil ethic!

Links Polyface Farm, Soil Carbon, Joel Salatin http://www.worldorganicnews.com/35601/the-call-of-the-farm-the-polyfaces-vision-for-a-better-world-millennial-mutt/   Polyfaces Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/Polyfaces/?ref=page_internal   Joel Salatin http://www.polyfacefarms.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Salatin   Soil carbon from 2007 http://www.abc.net.au/science/features/soilcarbon/ **** This is the World Organic News podcast catch up episode. Jon Moore reporting! Well at long last the voice is back, sort of and I have some thoughts to catch up on and some housekeeping too. Housekeeping first. I heartfelt thanks to Angry Genghis for the review on iTunes. Really, thank you so much. I might point out though that I'm not in New Zealand but in Australia. The wonder of the interwebs is the dissolution of borders and the possibility of direct conversations across the globe. If anyone is doing interesting things out there and would like to be interviewed, drop me a line at: podcast@worldorganicnews.com. Now let's turn to the news! I’ve had time to think these past few weeks and there has been one stand out idea stuck in my mind the few weeks. Soil carbon! The post from millennial mutt entitled: The Call of the Farm: The Polyfaces Vision for a Better World explains how we can reverse the excess carbon dioxide accumulated in the atmosphere by returning it to the soil. This has the added benefit of increasing the fertility of the soil. Why, I hear you ask, is there a need to place carbon in the soil? More correctly, back in the soil? Well, I’m sooooo glad you asked. When the Second World War ended, there was an industry designed to pull nitrogen out the atmosphere. There had been a huge demand for this Nitrogen as part of the munitions industry. These people pushed for the use of this nitrogen as a fertiliser. Nitrogen is one of three key macro elements necessary for plant growth, Phosphorus and Potassium being the other two. Now the application of synthetic Nitrogen has the effect of destroying humic acid and the fungal communities under the soil surface. The deal with artificial fertiliser is this: Increased short term production for 1 to 2% loss of topsoil. Seems like a good system to start with but, but in the end what happens is basically hydroponics in subsoil. The process also releases soil carbon to the atmosphere both in the production of the synthetic Nitrogen and in the application to soil. So a return to organic farming, regrowing soil structure, humic acid, fungal communities and tree cover are relatively simple to introduce and effective. The UN argues only smallholder organic farming can feed the world anyway so let’s get to it! I’ve included a link to an ABC Science page back in 2007 regarding a soil carbon conference in Orange, NSW. This idea is nothing new, the problem seems to be most climate activists are focused upon urban and industrial CO2: coal fired power stations and motor vehicles. If they look at the bush it’ only to point the finger at factory farms. As I think I’ve made clear before, they and I are on the same page with factory farms. But the “simplicity” of returning soil carbon seems to have passed the urban types by. This is a shame. Polyface Farm, Virginia, USA is run by a contrarian individual: Joel Salatin. I have links to his site and the Wikipedia page in the show notes. He’s been walking the talk for decades so it is possible. In the same way Permaculture, Natural Farming and Biodynamic methods all work and are productive, we have a way forward. It’s under our feet. And that brings us to the end of this week’s catchup podcast. If you’ve liked what you heard, please tell everyone you know any way you can! I’d also really appreciate a review on iTunes. This helps others to find us. Thanks in advance! Any suggestions, feedback or criticisms of the podcast or blog are most welcome. email me at podcast@worldorganicnews.com. Thank you for listening and I'll be back next week as usual.

LINKS   UN Report Says Small-Scale Organic Farming Only Way To Feed The World | The Unveiling of The Hidden Knowledge http://www.worldorganicnews.com/50748/un-report-says-small-scale-organic-farming-only-way-to-feed-the-world-the-unveiling-of-the-hidden-knowledge/   Maslow's hierarchy of needs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs   Making headway towards urban food security – Food Governance http://www.worldorganicnews.com/50592/making-headway-towards-urban-food-security-food-governance/   A Farm Is Born – My Urban Farm http://www.worldorganicnews.com/50464/a-farm-is-born-my-urban-farm/   What Makes a Good Urban Farm Site? – TheBreakAway http://www.worldorganicnews.com/50686/what-makes-a-good-urban-farm-site-thebreakaway/   To till or not to till? Creating fertile soil | DIY Dynamics http://www.worldorganicnews.com/50570/to-till-or-not-to-till-creating-fertile-soil-diy-dynamics/   The One Straw Revolution. http://www.appropedia.org/images/d/d3/Onestraw.pdf **** This is the World Organic News Podcast for the week ending 31st of October 2016. Jon Moore reporting! We begin this week with a reminder! The blog The Unveiling of The Hidden Knowledge reminds us of a UN report on Small Scale Organic Farming. Quote: Drawing on an extensive review of the scientific literature published in the last five years, the Special Rapporteur identifies agroecology as a mode of agricultural development which not only shows strong conceptual connections with the right to food, but has proven results for fast progress in the concretization of this human right for many vulnerable groups in various countries and environments. End quote. The report highlights not just food security but the right to food. Surely one of the most basic of human rights?  It sits at the base of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: food, shelter and clothing. It is worth pointing out the priority given to the methodology of agroecology. I and, indeed, others have placed Permaculture, Natural Farming and similar schools under this heading. Given that many people and soon to be the majority of us will be living in cities, how is this agroecology to be applied to urban areas? As I’ve discussed before, growing food where it is consumed has much to recommend it: fresher food, short supply lines, fossil fuel use reduction and so on. As the UN reports states, quote: ....in a context of ecological, food and energy crises, the most pressing issue regarding reinvestment (in food production)  is not how much, but how. End quote. The blog Food Governance’s post: Making headway towards urban food security discusses this very issue. The author makes the point that this must be a bottom up process. Locals know what they like to eat and they understand their local microclimates better than outside “experts” or they very quickly learn them throughout a growing season. The danger avoided with a bottom up approach is the Green Revolution, one size fits all approach. Individuals with fruit tree skills meet with gardeners and they all meet with backyard chicken keepers and so on. Depending upon the locale small ruminants can also be worked into local food systems to provide dairy products and manures for the gardens. What is needed is seed funding, leadership and connections between people. Of these three things, the latter two, leadership and connections between people tend to be lost with increasing urbanisation, at least in the initial stages. Yet progress is possible! The blog:  My Urban Farm posted this week: A Farm Is Born. The author takes us through their process from reluctant starter to back breaking mattock work to sheet mulching to productivity on their test plot. Well worth a read as it shows the succession of thoughts and actions in response to heavy clay and restricted water supply. This is one way of doing things. The growers made do and adapted to what was before them. The blog TheBreakAway posted a video entitled: What Makes a Good Urban Farm Site? This video describes what we could call the perfect setup. Great if you can get it. The previous post from My Urban Farm shows what happens more often than not. So we need to adapt, improvise and overcome. You know, the problem solving thing that makes us truly human. The blog DIY Dynamics has an interesting post entitled: To till or not to till? Creating fertile soil. This approach to no till is a little different from the one I use. I just pile organic matter on top of garden beds or a layer of cardboard and newspapers when starting a bed. The system used in the blog post is this: Quote: A new technique that the farm has adopted in the last year is the no till method of bed preparation. By using a hand tool, called a broad-fork  to manually aerate and lightly turn the soil. This helps to create an ideal habitat for micro-biotic organisms to thrive. The less you till the soil the more that these flora and fauna can establish their residence. End Quote. Thinking this through I can see the logic of the process. I just wonder at the potential damage done to my oft mentioned fungal communities. Maybe the occasional damage to them will release nutrients, maybe they will grow back more strongly or maybe, even in a biodynamic setting, the urge to touch the soil with tools is still too ingrained in the collective consciousness of gardeners across the globe to avoid. It is this urge to fix the soil through manual labour which is the cause of so much frustration and time consumption in gardening circles. It is the biggest step we have to overcome before the food, flower and feed potential of soils everywhere are fully realised. The moment we realise Nature has been growing food long before we were trapped into domestication is the moment we are truly free. Nature will grow more than enough food for all of us, Nature will do it in a way that provides healthy, nourishing food and Nature will happily do it without the need for returns to shareholders, without the need to rely upon oil based fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides. We just need to shut our chattering mind off for long enough for her to be heard. And we can all do this. It is a simple process, not necessarily easy but simple. I’ve included a link to a pdf version of The One Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka as a great starting point. This is the story of how one person learned to listen, observe and biomimic. Highly recommended! And that brings us to the end of this week’s podcast. If you’ve liked what you heard, please tell everyone you know any way you can! I’d also really appreciate a review on iTunes. This helps others to find us. Thanks in advance! Any suggestions, feedback or criticisms of the podcast or blog are most welcome. email me at podcast@worldorganicnews.com. Thank you for listening and I'll be back in a week.  

Links   Why do we work? – Hawthorn Rising http://www.worldorganicnews.com/50921/why-do-we-work-hawthorn-rising/ Organic egg industry pits factory farms against family farms | Agweek http://www.worldorganicnews.com/50885/organic-egg-industry-pits-factory-farms-against-family-farms-agweek/ A Paradigm Project for the future – Location: Morocco : Augusta Free Press http://www.worldorganicnews.com/50878/a-paradigm-project-for-the-future-location-morocco-augusta-free-press/ **** This is the World Organic News Podcast for the week ending 7th of November 2016. Jon Moore reporting! The blog Hawthorn Rising brings a post: Why do we work? It begins with a quote from Masanobu Fukuoka author of The One Straw Revolution. Quote: “I do not particularly like the word ‘work’. Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think that is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they have to in order to stay alive.” End Quote. The post goes on to suggest we currently need to work to cover bills, debts etc. and then end with the sentence: Quote: It wasn’t always this way, and needn’t be in the future either, however we would have to change our expectations drastically! End quote. This needs some unpacking. Let’s begin. We work because we live in a system which has created a value for work. The protestant work ethic springs to mind. From this follows, amongst other things,  the need for efficiency, rational use of resources, the abhorrence of idleness and so on. Fukuoka refers to the days of his childhood when the local farmers grew sufficient food for themselves and had a surplus by farming between Spring and Autumn, that would be Fall for the North Americans out there. During winter they and their soils rested. The farmers hunted rabbits, repaired tools, met and recuperated. This meant they had time for reflection, for poetry, for being fully human. Whilst Fukuoka spoke against the idea of work, he was not opposed to labour. He happily put the hours in when they were needed. He was just opposed to the battery hen world of factories and offices. If we take a further step back we can see the concept of work, of the protestant work ethic and economics in general are based upon the principle of shortage. My economics textbook began with the statement: “Economics is process where unlimited wants negotiate finite resources.” For most of human existence this has been the case. Fisher-gatherer-hunters solved this riddle by matching the carrying capacity of their domain to their population. As the species travelled out of Africa across five of the other six continents this wasn’t so great a problem. There was always more land, more resources and so on. Then in the years between the various points of domestication, The Fertile Crescent, Mesoamerica, East Asia and sub saharan Africa, the shortage of available resources was negotiated through power structures and work. Those in elite positions needed not to work and the great masses had to work or they starved. There were times when starvation came despite any amount of work but the general principle holds true. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution this notion was solidified into reality. The need to work to justify an existence, to define masculinity, to not be a welcher on society became ingrained. This was reinforced through religion with statements like: “Idle hands do the devil’s work” and so on. This is the system which forced the notion of efficiency and productivity on the farmers of Masanobu Fukuoka’s part of Japan. They changed from farming for three seasons and contemplating for one to continuous production based upon oil derived fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides. The system of Natural Farming developed by Fukuoka returns to a condition of continuously available food, minimal labour and community creation. On a technological level we are approaching a point where not just the drudgery of work but the highly paid work of solicitors, accountants and so on are about to be “roboticized”. That is the routine, the repeatable parts of all jobs are about to be replaced by machines who do not take holidays, become ill, strike or even demand wages. Budweiser ran a proof of concept delivery across Colorado last month with a self driving truck. Think of how many people are employed in transport, think of the routine jobs in the admin in the transport sector which will also be replaced with artificial intelligence as the truck, cab and hire car drivers are removed from the roads by self driven vehicles. We are moving from a world where scarcity defined our context. From this followed the “dignity” of work, the despising of the lazy and a questioning of the value of the creative. Once 90% of us don’t have a job, how do we eat? How do we define ourselves? We are entering a new era. Fukuoka has shown us one way we can feed ourselves, be fully alive and labour with purpose and creativity. We are all heading into a world where the meaning of “work” is changing. We can and must ask ourselves how this world will function and what will be our purpose in this new environment. We can all make preparation for the transition period coming. The transition from post industrial revolution to the Web 3.0 Revolution. Change is upon us. The blog Agweek describes the struggle between organic egg production and factory farms. It’s particular focus is upon the factory like animal welfare status so many “organic”, in inverted commas, farms. A cage free organic egg farm still has low square footage per bird and access to sunlight and fresh air is designed for the birds to avoid. These conditions are not acceptable in an organic farm yet animal welfare, at least in the US, is not part of the organic certification process from what I can work out. This holds true for dairy farms as well. In these so called organic units cows are stall tied and conveyor fed as per industrial farms. The difference is the feed is from certified organic suppliers. This sort of misses the point. It is not dissimilar to providing an open plan office for humans as opposed to cubicles. The humans are still tied to their desks even if the cage is now gilded. But change, as I say is upon us. The blog Augusta Free Press posted a piece entitled: A Paradigm Project for the future – Location: Morocco. The post discusses the correct use of resources in a development project to achieve sustainability and longevity. It discusses a particular development project in Morocco. The point I draw from this is we have time to change our food production systems. The social changes coming will be seismic but we will still have to eat. We can prepare for the change. The late Bill Mollison in a quote from my tribute episode summed up what we can and must do: Quote: “The greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of us do this, there is enough for everyone. Hence the futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on the very system they attack, and who produce words and bullets, not food and shelter.” ― Bill Mollison End Quote Maybe this time, as a species, we can transition through change peacefully. It is indeed my hope. And that brings us to the end of this week’s podcast. If you’ve liked what you heard, please tell everyone you know any way you can! I’d also really appreciate a review on iTunes. This helps others to find us. Thanks in advance! Any suggestions, feedback or criticisms of the podcast or blog are most welcome. email me at podcast@worldorganicnews.com. Thank you for listening and I'll be back in a week.    

Links   Home Farming Robot – Englishery! http://www.worldorganicnews.com/51104/home-farming-robot-englishery/   Soundscapes in the Vineyard | Son Alegre Ecològic http://www.worldorganicnews.com/51080/soundscapes-in-the-vineyard-son-alegre-ecologic/   The 3 sisters – An Artist in Spain http://www.worldorganicnews.com/51030/the-3-sisters-an-artist-in-spain/   Weeds | Permaculture San Joaquin – Colombia http://www.worldorganicnews.com/51109/weeds-permaculture-san-joaquin-colombia/   Good Soil – Turnips and Toadstools http://www.worldorganicnews.com/51184/good-soil-turnips-and-toadstools/ Lindsey Brigham, “Good Soil”, Circe Institute   Transcript! This is the World Organic News Podcast for the week ending 14th of November 2016. Jon Moore reporting! We begin with an ominous post following on from last week’s episode: Home Farming Robot! From the blog Englishery! It’s a video post  showing the planting, watering and a growing season all handled by a farmbot. Water where it’s needed and nowhere else,  a triumph of engineering. So we are not needed to grow food, produce goods or perform routine service tasks as the robots/AI takes these tasks from us. What are we to do?  Storytelling is what makes human. Maybe there’s a ray of light there. Maybe? Our next post of interest comes from the blog: Son Alegre Ecològic. It is intriguingly entitled: Soundscapes in the Vineyard.The post discusses the variations in soundscapes between vineyards. It is based upon the work of Bernie Krause. Quote: Soundscape ecology is the bio- and geo-acoustic branch of ecology that studies acoustic signatures from whatever source within a landscape (the soundscape). The soundscape of a given region can be viewed as the sum of three separate sound sources: Geophony is the first sound heard on earth. Non-biological in nature, it consists of the effect of wind in trees or grasses, water flowing in a stream, waves at an ocean or lake shoreline, and movement of the earth. Biophony is a term introduced by soundscape ecologist, Bernie Krause, who in 1998, first began to express the soundscape in terms of its acoustic sources. End Quote. I find this approach fascinating. Can we use this information, long hidden or even ignored, to understand our world a little more deeply? I think so. This seems an area of investigation ripe with possibilities.  Now we move from a newish field of endeavour to an ancient technique: The 3 sisters from the blog An Artist in Spain. Who are these three sisters? I hear you ask. Well, they are corn, beans and squash. The 3 sisters idea is to combine the three plants to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. To quote from the post: Quote: The sweet corn grows high and provides a strong frame for the beans to climb up. The beans are nitrogen fixing and increase the fertility of the soil, and the squash provides green mulch, reducing evaporation from the soil whilst protecting it from erosion by heavy rain. .... ...The idea isn’t to increase the yield of any one specific crop, but to increase the combined productivity of that piece of land whilst also maintaining (or preferably improving) the quality and integrity of the soil. End quote. The post goes on to explain that this is referred to as a plant guild in permaculture. They then decided to apply this principle to their lives. I’ll leave you to read the outcome but it is positive and enlightening. Following on with the Permaculture theme, Permaculture San Joaquin – Colombia posted on Weeds. This post calls not for a “see it and spray it” approach but a more nuanced, deeper understanding of “weeds” and what they can tell us. Quote: Every disturbance of vegetation is met with a reaction, be it fire, compaction of the ground, plowing (sic), erosion or anything else and weeds are the first emergency responders. Every plant has a ‘germinating condition’ directly connected to the process of disturbance and repair. When for example the soil gets compacted the plants with strong deep root systems emerge to break up the compaction. Is the ground too loose, for example after plowing (sic), then plants with a widespread system of small roots germinate to cast a net that holds the loose soil together. End Quote. Whilst most gardening authorities will tell you weeds are plants in the wrong the place, the approach suggested in this post would suggest “weeds” are plants exactly where they need to be to keep the soil safe. A safe soil will sustain not only the plants within it but all non oceanic life. Seeing weeds in this light, we can use them to guide us as we assist Nature to achieve the best soil in a given location. Imagine a situation where all soils were rehabilitated responding to the signals they are sending us through the “weeds” in air quotes. Just imagine... The blog Turnips and Toadstools brings us a timely reminder with the post: Good Soil. Quote: Modern agriculture focuses on crop production over soil cultivation. Exhausted soil is boosted with fertilizers, then sown with thousands of rows of a single plant type, producing high yields but sterilizing the land. In much the same way, results-driven education teaches to the test in order to yield students who rank high on standardization, but whose minds are worked to exhaustion, unable to grow anything of their own.” -Lindsey Brigham, “Good Soil”, Circe Institute End Quote. This succinctly sums up the pact with devil made by industrialised agriculture since World War 2. By using soil as nothing more than a wide scale hydroponic medium for growing crops, that soil has been destroyed by 1% or thereabouts each year. Weeds become rampant but, as we know now, these “weeds” are trying to tell us what the soil needs. Instead of reading the soil through these weeds, more herbicides have been applied, the conditions conducive to weed growth has been encouraged and the cycle continually feeds up itself. Great if you’re selling herbicides, not so great if you’re thinking about the soil you’ll be leaving your grandchildren.   And that brings us to the end of this week’s podcast. If you’ve liked what you heard, please tell everyone you know any way you can! I’d also really appreciate a review on iTunes. This helps others to find us. Thanks in advance! Any suggestions, feedback or criticisms of the podcast or blog are most welcome. email me at podcast@worldorganicnews.com. Thank you for listening and I'll be back in a week.   Home Farming Robot – Englishery! http://www.worldorganicnews.com/51104/home-farming-robot-englishery/ Soundscapes in the Vineyard | Son Alegre Ecològic http://www.worldorganicnews.com/51080/soundscapes-in-the-vineyard-son-alegre-ecologic/ The 3 sisters – An Artist in Spain http://www.worldorganicnews.com/51030/the-3-sisters-an-artist-in-spain/ Weeds | Permaculture San Joaquin – Colombia http://www.worldorganicnews.com/51109/weeds-permaculture-san-joaquin-colombia/ Good Soil – Turnips and Toadstools http://www.worldorganicnews.com/51184/good-soil-turnips-and-toadstools/ Lindsey Brigham, “Good Soil”, Circe Institute    

Links   Agricultural Revolution in a Shipping Container – High Tech Turn Key Solution for Food Insecurity and Safety – Recipes of My Home http://www.worldorganicnews.com/51320/agricultural-revolution-in-a-shipping-container-high-tech-turn-key-solution-for-food-insecurity-and-safety-recipes-of-my-home/   The Cover Crops | My Garden in the Grove http://www.worldorganicnews.com/51339/the-cover-crops-my-garden-in-the-grove/   New living wall launched could lead to 20% carbon reduction | Keep the pace of sustainability http://www.worldorganicnews.com/51408/new-living-wall-launched-could-lead-to-20-carbon-reduction-keep-the-pace-of-sustainability/   Why does Ireland only have 1,787 organic farmers? – Independent.ie http://www.worldorganicnews.com/51396/why-does-ireland-only-have-1787-organic-farmers-independent-ie/   Carbon farming for climate health | Looking Forward | santamariatimes.com http://www.worldorganicnews.com/51518/carbon-farming-for-climate-health-looking-forward-santamariatimes-com/ This is the World Organic News Podcast for the week ending 21st of November 2016. Jon Moore reporting!   We start this week with a remedial solution. The blog Recipes of My Home brings a video blog entitled: Agricultural Revolution in a Shipping Container – High Tech TurnKey Solution for Food Insecurity and Safety   In times of food stress this urban farm in a shipping container is life saver. I see it being used to green food deserts, shorten supply lines and so on everywhere else. Ideal for places like Christmas Island where a fresh lettuce can cost upwards of $9. Lettuce, as a rule, doesn’t can very well so fresh is best. I see these modules as getting fresh food to people quickly whilst organic systems are created around them. They can act as a first response to poor diet, famine conditions and so on. I don’t see them as a permanent solution unless the inputs and hence outputs are organic. Otherwise we will still be using oil based resources. But as I said, these modules are a great stop gap measure.   The blog, Keep the pace of sustainability, brings us a post: New living wall launched could lead to 20% carbon reduction. This system grows trailing plants off scaffolding whilst a building is being built, renovated or whenever scaffolding is used. The makers claim is reduces noise pollution from the sight and saves up to 20% carbon emmissions. Not sure of that but it is the sort of lateral thinking we need to find every scrap of carbon sequestration we can.   My Garden in the Grove brings a more traditional way of saving soil carbon with the post: The Cover Crops. This is garden sized application of cover crops. For those who don’t know, a cover crop is one planted when the soil is not in productive use. Typically this is winter in temperate regions. Soil needs plants or it deteriorates over crops. This particular post points to an experiment using four different types of cover crop: Crimson Clover, Hairy Vetch, Austrian Winter Peas, and Buckwheat. As they say in the blog: A fun experiment!   A piece from the Santa Maria Times: Carbon farming for climate health. Reminds us we have, to a lesser extent been here before. This piece refers back to the US dust bowl of the depression era in the 1930s. As farmers were able to turn the Dust Bowl into fertile soils, we too can return to healthier soil.       Quote: We are facing a global crisis today brought on by our own actions. Climate change threatens us more than the Dust Bowl. Yet, just as people took action back then to reverse the damage, we can do the same now. End Quote   I’ve commented on this before but here we go again. By the application of oil based fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides in conjunction with ploughing we have, since 1945, slowly at first but with increasing rapidity, destroyed soil carbon, soil life and soil structure. Once we toss in deforestation the problem is obvious. Is it reversible? Yes, yes it is.   Permaculture, Natural Farming, common or garden back breaking organic double dug beds are better than drowning everything in fertiliser, herbicides and pesticides and you get food too.   When we think of Green and Clean countries which ones come to mind? Iceland? Maybe, New Zealand, probably, Ireland? Definitely. Plenty of water, soils from poor to wonderful so why are only 1.5% of irish farms organic? The EU average is 6-7%.   The answer seems to be that most farmers believe they are so close to organic anyway, the cost of registration seems prohibitive.   To quote Grace Maher, of the Irish Organic Farmers and Growers Association Quote: Farmers, she said, are very slow to convert to organic as many feel they are farming very close to organically, but don’t bother with the additional process and paperwork that is involved to get certified, and that directly affects the numbers of farmers converting to organic production. But, for most farmers, she says turning organic would involve very little change except for a reduction in fertiliser usage. End Quote   It could be that the hurdles set up, in particular, the costs need to be looked at. And this is a worldwide problem. I know someone who makes biscuits using organic ingredients as a part time hobby slash business and when he looked into obtaining organic certification the costs were enormous. $1000 to read his application, travel costs for someone to look at his kitchen and then annual fees. This seems like an area where removing private certifying bodies and institute a government certification system with low or nil subsided costs as these costs will be more than made back increased taxation revenue. Or we could use some of the subsidies paid to the fossil fuel industry and use them to promote organic certification. Things don’t have to be done they have been. We can force change upon a monolithic bureaucracy. Write to your elected representatives, not email, not sign an online petition, actually put pen to paper. Once all us in the organic movement do this, then we will see things change more quickly than we imagine.   And that brings us to the end of this week’s podcast.   If you’ve liked what you heard, please tell everyone you know any way you can! I’d also really appreciate a review on iTunes. This helps others to find us. Thanks in advance!   Any suggestions, feedback or criticisms of the podcast or blog are most welcome. email me at podcast@worldorganicnews.com.   Thank you for listening and I'll be back in a week.       Agricultural Revolution in a Shipping Container – High Tech Turn Key Solution for Food Insecurity and Safety – Recipes of My Home http://www.worldorganicnews.com/51320/agricultural-revolution-in-a-shipping-container-high-tech-turn-key-solution-for-food-insecurity-and-safety-recipes-of-my-home/   The Cover Crops | My Garden in the Grove http://www.worldorganicnews.com/51339/the-cover-crops-my-garden-in-the-grove/   New living wall launched could lead to 20% carbon reduction | Keep the pace of sustainability http://www.worldorganicnews.com/51408/new-living-wall-launched-could-lead-to-20-carbon-reduction-keep-the-pace-of-sustainability/   Why does Ireland only have 1,787 organic farmers? – Independent.ie http://www.worldorganicnews.com/51396/why-does-ireland-only-have-1787-organic-farmers-independent-ie/   Carbon farming for climate health | Looking Forward | santamariatimes.com http://www.worldorganicnews.com/51518/carbon-farming-for-climate-health-looking-forward-santamariatimes-com/    

Links An Introduction to Factory Farming – Revolution In Media http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dsE industrial agriculture described + a comparison of the benefits and disadvantages – ECOSYSTEMS UNITED http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-drL World Organic News No Dig Gardening Book https://www.amazon.com/World-Organic-News-Gardening-Book-ebook/dp/B00U7G2OXI/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1474065878&sr=1-1&keywords=world+organic+ne This is the World Organic News Podcast for the week ending 28th of November 2016. Jon Moore reporting!   This week we begin with a post from the blog Revolution in Media entitled: An Introduction to Factory Farming by Larry Parker.   The author quotes the wikipedia definition of factory farming and then interrogates it.   Quote: At first glance, one can’t help but notice a few interesting terms in this definition, like “controversial practices”, “intensive agriculture”, and “industrialized production”, words that certainly conjure up a set of powerful images. But of even greater importance than these is the phrase: “…making use of economies of scale to produce the highest output at the lowest cost.” And, what does this mean exactly for the purposes of a discussion about farm animals? End Quote.   As we have discussed before on this podcast, it means a lifetime of suffering and misery for the animals. As Larry Parker, the author goes on to point out, the focus on the bottom line means the suffering of the animals is of little or no consequence. Over time these CAFOs, as they are called, have grown in size. Even the use of the word CAFO is part of the problem. The fully name for these factories is Confined Animal Feeding Operation. Let’s take a moment and look at those words. Confined, what we do to criminals, Animal, straightforward enough, Feeding, not raising, breeding, walking nor interacting just feeding and finally Operation, not farm but operation.   As I said these CAFOs have grown in size over time to achieve the sacred effect of economies of scale. Now this makes some sense if you’re producing widgets but in factory farming, we are dealing with live animals. Animal species that evolved in environments which did not include standing around eating and defecating and then standing in that. Do I need to carry on? These “business units” in air quotes, need to end and end yesterday. Yes, meat will be more expensive and maybe less plentiful but so too will the manure lakes be less plentiful. Stock will be back on pasture and nothing improves the health of pastures and stock than having the stock on pastures.   The underpinning of this whole system is a series of subsidies which producers dirt cheap corn. Remove the subsidies and people will stop growing so much corn. It is this one particular market manipulation which distorts the entire agricultural and food supply systems which is leading to distortions in the health system.  Cheap corn equals cheap meat but it also equals cheaps biscuits, snacks and whole host of unnecessary foods contributing to obesity.   And corn is but one variation on this theme. It is grown all on its own across vast swathes of country. It is a monoculture. Given the excessive hybridisation of the seeds these monoculture arise from, they are almost, the same plant across those swathes of land.   The blog ECOSYSTEMS UNITED brings us a post: industrial agriculture described + a comparison of the benefits and disadvantages. And this is fascinating. As we’ve discussed before more food has been grown more In air quotes “efficiently” since the second world war. This post quantifies this:   Quote: ...this system has dramatically increased the amount of food produced – between 1960 and 2010 the production of cereals increased from 900 million to 2,500 million tons. End Quote.   The post further points out: Quote: Industrial agriculture is a form of food production based on the assertion that a farm is a factory that requires inputs, such as pesticides, hormones, feed, fertilizer and fossil fuels, in order to produce outputs like meat, cereals, and plant products. The goal of industrialized agriculture is to increase yields as effectively as possible while reducing costs. These efforts are generally dependent on synthetic chemicals, large quantities of water, major transportation systems and mechanical technologies. End quote.   And this is the dilemma facing the world. We can continue to produce monoculturally at the cost of oil based chemical inputs, what appears to be excessive water usage and oil based transportation systems. You can see the problem? Apart from the water usage, the other two underpinnings are based upon fossil fuels. The continued burning of fossil fuels will contribute to climate change and then areas of current food production will become unsustainable. We have an opportunity to affect change. COP Paris, COP Marrakech offer some hope but we actually have to do something differently or we will continue along our current path. Obviously! There have been unintended consequences apart from those discussed above. The post makes this point in relation to pesticides.   Quote:   Despite there being a 10 fold increase in the amount of pesticides applied, there is double the crop damage by pests than past decades. This is attributed a lack of crop rotation; $1 in pesticides equals $4 in protected crops, but 37% of crops are still destroyed by pests; 18% of pesticides and 90% of fungicides are carcinogenic; Food is only tested for 40 of 600 agrochemicals and 3% of all chicken sold has illegal residue; Bees contribute $40 million worth of labor annually, but 20% of bee colonies are adversely affected by pesticide application and 5% die outright; 50%-70% of pesticides applied by aircraft never make it to their intended location; 520 mite, 150 plant pathogens, and 273 weed species are resistant to pesticides and require reapplication. Likewise, 10% of all pesticide applications are due to resistance; 72 million wild birds are estimated to die from pesticides each year [this is a conservative estimate]   End Quote   It seems clear to me the time for change is here, or more accurately was here ten years ago. We still have time. Bill Mollison pointed out and I’ve quoted him several times so I’ll paraphrase: We need to move from consumption to production. If 10% of start growing fruit and vegetables we can change the world.   I’ve included an Amazon link to an eBook I’ve written on no dig gardening in the show notes. $1 is all it costs and will have you moving from consumption to production in no time.   We can do this, we must do this. The current paradigm is revealing itself as bankrupt. Food shortages shocked the world in the first decade of this century as a result of price rises. What happens when a series of unexpected events shuts down the transport system for more than the three days worth of food in the supermarkets? By each of growing something, locally, we cushion ourselves and our fellow citizens from these sorts of shocks.   Let’s get our hands dirty and bellies full!   And that brings us to the end of this week’s podcast.   If you’ve liked what you heard, please tell everyone you know any way you can! I’d also really appreciate a review on iTunes. This helps others to find us. Thanks in advance!   Any suggestions, feedback or criticisms of the podcast or blog are most welcome. email me at podcast@worldorganicnews.com.   Thank you for listening and I'll be back in a week.   Links   An Introduction to Factory Farming – Revolution In Media http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dsE industrial agriculture described + a comparison of the benefits and disadvantages – ECOSYSTEMS UNITED http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-drL World Organic News No Dig Gardening Book https://www.amazon.com/World-Organic-News-Gardening-Book-ebook/dp/B00U7G2OXI/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1474065878&sr=1-1&keywords=world+organic+news#nav-subnav    

Links   8 Easy Ways to Lead a More Sustainable Lifestyle – The Mindful Bunny http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dw2 USDA: Organic corn and soy more profitable than conventional crops despite higher costs http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dxz How ancient wisdom can help us adapt to climate change | ideas.ted.com http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dxK become a farmer in seven days | The One-cow Revolution http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dyA Transcript This is the World Organic News Podcast for the week ending 5th of December 2016. Jon Moore reporting!   This week we have a series of good news stories! Yes things are not ideal in the world and we’re all dealing with changes over which we have no control so let the good news begin!   The wonderfully named blog: The Mindful Bunny brings us a post: 8 Easy Ways to Lead a More Sustainable Lifestyle!   Like many of us the concept of sustainability can be overwhelming and The Mindful Bunny is no different: Quote: Sustainability is the concept that allows the current generation’s needs to be meet without sacrificing the needs of future generations. This is important. The rate at which we currently use resources is not sustainable in the slightest. At first this problem is completely overwhelming. And no, you can’t fix it by yourself. This thought made me anxious beyond belief. After taking a step back I realized that I can make a difference. The little things do add up and leading by example has always served me well. End Quote.   The eight suggestions start with low hanging fruit: Is waste really waste? Do I need to throw it away or not? Through to more challenging suggestions: Go Vegan sell the car and walk or ride a push bike.   The point of this post is that we can all make a difference. Even if we only choose to put the first few suggestions into practice we will make a difference. The way to change the world is by many of us doing small things to achieve massive outcomes. The Mindful Bunny gives us a good place to start!   The Genetic Literacy Project brings us a story that should be shouted from the rooftops, spread across the web and lead to such massive change we can all breathe a little easier. The post is entitled: USDA: Organic corn and soy more profitable than conventional crops despite higher costs. Let me just re-read that title so you’re sure of what I said. USDA: Organic corn and soy more profitable than conventional crops despite higher costs.   This is information we should spread far and wide! What many of us already knew has now been “proven” econometrically.   Quote: The premiums organic farmers receive for growing those crops more than compensate for the higher cost of production, said Catherine Greene, senior agricultural economist with the USDA’s Economic Research Service. End Quote.   I’d even question the higher costs of organic production. When we factor in the costs of pesticides, herbicides and annual seed purchases that do not occur in organic systems. These alone, on economic grounds, point towards organic systems. Given good design labour costs are little more than or even less than conventional systems. And all this is before we include the benefits to pollinators, soil biota, water systems and all life on earth generally.  So spread the word on this post, spread it as far and as thickly as you can!   Following on with good news, the blog ideas.ted.com brings the post: How ancient wisdom can help us adapt to climate change. The author Coco Liu brings us four old ideas making a comeback, especially with regards to drought.   The first is an old variety of rice. Quote: “Floating rice is well adapted to floods,” Nguyen says. When heavy rains come, the plants grow at an accelerated rate so their foliage always remains above water — they can reach up to six meters (20 feet) in height. And since floodwaters can safely fill floating-rice paddies rather than swelling the river, the cities and villages downstream escape being submerged. “When we first reintroduced floating rice to the village of  Vinh Phuoc in 2013, nearby farmers wanted us to teach them as well,” Nguyen says. His team is running a pilot program in two provinces in the Mekong Delta, and they plan to launch field work in Cambodia and Myanmar next year. End Quote.   To achieve the best results on a society wide approach, the rice fields are not surrounded by dykes. This allows the flood waters to move sideways, so to speak, before flowing down stream. The benefits of this are food production from an adapted variety and less damaging flooding downstream.   The floating rice is less productive than hybridised “modern” varieties but work on this aspect of the variety is still to be done.  It’s a balance thing where the costs of flooding are mitigated by less rice production but, obviously, massively larger straw production. This could be converted to protein by rabbits and or pigs so that the total food production rather than one output, grain, may be equal or even higher.   Another idea from the post relies upon understanding the archaeology of a region, in this case Bolivia. Floods and droughts in succession were mitigated in the past by canals and extreme raised bed gardening. These raised beds, some two metres in height, are called camellones.   Quote: Since Saavedra experimented with the method in the Beni region in 2007, he’s seen good results: His cassava and corn harvests set new records for organic farming in the area. When severe floods came in 2008 — the worst Bolivia had seen in 50 years — the plants on the camellones were the only ones that survived. The crops in conventional fields were completely swamped and destroyed. Although the intensive labor required to construct a camellone — it takes a week’s work with machinery for each hectare — has deterred some farmers, Saavedra’s nonprofit organization Sustainable Amazonia has taught 500 families to use this method. Oxfam has endorsed the camellone technique and financed its development in Bolivia. End Quote.   Perhaps it is worth remembering the words of Joel Salatin. I paraphrase, “We’re really good as a culture at hitting targets. What we’re not so good at is asking if we’re aiming at the right target.”   Coco then goes on to talk about an old tribal habit in Kenya of calling a council called a “Dedha”. It’s all about managing feed resources during drought by allocating grazing for the whole community. It is an interesting idea and not dissimilar to how commons were grazed in medieval Europe for the benefit all in the community.   The final idea suggested is... Duck not pesticides!   Quote: ... in northern China’s Heilongjiang Province. There, chilly springs used to hold back the hatching of pests. But with rising temperatures, that delay is fading away and pests are proliferating. Many farmers turned to intensive pesticide use, which has saved their crops — but killed large amounts of wildlife. “I was in a village where there were no frogs and no swallows. Instead, I saw empty pesticide bottles everywhere,” says Fang Yongjiang, a Chinese farmer and entrepreneur in the province. “The village was so quiet that it was scary.”   So Fang devised a chemical-free approach: using ducks to patrol the rice paddies, a technique that his ancestors relied on at least 600 years ago. The ducks feed on insects and weeds without consuming the rice plants; their droppings serve as fertilizer. End Quote.   And you get duck eggs and duck meat. Using animals to the jobs of chemicals is really a no-brainer. It is a mimicking of Nature and it is always easier to work with the systems Nature has tested in the fire of evolution than to reinvent the wheel. Prety much all problems in agriculture and gardening have been solved already if we will only take the time to see them.   Our post this week comes from The One-cow Revolution blog and has the tempting title: “become a farmer in seven days”   Surprisingly, if you know what you’re doing, this is doable! From vacant overgrown block to farm in seven days! The first two days will give you some idea. A link to full article and all other articles mentioned are in the show notes. This particular post had me smiling extremely broadly.   Quote:   Day one Buy or beg a goat, 50 ft. of airline cable, 2 swivels, a cinder block, and a bucket Tether the goat in your worst briars and scrub; give her a bucket of water Milk her, drink the milk Cost: $100 or the sky’s the limit, depending on the goat Day two, Build a 4′ x 8’compost bin, put a dog carrier at one end, and install six pullets Fill the other end of the bin with at least twelve inches of organic matter: wood chips, grass clippings, leaves, sawdust, even shredded paper Add all your kitchen and table scraps, and let the chickens go at it. Milk the goat, move her tether Cost: $50 for the chickens, $30 for a roll of woven wire, scrounge the posts and dog carrier   End Quote.   And so it goes on for the rest of the week. Really worth clicking through.   And that brings us to the end of this week’s podcast.   If you’ve liked what you heard, please tell everyone you know any way you can! I’d also really appreciate a review on iTunes. This helps others to find us. Thanks in advance!   Any suggestions, feedback or criticisms of the podcast or blog are most welcome. email me at podcast@worldorganicnews.com.   Thank you for listening and I'll be back in a week.     Links   8 Easy Ways to Lead a More Sustainable Lifestyle – The Mindful Bunny http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dw2   USDA: Organic corn and soy more profitable than conventional crops despite higher costs http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dxz   How ancient wisdom can help us adapt to climate change | ideas.ted.com http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dxK   become a farmer in seven days | The One-cow Revolution http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dyA  

Links Perovskite solar cells hit new world efficiency record « Great Things from Small Things .. Nanotechnology Innovation http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dzn Australia can get to zero emissions, as rooftop solar booms « Antinuclear http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dBb Electricity Network Transformation Roadmap http://www.energynetworks.com.au/electricity-network-transformation-roadmap Detroit’s Sustainable “Agrihood” | Suzanne's Mom's Blog http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dzF How soil is lost | Make Wealth History http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dD0 **** This is the World Organic News Podcast for the week ending 12th of December 2016. Jon Moore reporting! This week we begin with news from the academy! Those curiously named solar cells perovskites have hit new efficiency levels. The blog: Great Things from Small Things .. Nanotechnology Innovation brings us the post: Perovskite solar cells hit new world efficiency record. Quote: They’re flexible, cheap to produce and simple to make – which is why perovskites are the hottest new material in solar cell design. And now, engineers at Australia’s University of New South Wales in Sydney have smashed the trendy new compound’s world efficiency record. End Quote. This is wonderful news. Non fossil fuel based energy is the way forward. After generations of research focused on fossil fuels, bright minds are now and have been for a while driving alternatives. Perovskites are quick and cheap to manufacture, increasingly efficient but do suffer from some stability issues in open weather. There are workarounds to overcome these issues. The increasing efficiencies may make these drawbacks irrelevant. The research continues and with it hope for the future. Even using “standard” PV cells it is possible to make great advances. The blog Antinuclear brings us a post entitled: Australia can get to zero emissions, as rooftop solar booms. Funnily enough if the price signals are sufficiently strong and the technology serviceable, individuals will make decisions which collectively benefit us all. This is what’s happened in Australia with rooftop solar cells. To such an extent, the CSIRO can see them as Australia’s pathway to zero emissions. Quote: Consumers using rooftop solar panels and batteries will produce between a third and half of Australia’s electricity by mid-century if the right policies are introduced, according to a roadmap from the CSIRO and power and gas transmission body Energy Networks Australia. The two-year analysis also found an emissions intensity scheme for the electricity sector – a form of carbon trading that was to be considered by a government climate policy review until that plan was abandoned on Tuesday afternoon – would be the cheapest way to cut carbon dioxide emissions. End Quote. The report suggested the entire electrical grid could be zero carbon emitting when rooftop solar is coupled with batteries by 2050. Whilst this doesn’t deal with road transport and other emitters of CO2, the grid is a great place to start. Now we move onto another great news story. Suzanne's Mom's Blog brings us the post: Detroit’s Sustainable “Agrihood”. Given the economic disasters which have befallen Detroit in the past thirty years, this post is one of great promise. As vast swathes of greater Detroit have been abandoned following the crisis of 2008, land has become available for alternative use. To be specific for food production. From the blog post: Quote: “This week, the Michigan Urban Farming Initiative (MUFI) revealed its plans for the first Sustainable Urban Agrihood in the North End. “Wait, an agrihood? It’s an alternative neighborhood growth model, positioning agriculture as the centerpiece of a mixed-use development. There are some agrihoods around the country, but in rural areas. This is the first within a city. End Quote. From the great pains of economic downturn comes the possibility of a better way to live. Food grown where it is consumed, employment, renewal and a future. I recommend a reading of the whole post. It is uplifting. How soil is lost is a post from the blog Make Wealth History. I think we’ve made the point in earlier episodes that without soil, we are in dire straights. This post reminds us of how precious this resource is and how we are losing it. Quote: ....soil is a self-maintaining system. In nature, it looks after itself. When humans intervene with agriculture, the balance can be lost and the processes interrupted. Soil works in tandem with the vegetation that grows from it, as a mutually reinforcing dynamic. Plants need soil, and soil needs plants.  Unfortunately, we tend to clear the land completely in order to choose what grows from it, breaking that cycle. Then we haul away what’s been grown, keeping the grain as food and baling up the stalks, rather than letting the soil re-absorb the nutrients. The result is a gradual loss of fertility, and we have to make up the difference with chemical fertilisers. End Quote. Given the long history of agriculture and its increased pace with population growth, we could be in for trouble. So far extreme soil losses have been relatively confined to nation states. Think The US Dust Bowl of the Great Depression and the dust storms from northern China covering Beijing with topsoil in the late 1990s. The post though provides some sobering statistics: Quote: Globally, the equivalent of 10 million hectares of arable land is lost every year. In the last 150 years, we have lost half the world’s topsoil.  When land is exhausted, farmers move on and start somewhere else. The FAO estimates that 20 million hectares of farmland is abandoned every year. End Quote. The good news is we can reverse this. Permaculture, Natural Farming, Agroforestry and Biodynamic methods to name but a few options we already know work and are productive and sustainable. Remember the US Dust Bowl was reversed through good soil retention techniques. We can reverse, indeed, we must reverse this trend whilst we can.       And that brings us to the end of this week’s podcast. If you’ve liked what you heard, please tell everyone you know any way you can! I’d also really appreciate a review on iTunes. This helps others to find us. Thanks in advance! Any suggestions, feedback or criticisms of the podcast or blog are most welcome. email me at podcast@worldorganicnews.com. Thank you for listening and I'll be back in a week. **** Links Perovskite solar cells hit new world efficiency record « Great Things from Small Things .. Nanotechnology Innovation http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dzn Australia can get to zero emissions, as rooftop solar booms « Antinuclear http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dBb Electricity Network Transformation Roadmap http://www.energynetworks.com.au/electricity-network-transformation-roadmap Detroit’s Sustainable “Agrihood” | Suzanne's Mom's Blog http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dzF How soil is lost | Make Wealth History http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dD0  

2016 12 31   This the World Organic News yearly roundup episode. And what a year its been! I’ve identified four broad themes to 2016. Let’s get into them   Firstly, Cities. Perhaps the most unlikely place to find farming but here it is. Rooftop, vertical, empty lot and balcony/terrace farming/gardening as well as the suburban homesteader all featured this year in the blog and on the podcast.   Small areas, intensively planted and thoughtfully custodianed can produce huge amounts of food. That people are doing this is a sign of our longing for real food. That people are doing it in cities is a sign the long, fossil fueled based, supply lines may not be as safe as we are led to believe. It is also a sign people are looking for flavour. An heirloom variety of tomatoes that grows well in container on a balcony will never be capable of bulk transportation across 1000s of kilometres. It will however have flavour to balance its inability to travel.   On a more industrial scale, the Japanese plan to open a fully automated vertical farm harvesting, initially, 1000s of lettuce a day before diversifying into other leafy vegetables. As I’ve stated elsewhere, peopleless farming doesn’t sit right with me but it is an option during famines, disaster relief and so on when the need to feed people is greater than the need for human interactions with food. I just realised that argument can be extended to feeding people at anytime yet peopleless farming still doesn’t sit right with me.   The urban/suburban homesteading movement continues apace as more individuals and families see the benefits of growing their own. The homesteading side of this movement usually involves some sort of animals to add to the mix. This allows manure collection and increased soil health and productivity. I’ve seen people growing rabbits on this scale but the usual and animal is the chicken! The good thing about chooks is they will give you manure and an egg a day whether you have a rooster or not. With a rooster comes the joys of breeding but in some council areas roosters also bring noise complaints. And remember kids, chickens are the gateway stock to larger animals! It is a very small step from hens to backyard goat!   The second theme for 2016 is biotech! This year has seen Washington State sue Monsanto for residues in the environment and the Australian High Court reject an appeal from Steve Marsh against a contamination of his land by a neighbour’s GMO canola pollen. Mixed messages! Burkina Faso has dumped BT Cotton and returned to standard types. Still chemically grown but a step in the right direction. To add to this small step against Monsanto, the World Health Organization declared Monsanto’s flagship pesticide Roundup a probable carcinogen. Probable is one step down from carcinogenic. The reason why Roundup only received a probable rating is a lack of evidence. The WHO will continue to collect data and review its rating of Roundup as it does for all the declared probable carcinogens.   Perhaps more troubling is merger between Bayer and Monsanto. Two enormous biotech, chemical and seed producers merging into a huge corporation. Could they use this market power for good or does that word not enter into the economic considerations? The point of corporations is simply profit. Sad but true. Individuals in positions of power within corporations may consider things other than profit but people come and people go. The corporation or one very much like it will continue to live for nothing but profit. So it augers not well for the biosphere from this merger. We will have more to say on this in 2017, I’m sure.   As many of us have noted and the BBC statistical radio show “More or Less” proved, 2016 was a year of high profile deaths. The one which impacted the organic movement most strongly was, off course, the passing of Bill Mollison. Bill’s passing marked the loss of the last of the triumvirate who influenced my path into and through the organic movement. The other two being John Seymour and Masanobu Fukuoka. So a particularly deep loss not just me but for many. What can I say that has not already been said? This world is a lesser place without Bill. Yet his work lives on. I have yet to find a country, even war torn one, without permaculture. The genius of Mollison’s and Holmgren’s work is the universality of the method. Across climate zones from Desert to Jungle Permaculture both has a place and is being implemented as I speak. Truly a legacy we will only truly understand with passing of time.   Despite or, if you are of that persuasion, because of, the political changes in 2016,  World Organic News still believes there is room for hope in this world. We have the tools to feed the world. Feed the world healthy food which not only does not damage the biosphere but actually heals it. We have a rising number of young farmers across the developed world for the first time in generations and they are overwhelming organic practitioners. Do we see the start of a truly grassroots movement? World Organic News hopes so.   On another positive note, the positive outcomes from Paris COP20 in 2015 to Morocco COP21 there is a path forward on climate change. Even if we weren’t facing the challenges of climate change, a move to fossil fuel free economies would still make sense. The pollution from the fossil fuel industry will take centuries to remediate and that time is continuously being pushed back as we cling to this dirty fuel.   Perovskite solar cells continue to set new efficiency records, silicon solar cells are now the cheapest form of energy production. Despite the politically based claims against climate change one thing and one thing alone will drive both believers and skeptics and that is price. As economies of scale continue to kick in this price difference will only increase. Once this gains momentum the subsidies paid to fossil fuel producers will come under increasingly strong pressure. The question before us is one of timing. Can we make the transition in time?   There is also something we can all do. The organisation Kiss the Ground (https://www.kisstheground.com/) has a great series of videos explaining how, since about World War Two, carbon has been liberated from the soil and dispersed to the atmosphere. More importantly the videos explain how to move the carbon back to the soil.   And this is what organic methods can and will do! Surely this is hope enough to take us into 2017 with heads held high, ready to face the effects of our species’ actions and to do something about it!   I’ll be back on the 9th of January 2017 with a return to the weekly roundup of news, ideas and methods from the Organic World!   I am contractually required to mention that I have new microphone and hopefully the sound quality has improved. Let me know if you think it has improved.   If you’ve liked what you heard, please tell everyone you know any way you can! I’d also really appreciate a review on iTunes. This helps others to find us. Thanks in advance!   Any suggestions, feedback or criticisms of the podcast or blog are most welcome. email me at podcast@worldorganicnews.com.   Thank you for listening and I'll be back in a week.

Links Australian Podcast Awards Click here How organic farming will save us all – if we can throw away our antiquated notions of what it means | National Post http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dUo   ****   This is the World Organic News Podcast for the week ending 8th of January 2017. Jon Moore reporting!   The week, indeed, this year begins with an article from the National Post entitled: How organic farming will save us all – if we can throw away our antiquated notions of what it means. And the title says it all. We live in times of minutely defined identity. Each of us is encouraged to define ourselves as some combination of words that describes our family status, sexual orientation, voting intentions, lifestyle and who knows what else. That people have bought into this way of seeing themselves means they must also place others within a category or combination of categories. Hence I quote from the article: Quote: If there is a stereotype of the organic farmer it’s that they spend their days wrapped in droopy clothes made of hemp and burlap, becoming one with nature while foraging for chanterelles. End quote.   The truth, of course, is much bigger than this. Yes there are organic farmers like those described but and I quote again from the article:   Quote: Yet the reality of many organic farmers couldn’t be further from the truth. For those serious about agriculture free of synthetic chemicals, farming is a complex system that requires endless days of laborious work, with the potential to yield lucrative results. End Quote.   Indeed the business of organic farming is as much a cerebral one as it is physical. A knowledge of so many disciplines is required: agronomy, entomology, soil science, animal husbandry, meteorology, algebra, accounting, hydrology, history and I could go on but will spare you. Quite often these things are just within the lifetime of each organic farmer’s experiences, sometimes they need to be studied.   The author, Claudia McNelly goes on to use one farm as an example. Brent Preston gave up an office job to grow food or as he is quoted later in the piece, grow soil.   Quote: Well-managed, nutrient-dense soils are the guiding light to finding success in self-sustaining, organic agriculture. “It’s not just something that can be done for 10 years or 100 years until the soil is exhausted,” says Preston. “The goal is every year your soil is better than it was the year before.”   End quote.   Now we know, or should by now know, chemical based farming destroys soil health. Dead soil is just dirt and dirt blows away. The death of soil through chemical agriculture is, or usually is, a slow process. This is the deal with the devil I’ve discussed in earlier episodes. 1% soil loss of soil per year for increased short term returns. Unfortunately 1% per year is a compound interest situation. This means not much appears to be happening for five, ten maybe even twenty years but the bill will come due and these bills always come at the worst time. Drought, flood and/or fire seem to accompany these payments.   Cover crops, rotational grazing and cropping are all part of a system which grows soil. Again a lengthy quote:   Quote: For millenniums(sic), crop rotation – the practice of moving crops and livestock around to ensure too much of one nutrient is never depleted – was the go-to method for maintaining soil health. During the Middle Ages, three-field rotation – a system where one field is allowed to rest every crop cycle – took over. This was the standard method of farming until less than a century ago, when increased food production became the goal. This meant that all available farmland would be put to use to grow crops. End quote.   This meant that all available farmland would be put to use to grow crops. This was the deal with the devil. Not only was monoculture encouraged as scientific, the use of a single variety across all locations was encouraged or, in some locales, mandated from above. Locally adapted varieties were lost, generations of selection tossed into the dustbin of history. We still have time to retrieve some of these species but we must act quickly. We can also start the process of selecting for local varieties by using open pollinated, non hybrid varieties ourselves. Each season selects for the next, evolution is relentless and uncaring. We can work with it or be steam rolled by it.   Above all, organic farming is about people. Organic farms tend to be smaller than say, corn or wheat farms yet they are far more profitable on a per acre basis. Once cereal subsidies are removed, they become more so.   Quote: Organic farms generate more money per acre than their conventional counterparts. Even though they are not as big, they are usually far more profitable. “The amount of money we generate per acre on the farm is many multiples per acre of what our neighbours produce growing cash crops,” says Preston. A well-run small-scale organic farm will generate somewhere in the neighbourhood of $40,000 gross sales per acre. Corn and soy, known as “cash-crops” generate an average of $300 per acre, according to a 2016 paper published by the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois. End quote.   It is the huge number of acres planted to corn and soy which make them viable and which are destroying soil at an increasing pace across the globe.   In essence the difference between a broad acre monoculture and a small area organic farm is one of thought. Much more planning, thinking and pondering is required of the small area farmer than the broadacre ploughing enterprise. The latter may have fed the world during the 1960s and 1970s but it was the improvements in transportation world wide that did much more on that front. We have managed to grow more food than the world population needed since about 1850. Political indifference, poor transportation and wars are the reasons most people have starved. Ireland was, after all, exporting wheat to England as her citizens were starving to death during the potato famine.   Independant, small area farmers, Yeoman, if you like, have, throughout history been a troublesome, cantankerous class. A ballast against change, think of the lack of revolution in the UK in 1848, the cutting edge of revolution, the US war of independence and the manpower for classical Greek and Roman republican armies. These people are thinkers, they have to be to survive. Given the inane, mindless consumerism of our current “developed” world I would suggest we need cantankerous thinkers more than ever. Joel Salatin springs to mind. Our soils certainly need their care and attention. Take your position, even if you only grow a rosemary bush in a plant pot, you have made a statement. Annoy your representatives until we  see the end of subsidies for big ag and those funds redirected to farmer’s markets, school ag education programs and a world of shorter, safer food supply chains. Nothing changes until those in power are forced to change. Let’s make our local food producers the new celebrities! Just think how different our world can be.   And that brings us to the end of this week’s podcast.   If you’ve liked what you heard,could please follow the link in the show notes and vote for World Organic News in the Australian Podcast Awards Click here Thanks in advance.   Any suggestions, feedback or criticisms of the podcast or blog are most welcome. email me at podcast@worldorganicnews.com.   Thank you for listening and I'll be back in a week.   ****   Links Australian Podcast Awards Click here How organic farming will save us all – if we can throw away our antiquated notions of what it means | National Post http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dUo

Links World Organic News in the Australian Podcast Awards Click here   Composting: Composting 101: Take One | Zero Waste McMinnville http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dVC Composting: 101 – Rustic Edibles http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dVJ THE USE OF THE VERMICULTURE – micelasite http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dWE brewing compost tea. | Dank47 http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dWX Journey to Forever - Composting https://journeytoforever.org/compost.html   ***   This is the World Organic News Podcast for the week ending 16th of January 2017. Jon Moore reporting!   Compost! Yes for our listeners in the snowy, frozen parts of the Northern Hemisphere, now is the time to be composting. Spring is on its way, even if it doesn’t feel like it.   This week has seen quite a few posts on the gentle art of composting. From the blog Zero Waste McMinnville comes a post composting 101. An interesting background story where the author was introduced to recycling is instructive in itself. But it’s all about the composting this week. So the author has moved on from a plastic bucket. Quote: Our plastic container on the kitchen counter has recently been replaced by a designed compost bin. It has a filter and is easy to clean. With the lid kept in place there is no odor nor any enticement for fruit flies to gather. End Quote.   Composting is about coming to terms with the flows of Nature. Smells and fruit flies are part of the deal. To keep ourselves healthy we must take measures like tight fitting lids and filters or remove the material from the house as quickly as possible. We are dealing with a living thing or more accurately a number of living things. The interconnectedness of these lives is what makes or breaks your compost. Composting in an aerobic process. That is, it occurs in the presence of oxygen. Anaerobic decomposition, without any oxygen, is used to produce biogas and that is whole other story.   Funnily enough the blog Rustic Edibles also has a post entitled Composting: 101. Rustic Edibles describes their method: Quote: We maintain our compost pile with vegetable and fruit scraps, egg and seafood shells, coffee and tea grounds, leaves, grass cuttings and cow manure. It’s also good to alternate layers of brown and green material in order to keep the pile healthy. And of course turning the pile is good for aeration although a compost pile on the ground does permit aeration from worms and other healthy organisms.   End Quote   Now there is much debate amongst composters and I have tried both methods, turning the pile and leaving it. I can’t see much difference in time or outcome but conduct your own experiments. It’s a bit academic as I prefer to use a different method again: Vermiculture. That is the use of compost worms. I find the output from the worms a better matrix in which to plant but that’s just me, oh, and the blog micelasite with their post THE USE OF THE VERMICULTURE. The give a succinct but powerful explanation of the process and its benefits. Quote This method is simple, effective, convenient, and noiseless. It saves water, energy, landfills, and helps rebuild the soil. The worms ability to convert organic waste into nutrient-rich material reduces the need for synthetic fertilizers. We violate nature’s ability to complete the life cycle process when we send food down the garbage disposal, or bury it in a landfill. We deplete the soil and deprive nature from rehabilitating itself when we bypass this natural life cycle recycling process. End Quote   Well put. Closing cycles is a merely  matter of remembering the words of Bill Mollison: “Waste is simply a resource in the wrong place!” And landfills and garbage disposals are probably two greatest wrong places we deposit resources.   In summary the post nails the advantages of vermiculture. (As an aside, this post was written by someone for whom English was not a first language. I will quote them verbatim. Quote: The Vermiculture has every more future day, since it helps the man to recycle the remains of most of the organic matters that it produces both of animal and domestic origin, avoiding the contamination and simultaneously helping him in the systems of agricultural, forest production and of gardening, putting at its disposal a product completely ecological and recognized like ideal for the food of any class of plants and germination of seeds. End quote.   But wait there’s more!!! Compost and vermicompost may also be used as the basis of a tea. brewing compost tea by Dank47 covers the first and probably only mistake you can make with compost tea: anaerobic digestion. Bubbling air through the water and the compost tea bag will ensure wild bacterial growth and wonder fertiliser! It really is good stuff.   So whether you turn your compost pile or don’t, whether you let compost worms do the decomposition for you or not and whether you make tea or not pick at least one method and do that.   A quote from the site “Journey To Forever” will inspire! Quote: It's estimated that a human with a compost fork and a watering-can, carefully piling up organic matter with the correct C/N ratio, water content and aeration so that it cooks away at high temperatures and emits jets of steam, can make as much topsoil in a year as nature can make in a century, and nature definitely approves. End quote.   And that brings us to the end of this week’s podcast.   If you’ve liked what you heard,could please follow the link in the show notes and vote for World Organic News in the Australian Podcast Awards Click here Thanks in advance.   Any suggestions, feedback or criticisms of the podcast or blog are most welcome. email me at podcast@worldorganicnews.com.   Thank you for listening and I'll be back in a week.   Links World Organic News in the Australian Podcast Awards Click here   Composting: Composting 101: Take One | Zero Waste McMinnville http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dVC Composting: 101 – Rustic Edibles http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dVJ THE USE OF THE VERMICULTURE – micelasite http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dWE brewing compost tea. | Dank47 http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dWX Journey to Forever - Composting https://journeytoforever.org/compost.html  

Links WORLD ORGANIC NEWS in the Australian Podcast Awards Click here   Urban wheat crop grown on Narrabri footpath provides bumper harvest - Rural News - ABC News http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dXH   The Benefits of Perennial Wheat – Permie Flix http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-e2D   Why a Topbar Beehive? – Bee Conscious http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dY3   Where did Nature go? – human meets nature http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-e0A Rachel Carson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Carson   **** This is the World Organic News for the week ending 23rd of January 2017. Jon Moore reporting!   This week begin a man who took steps to save himself time and grow food in one action. Suburbia is known for its nature strips or lawns from the fence to the road. We can either turn these into food forests or mow them to comply with the middle class, lawn is king paradigm. Guy Roth from Narrabri in western New South Wales had a problem.   Quote: I had nothing but khaki weed, pig weed and bindi-eye. End quote.   I might add here the Guy Roth is also known as Dr Roth cotton researcher.   So faced with this the Roth family ploughed and planted wheat! That was back May 2016. In December, they harvested. The crop took some losses from cockatoos and other parrots but in the end he harvested 20 kilos of grain. That’s about 44 pounds in the old money. The good Dr plans to make some bread from the harvest. A link to this story is, of course, in the show notes.   Staying with wheat, the blog Permie Fix has a video post from Washington State University on that little known variation of wheat, Perennial Wheat. This is something that’s come up in an early podcast, I’m sure but this post let’s you see the stuff. Kevin Murphy, Assistant Research Professor narrates the video and explains the benefits and the drawbacks of this plant. The benefits? Less ploughing, fossil fuel usage, spraying and fertiliser use. The drawbacks? Mainly yield. The video is about the need for further research to increase yields through crop selection, testing in different climates and so on. A quick two minute video, so worth a look.   While we’re on the subject of slightly out of the box ideas, The blog Bee Conscious brings the post: Why a Topbar Beehive? Topbar? I hear you ask. Yes. We are, I’m sure all familiar with the Langstroth hives dotted around the globe. It is the favourite of commercial beekeepers. A mature technology, it’s limits and strengths are well known. The great advantage of the topbar design is its closer approximation to natural conditions. That said, the greatest worry with a topbar is the possibility of cross combing. That is each vertical sheet of comb not remaining independent of its neighbour. If the space between cobs exceeds the “bee space” the bees will attempt to fill the space with comb. So the initial setup and measurements for a topbar are critical. That done, the output from a topbar hive is different from the langstroth. The latter is designed for honey production and very little else. The top bar still produces honey but also beeswax. In the langstroth the comb is supplied and the bees fill it. In the topbar a line of wax is provided and the bees build the comb of this. It also then available for harvesting. In the langstroth system the comb is uncapped and left in the frames after the honey is spun out.   I have read that it is possible for the langstroth frames to accumulate pesticides in the “permanent” frames whereas this can’t occur with the topbar system as the wax is replenished each year. But having to build combs means less energy/time for honey collection. You makes your choice and lives with the decision.   human meets nature brings us a post of great import: Where did Nature go? The image of Rachel Carson at the top of the post sets the tone. For those of you who may not have heard of Rachel Carson, she published Silent Spring back in the 1960s which showed the reality of the bioaccumulation of DDT in the environment and its effect on eggshell thickness amongst other things. I’ve placed a link in the show notes if you’d like to know more.   Back to Where did Nature go? The author, not political in nature, has noticed something from the past couple of years.   Quote: ---there has been three huge political issues in the last couple of years that even I couldn’t miss. The first was the Scottish independence referendum – I’m Scottish so that was very much unmissable! Second was Brexit and third is the ongoing drama of the impending Trump presidency.   More than the political back and forth, the in-fighting and one-upmanship I’ve been struck by the absence of one key issue, thee key issue, during these debates – the relationship between humans and nature and the worsening environmental crisis. End Quote.   Well might we ask: Where Did Nature Go? Particularly with the removal of all mentions of climate change from the White House web site on the day of inauguration. Yet the post ends on a positive note which I think we all need at the moment. Quote: Nature just isn’t sexy, yet; but I don’t believe that people don’t care, they do. In many cases our hands feel tied because of the societal and power structures that we exist within. We are at a tipping point, things are changing rapidly; things can change for the better,  but only if we give it the attention it requires. It’s said that whatever we give attention to will grow. Let’s hope that the political spectacle will soon calm down and our attention will be drawn back to the most fundamental of human concerns – our very survival, and the survival of all that enchants our lives in this place. End Quote.   I would disagree with “Nature just isn’t sexy” but otherwise I concur. Let’s get out there and hassle our elected representatives until they have no choice but to respond. We seem to be living in a time of change so let’s drive it!   And that brings us to the end of this week’s podcast.   If you’ve liked what you heard,could please follow the link in the show notes and vote for World Organic News in the Australian Podcast Awards Click here Thanks in advance.   Any suggestions, feedback or criticisms of the podcast or blog are most welcome. email me at podcast@worldorganicnews.com.   Thank you for listening and I'll be back in a week. **** Links WORLD ORGANIC NEWS in the Australian Podcast Awards Click here   Urban wheat crop grown on Narrabri footpath provides bumper harvest - Rural News - ABC News http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dXH   The Benefits of Perennial Wheat – Permie Flix http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-e2D   Why a Topbar Beehive? – Bee Conscious http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-dY3   Where did Nature go? – human meets nature http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-e0A Rachel Carson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Carson

Links WORLD ORGANIC NEWS in the Australian Podcast Awards Click here Bacteria Surf the Fungal Web – Permie Flix http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-e5R   Endless economic growth – Joy of Reading http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-e6p   Let’s all build an environmental mindset. – The Food Geographer http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-e6s   Quote:   Food growing – volunteer at an urban farm Vegetarian cooking – ask someone to teach you How to make your home more sustainable – turn your apartment into a garden! Recycling schemes in your area – contact your Council, support Hubbub’s new coffee cup campaign Air pollution – plant more trees, sign a campaign every week Wildlife conservation – vertical farming, or identifying bird songs to help conservation Improving public transport and biking – write a letter to your government rep. Young people and education – learn how to teach or host workshops at school   End Quote.   World Organic News No-dig gardening book Sustainable House: click here Zero Waste Movement The Real Food Chain ***   This is the World Organic News for the week ending 30th of January 2017. Jon Moore reporting!   This week’s show marks the one year anniversary of the podcast! Those of you who have been with us from the beginning, thanks, and to those you have joined us on the way, also thanks. It is an humbling and gratifying thing to see the stats improve over the year. It is also very motivating so, once again, thanks to all my listeners.   A post from Permie Flix this week seemed appropriate for the one year anniversary: Bacteria Surf the Fungal Web. Regular listeners will know my obsession with the fungal webs beneath forest communities and our need to preserve these structures from clear felling and ploughs. This video from the Scientific American Blog shows actual bacteria travelling along these fungal super highways. The video is only 1 minute 31 seconds long but seeing the bacteria moving along these fungal pathways will change the way you see the world forever. So much goes on underground, out of sight and until recently, out of mind. We are just scratching the surface on this world, pun intended. Have a look and change your life! Link in the show notes.   In contrast to this system of balance and flow comes a post from the blog: Joy of Reading entitled: Endless economic growth.   Quote: The Western monopoly capitalist paradigm that allows big money to chase after more for the profit of the few, using Mother Earth as a disposable factor of production, is neither sustainable nor logical based on modern science and natural law. End Quote.   I’ll admit this sounds a little Malthusian but I can live with that. The point is well made. Converting Nature into, not so much pieces of paper with an agreed value of exchange but now into arrangements of electrons to do the same job does seem like a fool’s errand. Many people no longer live in poverty as a result of this system but it is possible to, and I would, argue their poverty was a result of the system in the first place.   There is change afoot.   Quote: Endless economic growth based on finite natural resources is finished. It is a mind-centered egotistical fantasy to thrive at the expense of other Nations. The death of the paradigm has already begun. End Quote.   To follow on from this blog The Food Geographer brings us a call to action: Let’s all build an environmental mindset.   Quote: I have found myself in a situation that I think many people are in: Caring about the environment, but feeling paralysed by the enormity of the task at hand, and how ‘little’ they feel in comparison. End Quote.   This sums up our dilemma succinctly. Yet thefoodgeographer provides solutions:   Quote: I think what we need is a mindset shift, which will then lead to an action shift. Here are my simple suggestions: Remember that, unless you are the next Gandhi, you alone cannot change the entire world. End Quote.   So we each can do a little. In so doing we will discover the next Seymour, Mollison or Fukuoka. Thefoodgeographer suggests skills we could learn, improve on and/or pass onto others:   Quote:   Food growing – volunteer at an urban farm Vegetarian cooking – ask someone to teach you How to make your home more sustainable – turn your apartment into a garden! Recycling schemes in your area – contact your Council, support Hubbub’s new coffee cup campaign Air pollution – plant more trees, sign a campaign every week Wildlife conservation – vertical farming, or identifying bird songs to help conservation Improving public transport and biking – write a letter to your government rep. Young people and education – learn how to teach or host workshops at school   End Quote.   Now we could call this the Noble Green Eightfold Path to save ourselves and our communities.   Let’s examine each of these in turn.   Food growing, my eBook on no-dig gardening is a great starting point, even though self praise is faint praise, I am quite proud of it. Click here. We can all grow some food and surprisingly large amounts of it in small areas. Local urban and community gardens and farms are also ways into this wonderful activity. Vegetarian cooking, a simple google search will help if you are driven in this direction. A sustainable home is possible. Even a more sustainable home is a good start. Michael Mobbs in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia has done it and will show you how: Click Here. He lives off grid in an inner suburban terrace house. He generates his own energy  and much of his own food. So it really is doable. Recycling, this is so 1970s I shouldn’t even have to mention it. Maybe a look at the Zero Waste Movement might help. Air Pollution. All pollution in fact is a problem. Think of Bill Mollison’s quote: Waste is a resource is the wrong place. Starting there can and will change the world dramatically. Wildlife conservation is as much a given as recycling, I’d have thought but to that we add the specialisation of pollinator protection. No bees, little food variation. Pineapples, wheat, rice and potatoes. Not much of a diet. So this is an area we call make a difference. Public transport, pushbikes and so on as well as the move to electric vehicles helps. Provided the electricity is green, this will also help with #5, air pollution. Youth, it’s a cliche to say they are the future but educating children on these matters works. Way back in 1972, I had a teacher who, I see now, while a sufferer of anxiety, instilled in me the path towards this podcast. It all started with the wastefulness and pointlessness of coloured toilet paper. Yes such a thing did and I assume may still exist. Simple changes seem to make the biggest differences. After all, white toilet paper and even recycled white-ish toilet paper is much better for checking bowel health as well as planetary health. So, little things in the minds of children can have exponential change.   So there we have a Green manifesto and a set of steps to save the world. Let’s aim high!   To that end a friend and colleague of mine Rich Bowden and myself are starting a new podcast and blog in the near future. The Real Food Chain. There’s a link to the Facebook page in the show notes. The podcast will be interview based so keep your eye and ear out for that one. I’ll let you know when it launches.   And that brings us to the end of this week’s podcast.   If you’ve liked what you heard, could please follow the link in the show notes and vote for World Organic News in the Australian Podcast Awards Click here Thanks in advance.   Any suggestions, feedback or criticisms of the podcast or blog are most welcome. email me at podcast@worldorganicnews.com. Thank you for listening and I'll be back in our second year next week. **** Links WORLD ORGANIC NEWS in the Australian Podcast Awards Click here Bacteria Surf the Fungal Web – Permie Flix http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-e5R   Endless economic growth – Joy of Reading http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-e6p   Let’s all build an environmental mindset. – The Food Geographer http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-e6s   Quote:   Food growing – volunteer at an urban farm Vegetarian cooking – ask someone to teach you How to make your home more sustainable – turn your apartment into a garden! Recycling schemes in your area – contact your Council, support Hubbub’s new coffee cup campaign Air pollution – plant more trees, sign a campaign every week Wildlife conservation – vertical farming, or identifying bird songs to help conservation Improving public transport and biking – write a letter to your government rep. Young people and education – learn how to teach or host workshops at school   End Quote. World Organic News No-dig gardening book Sustainable House: click here Zero Waste Movement The Real Food Chain

Links WORLD ORGANIC NEWS in the Australian Podcast Awards Click here Agroecology: A Multifacted Solution | The Green Economist http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-e8p   Eating from the Garden | smallholding dreams http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-e9U   Grid Storage Reality | Power For USA http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-ea1 **** This is the World Organic News for the week ending 6th of February 2017. Jon Moore reporting!   The blog  smallholding dreams brings us a post: Eating from the Garden. This post addresses the alleged shortage in the UK of courgettes, that’s zucchinis for everyone outside France and the UK and Iceberg lettuces.   Quote: Apparently, there is a shortage of iceberg lettuce and courgettes in the shops  – um duh of course there is, it is winter. Seriously people, what happened to eating seasonal, local food? End Quote.   What indeed? We had a similar situation here during the drought of 80-85 when farmers weren’t able to feed themselves let alone their stock. This was an “ah ha”  moment for me. Somewhere between settlement and the post war “get big or get out” wave sweeping through agriculture, our farmers, at least enough of them, had moved from homesteaders to agribusinesses.   Yet the effort and space required to grow our own food is really quite small.   Quote: You really don’t need a lot of time (or space) to grow veggies, I work full time at the day job and at weekends I am the shepherd, beekeeper, dog (and goat) trainer, chick-hatcher cheese-maker and chicken killer/butcher here on the smallholding as well as growing all our fruit and veggies. It is amazing what you can do with a few hours a week. End Quote.   Even in a suburban setting, vegetable production is not that difficult. We did it a few summers back on a four radius circular garden. By having your food at hand, you just need to pick the number of lettuce leaves you need for each meal. The same thing applies to silverbeet, spinach and so on. Beans and peas keep producing, pretty much as long as you keep picking them. Zucchini and squash produce so heavily you’ll get sick of eating them. One square metre of rocket can be trimmed in strips and it will continually regrow.   Yes, this gardening will likely lead to chicken ownership and we all know chickens are the gateway stock to small mammals but that’s not a bad thing.   In fact, before you know you too will be dreaming of a smallholding.   The blog The Green Economist brings a post entitled: Agroecology: A Multifaceted Solution. They make the interesting point in regards Asia and sub-saharan Africa.   Quote: According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), smallholder farms provide up to 80 percent of the food supply in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Although farmers work small plots of land (average size is 2 hectares), they produce a variety of crops with high yields and very few inputs such as manufactured fertilizer. End Quote.   Agroecology may be answer for all the world. Small area farms, 2 hectares, or 5 acres in the old money, can produce an enormous amount of food. Feeding not just the farmers but sustaining nearby urban settlements. By staying small, the workload for each farm is not excessive but incomes can be.   A turnover of $100,000 per acre is not unheard of in the developed economies. In that situation, four acres are put to animal husbandry to enrich and maintain the acre of produce.   The article goes on to document the application of agroecology in Uganda. Well worth a full if you feel so inclined.   Hand in hand with clean food, produced by viable farmers we need a solution to our energy dilemma. Whilst renewables are now the least expensive way to generate power, the question of storage is continually thrown up in argument against a fully renewable system.   The blog Power For USA with their post: Grid Storage Reality provides a workable solution.   Quote: There currently is 20,000 MW of pumped storage in the United States, with the potential for an additional 31,000 MW. While substantial, it still falls far short of the storage capacity needed to eliminate a large portion of fossil fuel generating capacity. End Quote.   Yet this is both workable and is working. A similar system is in place in Scotland and another is being built in Queensland, Australia. Basically pumped storage relies upon the potential energy of a mass at a higher altitude over one at a lower altitude. Water is held in a reservoir. This reservoir is connected by pipes and pumps to a reservoir at a higher altitude, that is, up hill. In the Queensland example an old gold mine contains the two reservoirs. As excess power is generated, say from solar panels during the day, that excess is used to run pumps and drive the water from the lower to the upper reservoir. At night, when demand exceeds supply, the water runs back into the lower reservoir turning the pumps “backwards” so to speak, turning them from pumps to generators.   This is old, well tested, mature technology. We’ve had hydroelectric power for over a century. The hydro parts of this system are proven. The setup in Scotland has been running for at least ten years and is also proven. In that case they use off peak, that is cheaper electricity, to drive the water uphill and they sell electricity to the grid when the prices are higher. It is a simple matter to replace “off peak” with renewable energy.   What’s stopping us? The usual, vested interests, financing, the urgency for the need to change hasn’t dawned yet, who knows what else? We can do this, we can “make do” with current level of battery technology and use that to cover the gaps pumped storage can’t cover. Batteries will continue to improve but we have a technology we can use now. The more quickly we move the better.   On this technology and on the ideas of agroecology discussed earlier. We can make the leap from polluting to clean, we can make the leap from centralised food distribution to individual food sovereignty. Indeed And that brings us to the end of this week’s podcast.   If you’ve liked what you heard, could please follow the link in the show notes and vote for World Organic News in the Australian Podcast Awards Click here Thanks in advance.   Any suggestions, feedback or criticisms of the podcast or blog are most welcome. email me at podcast@worldorganicnews.com.   Thank you for listening and I'll be back in a week.   **** Links Agroecology: A Multifacted Solution | The Green Economist http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-e8p   Eating from the Garden | smallholding dreams http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-e9U   Grid Storage Reality | Power For USA http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-ea1  

Links   WORLD ORGANIC NEWS in the Australian Podcast Awards Click here   Addressing smallholder farmers’ needs with green manure cover crops and agroforestry in Zambia http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-eay   Improved manure management – getting more from a limited resource | Africa RISING http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-ebT   Conservation agriculture – a system to adapt to climate variability and declining soil fertility in Zambia | Africa RISING http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-edg   Soil networks become more connected and take up more carbon as nature restoration progresses – Permie Flix http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-eeh   ***   This is the World Organic News for the week ending 13th of February 2017. Jon Moore reporting!   This weeks focus is Small Holders! I saw a graphic on facebook the other day showing the production from industrial farms Versus smallholders. 30% of the world's food production coming from the industrial sector and 70% from smallholders.   This is a sector in need of support. Starvation or rather the threat of starvation tends drive systems to stability. If we change something we might well starve next winter. This is quite understandable yet something over which we have no control is changing, The Climate.   Watching an edition of Landline on the ABC last month I heard a farmer here in Australia telling the interviewer he was certain the climate was changing. His evidence? Silage making used to start in the first week of November, late Spring. Now He starts in the last week of August, two and a half months earlier. Even Alice Springs, in the dead centre of the Australian Continent is now regularly receiving rain during winter. So when the people on the ground can see the changes we need to take heed.   Smallhalodings are more resilient as a rule. They have greater tree cover, deeper soils full or organic matter and are by their nature not monocultural. A variety of crops and livestock are kept. This means some form of production will always occur barring a ten year drought. And these are happening too.   The blog Africa RISING brings us three posts: Addressing smallholder farmers’ needs with green manure cover crops and agroforestry in Zambia, Conservation agriculture – a system to adapt to climate variability and declining soil fertility in Zambia & Improved manure management – getting more from a limited resource.   The danger for smallholders is the enticement of the petrochemical industry and the call of “The West”. Perhaps fortunately inorganic fertilisers are 3 to 5 times the price they are in Europe. Growing as if these fertilisers had been applied but not doing so depletes the soil and leads inevitably to the collapse of the system. A poverty trap of enormous proportions.   Africa RISING provides a solution. An example from Zambia: Quote: In Eastern Province of Zambia, farmers are being offered a range of solutions by Africa RISING that provide a way out of this poverty trap. These technologies, options, and approaches include drought- and stress-tolerant maize germplasm, conservation agriculture (CA), improved rotation and intercropping with grain legumes, agroforestry, and green manure cover crops. End Quote.   In effect, apart from the seed selection options, a return to the traditional smallholder’s way of farming.   That being said, pretty much the entire globe is now trapped in a money system of some sort. The need for income has also driven many mixed livestock/cropping smallholders to feed off crop residues rather than leave them on the soil surface to protect that precious resource.   Quote: The use of CA (CA = Conservation Agriculture) principles (minimum soil disturbance, crop residue retention, and diversification through rotation and intercropping) hinges on the ability of farmers to retain sufficient surface crop residues to protect the soil from erosion, runoff, evaporation, and excessive temperatures. However, farmers in mixed crop-livestock systems face competing demands for these residues because they also feed them to their animals. Green manure and selected agroforestry species are therefore grown to improve the soil, generate biomass for ground cover, and provide fodder; some also produce high protein grain for food, feed, or for sale on the market. End Quote   This is the way I’d like to see more of the world’s agronomic resources put to use. It overlaps rather nicely with the methods and principles of Permaculture.   And the system has been tested in the fire of El Nino. Quote: Conservation agriculture systems have been successfully tried and tested in eastern Zambia since 2011. More than 20,000 farmers have been exposed to CA by SIMLEZA-Africa RISING, the predecessor project of Africa RISING, which continues to sensitize and train more farmers. Farmers benefitted from increased use of CA technologies by gradually increasing crop yields leading to a solid yield benefit of 117% (1942 kg/ha) in a manually direct seeded maize crop following cowpea as compared with the conventional practice in the 2014/2015 cropping season. Rip-line seeding led to a 109% yield benefit (1993 kg/ha) as compared to the conventionally tilled practice. It is the years with seasonal dry-spells and erratic rainfall, such as this last El Niño year, where CA provides its greatest benefits to smallholder farming systems. End Quote.   This stuff works, this will feed the world without any doubt. I used to think some large broad acre grain producers may be needed to cover severe drought and flood conditions. Upon reflection and through a real estate search of north western Europe I discovered nearly every village had a grain mill, local varieties of wheat were grown, well, locally. A return to this sort of diversification may be still be an option. Either way a workable transport system is essential to move foods from areas of surplus to those of deficiency.   The principles of Conservation Agriculture are well established as workable. The previous quote showed how it can be introduced: by running it next to paddocks not using the CA principles. Seeing is believing.   Our last article this week is from the blog Permie Flix. They tend to specialise in Permaculture related videos but this is a written post. Soil networks become more connected and take up more carbon as nature restoration progresses.   These underground systems just become more fascinating for me with each passing article. Not only do these fungal communities communicate between trees, pass nutrients in exchange for sugar they also sequester carbon! I wonder what would happen if we ended deforestation and then started reafforestation? Do you think we could first ameliorate and then reverse the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? It’s almost as if the great forests of the world act as a buffer to atmospheric variations. Who'd have thunk it?   And that brings us to the end of this week’s podcast.   If you’ve liked what you heard, could please follow the link in the show notes and vote for World Organic News in the Australian Podcast Awards Click here Thanks in advance.   Any suggestions, feedback or criticisms of the podcast or blog are most welcome. email me at podcast@worldorganicnews.com.   Thank you for listening and I'll be back in a week.   *** Links   WORLD ORGANIC NEWS in the Australian Podcast Awards Click here   Addressing smallholder farmers’ needs with green manure cover crops and agroforestry in Zambia http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-eay   Improved manure management – getting more from a limited resource | Africa RISING http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-ebT   Conservation agriculture – a system to adapt to climate variability and declining soil fertility in Zambia | Africa RISING http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-edg   Soil networks become more connected and take up more carbon as nature restoration progresses – Permie Flix http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-eeh  

Links WORLD ORGANIC NEWS in the Australian Podcast Awards Click here   The Push & Pull Technology – Foolish Family Farm http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-ehh Push-Pull http://www.push-pull.net/   Rice – Duck – Azolla – Fish Cultivation: An Example of Sustainable Farming – Foolish Family Farm http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-ehk The Azolla Foundation http://theazollafoundation.org/features/rice-duck-azolla-loach-cultivation/ Paying Off the Farm! Regenerative Agriculture. http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-ehA   ****   This is the World Organic News for the week ending 20th of February 2017. Jon Moore reporting!   This week the focus is upon creative thinking! Two posts from Foolish Family Farm on creative techniques based upon the observation of Nature get us started: The Push & Pull Technology and Rice – Duck – Azolla – Fish Cultivation: An Example of Sustainable Farming.   The Push-Pull Technology comes from sub-Saharan Africa. It uses plants to to create safe growing environments for cash crops.   Quote: Stemborers, parasitic striga weeds and poor soil fertility are the three main constraints to efficient production of cereals in SSA. End quote.   Cereals here refers to maize production. Understanding the life cycles of both the stemborers and the striga weed is essential in creating a defense against them.   Long Quote: The technology involves intercropping maize with a repellent plant, such as desmodium, and planting an attractive trap plant, such as Napier grass, as a border crop around this intercrop. Gravid stemborer females are repelled or deterred away from the target crop (push) by stimuli that mask host apparency while they are simultaneously attracted (pull) to the trap crop, leaving the target crop protected. Desmodium produces root exudates some of which stimulate the germination of striga seeds and others inhibit their growth after germination. This combination provides a novel means of in situ reduction of the striga seed bank in the soil through efficient suicidal germination even in the presence of graminaceous host plants. End Quote.   The two part nature of this approach appeals to me. Not only are the pests driven away from the cash crop, they are given alternative target crops which keeps them occupied. This is quite simply working with Nature not against it. The alternative is to wear the losses these “pests” cause or to spray insecticides and herbicides with all their inherent dangers to both the health of the farm workers and to the soil microbiome.   This sort of solution is only possible with a thorough understanding of the biology of the crops, the insects and the weeds. It is a long term solution without the quite considerable annual cost of poisons. A win/win situation for local people and soils. A not so good solution for the shareholders of poison companies.   There are links to the both the post and the Push-Pull website in the show notes.   The next solution comes from East Asia. Dr Furono has solved a series of problems in organic rice production by combining rice with ducks, fish and a water borne cover crop.   Quote: The operations simultaneously raise Aigamo ducklings, loaches (a species of fish), rice and Azolla. The ducklings provide integrated pest management, replacing pesticides and herbicides by naturally controlling predaceous pest populations and digging up or eating competing weeds.   The loach and duck waste, combined with the nitrate fixing properties of Azolla, increase soil nutrition and maintain productivity levels that are comparable to conventional farming operations without the need for costly synthetic fertilizers. The Azolla plants can later be harvested for animal feed. End Quote   Here we see through the lens of Permaculture, the concept of dual use. The fish and the ducks both eat pests and fertilise the paddys. The Azolla blocks the growth of unwanted plants and provides nitrogen fixing as well as proving cover crop and animal feed duties. Stacking these four species together creates an output greater than the sum of its parts. Again removing poisons from the system, allowing the earth to begin the process of cleaning herself through time. Healthier soil, healthier food, healthier people. What’s not to like?   A link to both the article and to the Azolla Foundation is in the show notes.   Now we come to the pointy end of regenerative agriculture where the theory and practice meets the reality of financing the whole thing.   Ridgedale Permaculture brings a series of video presentations but I will focus upon one: Paying Off the Farm! Regenerative Agriculture. This longish, by modern terms, video, 16 minutes, shows how the good folk at Ridgedale both financed their 10 ha, 25 acres and how they plan to be free and clear in five years. Barring droughts, floods, fires and pestilence they seem to be on a winner. They openly discuss their costings and income which is very generous of them. I would recommend you watch the entire video. It might just be the spark you need to make the leap into the organic farm you’ve always dreamt of.   A little forewarning! Next week will see the podcast as normal but the three following weeks I will be traveling through Ireland. I have a mobile recording setup so things should sound the same. Additionally I hope to speak with people who are getting their hands into the dirt of Ireland. I have a tentative booking with a beekeeper and another with a grower of tree based labyrinths. All in all I think I’ll have quite a bit of interesting content to share with you over then next few months. Not sure yet if these interviews will be added to the weekly podcast or published as supplements but they are coming so look out for them.   And that brings us to the end of this week’s podcast.   If you’ve liked what you heard, could please follow the link in the show notes and vote for World Organic News in the Australian Podcast Awards Click here Thanks in advance.   Any suggestions, feedback or criticisms of the podcast or blog are most welcome. email me at podcast@worldorganicnews.com.   Thank you for listening and I'll be back in a week.   *** Links   WORLD ORGANIC NEWS in the Australian Podcast Awards Click here   The Push & Pull Technology – Foolish Family Farm http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-ehh Push-Pull http://www.push-pull.net/   Rice – Duck – Azolla – Fish Cultivation: An Example of Sustainable Farming – Foolish Family Farm http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-ehk The Azolla Foundation http://theazollafoundation.org/features/rice-duck-azolla-loach-cultivation/ Paying Off the Farm! Regenerative Agriculture. http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-ehA

Links WORLD ORGANIC NEWS in the Australian Podcast Awards Click here   Five Notable Organic Gardening Methods | Garden Variety http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-ej0   Keyhole Garden Images https://www.google.com.au/search?q=keyhole+gardens&rlz=1C5CHFA_enAU695AU695&espv=2&biw=1296&bih=648&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjiyL_c8aTSAhXKjpQKHfEgCuQQ_AUIBigB   Hugelkultur Images https://www.google.com.au/search?q=keyhole+gardens&rlz=1C5CHFA_enAU695AU695&espv=2&biw=1296&bih=648&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjiyL_c8aTSAhXKjpQKHfEgCuQQ_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=hugelkultur&*   Lasagna Garden Images https://www.google.com.au/search?q=Deep+Mulch+Gardening&rlz=1C5CHFA_enAU695AU695&espv=2&biw=1296&bih=648&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiY7JD98qTSAhVDtpQKHQPbAWIQ_AUIBygC#tbm=isch&q=+Lasagna+Gardening   ****   This is the World Organic News for the week ending 27th of February 2017. Jon Moore reporting!   This week we focus upon five gardening ideas! These come from the blog post: Five Notable Organic Gardening Methods by  Garden Variety.   Four of these techniques are no-dig and one involves intensive digging. I assume by now you know my preference is for no-dig but I realise there are people out there happy to bend their backs and turn the soil.   We’ll begin with the digging system: French Intensive Gardening.  The post gives a good description of the process.   Quote: The French Intensive Gardening method was re-established in a two acre garden plot just outside of Paris in the late 1800’s. The purpose was to grow an abundance of vegetables year round in a several mid-sized growing beds for the home and markets. Generally, a wide bed (5ft in width) is dug approximately 12 inches in depth. The soil from this bed is placed to the side.  At the bottom of the trench, the soil is turned another 12 inches and then loosened with a sturdy garden fork and 1/3 yard of compost added. An additional bed is dug utilizing this same technique. After this is done, put the reserved soil from the first bed is placed back into the trench and mixed with 1/2 yard of compost (or manure). End Quote.   This double digging and moving soil about can be done within the confines of a single bed. A spade’s width of soil is removed at one end. The soil under it is dug and loosened. The next spade width of soil is turned onto the first and the second dug and loosened and so on until the end of the bed is reached and the first soil removed is added to the last spade width of the garden bed. Manures and compost being added throughout the process. As you can see this system requires a large amount of effort and it comes from a time when labour costs, let alone personal time costs, were much lower. The idea of double digging was to aerate the soil and to bury potential weed seeds. The bed was left bare to the elements until the plantings covered the surface area.   The system works and is productive. It provided food all year round and that’s a good starting point for any system. Sorry you listeners in Canada, the Northern parts of the USA and Scandinavia. I won’t even glance at our listeners in Russia.   The annual soil turning and the surface of the garden bed left exposed seems to point against this method. I’ve heard it argued that this a good first year technique, especially when the soil is compacted and/or a pan have formed below the surface. Masanobu Fukuoka, of The One Straw Revolution, faced just this problem in his orchard. He overcame this not by digging but by broadcasting daikon radish seeds and allowing this three foot monster radishes to loosen the soil for him. Your choice.   Now to the no-dig methods. We start with Keyhole Gardening. This system relies on a garden bed with a walkway cut into it. Usually circular in form The beds are uber raised to waist level. The post explains:   Quote: Keyhole Gardening was introduced in Africa by the Consortium for Southern Africa Food Security Emergency (C-SAFE) to help ailing and frail Africans grow their own produce with minimum effort by means of a specialized raised bed. The bed, which is waist high and in the shape of a keyhole, allows for standing and leaning for long periods and is built using stacked rocks, bricks, wood or pieces of concrete. A compost bin is placed in the center of the bed and as material breaks down, the resulting composted nutrients are added to the soil. End Quote.   There is much to recommend this system. The appealing circular nature of the beds is great for setting it’s size to the reach of the gardener. Circles aren’t overly efficient in space use but maybe you could interconnect hexagonal beds like a beehive? Anyway I’ve provided a link to the google images page for keyhole gardens in the show notes.   Now we come to Hügelkultur! Quote: Hügelkultur (a German word for hill mound) is a growing method that is believed to have originated from Eastern Europe thousands of years ago. Widely utilized by permaculture enthusiasts, it is based on the concept of natural occurring decomposition of plant material in forests; ergo fallen trees, branches and other plant material which over time has decayed and created a healthy biomass of rich hummus. The process of layered debris is continuous thus creating an organic, lush, green ecosystem teeming with beneficial life. End Quote.   I believe this system is also good for extending the growing season as the heat generated by the decomposing pile of organic material maintains a level of warmth into Autumn/Fall. I saw a man using these gardens in mountainous country when frosts can arrive at most times of the year. It takes some time and effort to set up a hugelkultur garden but the work tends to be maintenance over time rather than a re-start each year. I’m not sure how long these garden last but I’m assuming five years as a minimum. Again I’ve put a link to images of Hugelkultur gardens in the show notes.   Onto Deep Mulch Gardening.   Quote: The Deep Mulch Gardening method was made popular by gardening expert Ruth Stout in the 1960’s, offers a low maintenance-no work philosophy. Garden beds are covered in large amounts of hay, straw, leaves, pine needles, sawdust and vegetable waste periodically to create a barrier to deter weeds and enriching existing soil underneath as it gradually decomposes. When starting a new bed, it is recommended to mulch at least 8 inches thick over a planting area. End Quote.   This system can be used on top of the French Intensive beds if you’ve given up on digging. The idea is to mimic Nature, always a good starting point, by laying an 8 to 12 inch (20 to 30cm) layer on the garden bed as per the floor of a forest. Idea is to save the soil from temperature extremes and drying out alternating with flooding. The mulch acts as a sort of leveling tool for water flow. Mulch also attracts biota to both live within it and to assist in its decomposition. I’ve used urine soaked goat bedding as a mulch over yellow very sandy soil. Within one growing season the soil was black, rich in humus and at least 18 inches, (50cm) deep. I can, therefore, confirm this system works.   A variation on this system is the Lasagna Garden.   Quote: The Lasagna Gardening movement was conceived by Patricia Lanza and is a method of layering compostable material on top of a planting area to form a large mound which, over time, will decompose into viable and loamy soil and compost. The material normally used for layering is wet newspapers, peat moss, sand, compost, grass clippings, shredded leaves and wood ash. End Quote   This is a more formal version of the deep mulch system. First year production can be less than expected but not necessarily so. Either way, production increases each year as the material decomposes and feeds the soil. As with the other no-dig systems, Lasagna gardens need to be topped up each year with organic materials. This is a whole easier than double digging. If we let the soil systems do the work for us, we will find they do so 24 hours a day every day of the year. If we keep the soil covered, not with plastic but with organic matter, we will protect it, we will be nurturing it and it will support us in return.   A link to the google images page for Lasagna gardening is in the show notes.   And that brings us to the end of this week’s podcast.   If you’ve liked what you heard, could please follow the link in the show notes and vote for World Organic News in the Australian Podcast Awards Click here Thanks in advance.   Any suggestions, feedback or criticisms of the podcast or blog are most welcome. email me at podcast@worldorganicnews.com.   Thank you for listening and I'll be back in a week.   **** Links WORLD ORGANIC NEWS in the Australian Podcast Awards Click here   Five Notable Organic Gardening Methods | Garden Variety http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-ej0   Keyhole Garden Images https://www.google.com.au/search?q=keyhole+gardens&rlz=1C5CHFA_enAU695AU695&espv=2&biw=1296&bih=648&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjiyL_c8aTSAhXKjpQKHfEgCuQQ_AUIBigB   Hugelkultur Images https://www.google.com.au/search?q=keyhole+gardens&rlz=1C5CHFA_enAU695AU695&espv=2&biw=1296&bih=648&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjiyL_c8aTSAhXKjpQKHfEgCuQQ_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=hugelkultur&*   Lasagna Garden Images https://www.google.com.au/search?q=Deep+Mulch+Gardening&rlz=1C5CHFA_enAU695AU695&espv=2&biw=1296&bih=648&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiY7JD98qTSAhVDtpQKHQPbAWIQ_AUIBygC#tbm=isch&q=+Lasagna+Gardening  

Links WORLD ORGANIC NEWS in the Australian Podcast Awards Click here   Conventional not Organic Farmers Should Pay a Premium | Positive Health Leadership http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-emE ****   This is the World Organic News for the week ending 8th of March 2017. Jon Moore reporting!   This week we begin with a very interesting notion: Conventional not Organic Farmers Should Pay a Premium from the blog: Positive Health Leadership.   This is an idea that’s been rolling round in the back of my mind for sometime. From the post: Quote: Currently, organic farmers pay a premium to grow and sell organic food – while conventional farmers pay nothing additional.  This also translates to a higher cost to consumers for organic food.  Thus it is a deterrent from buying or growing organic food. Despite the premium costs associated with organic foods, reports suggest purchases of organic foods are growing dramatically, over 100% per year. End Quote.   There’s more to this than meets the eye!   A further quote: Quote: From a systems perspective, organic farmers are a positive contributing interdependent component of the whole system.  Organic farmers improve the system while contributing to it, by providing healthy food to humans, without taking away from the whole system.  Conventional farmers on the other hand are not able to function without getting external inputs in the form of petroleum fertilizers to be able to produce their output.  The fertilizers then hurt the whole system in many ways such as contributing to climate change, leaching carbon, and by hurting other species such as bee’s and in many other ways. End Quote.   To all these points we can add: the long term health costs of obesity and type 2 diabetes; the probable link between glyphosate and cancers, the known links between organophosphates and organochlorines and cancers. And those last two chemicals are persistent in the environment taking generations to decompose to safer compounds. Then we can add in the unaccounted for, financially,  carbon effects of manufacturing and transporting pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers.   These health costs are not included in the cost of food because in most governing systems agriculture and health are separate departments. A silo effect takes over and as an example from here in Australia and I imagine elsewhere in the world, salmonella is endemic in the guts and housing systems used to produce chicken meat. Rather than the Departments of Primary Industry financing a cull of infected birds and systems it is left up to the Department of Health and the Food Safety Authority to enforce strict cooking controls to ensure the salmonella is destroyed just prior to consumption.   I know, this is ridiculous. It exposes so many more people, from the stock handlers to the factory processors to the cooks and then exposes the public if an error occurs in the cooking process. If anyone is infected, the health systems bears the cost.   And if you want to produce organic food for sale you need to pay a rent to an authority who will allow you to put a logo on your food. If you wish to continue depleting soil carbon, encouraging erosion, over producing a commodity (in the USA and the EU at any rate) you will be paid a subsidy to do so.   Quote: If  polluters paid a premium, the system would change from encouraging the use of polluting methods to supporting, encouraging, nurturing and reinforcing health promoting practices.  Such a change could have dramatic positive effects on the quality of our personal and planetary health. This change would also make organic, not petroleum laced food, the less expensive and natural, or default choice. End Quote.   So what’s to be done. We can lobby, annoy, become the squeaky wheel and make life as difficult as possible for the non-organic sector. We can buy organic, grow your own, swap seeds and still the Monsantos and Bayers of this world seem to steam roll along. I see a time coming, however, where the mounting evidence will overwhelm even the legal departments and the lobbyist’s cash. We can must support independent science, we must stand behind those doing the detective work. Too many have been attacked and vilified using the “Tobacco is healthy” playbook from the 20th century.   There is change coming and any of us who witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall, the dissolution of the USSR and the economic rise of China can simultaneously see both the suddenness of change and the years of work to bring it about. We are and have been since WW2 fighting against chemical oil based food systems and the data is well and truly in, now we fight the entrenched interests, the political inertia and then we win!   And that brings us to the end of this week’s podcast.   If you’ve liked what you heard, could please follow the link in the show notes and vote for World Organic News in the Australian Podcast Awards Click here Thanks in advance.   Any suggestions, feedback or criticisms of the podcast or blog are most welcome. email me at podcast@worldorganicnews.com.   Thank you for listening and I'll be back in a week.   ****   Links WORLD ORGANIC NEWS in the Australian Podcast Awards Click here   Conventional not Organic Farmers Should Pay a Premium | Positive Health Leadership http://wp.me/p5Cqpo-emE