Farms and Carbon

[Sappho]

I was alluding to current farming practices, which encourage the depletion of soil organic matter in the persuit of short/medium term profit.

Boxy, what do you think of vertical farming?

[boxy]

I think it's a high tech solution, that may be viable in the future, if society can remain stable, continue to develop technologically, find a viable/cheap long term power source and get over it's fear of recycling human waste. I've heard quotes of 1% per annum reduction in global farmland due to degredation/urban encroachment. This is not sustainable, given the fact that the world population will continue to grow in the medium term.

Vegetables are already being grown hydroponically, in huge single story glasshouses, in Australia.

[Sappho]

Yeah... I'm inclined to think it a good idea also. Acknowledging your points I would add that it reduces the transport and so carbon emissions... and there are experiements where they are using nutrient rich gas to feed the plants rather than water and soil or other such mediums, and it works.

[Outlaw Yogi]

There's a video answering some of these question - 'How Cuba survived peak oil'.
Meant a complete restructuring of society, especially with regards to transport, and it took them 5 years to fix their soils plus farming was brought back into cities/suburbs ... not on top of the world yet but they're still kicking along despite big bad unfriendly U$A.

Cheap energy? .. can't beat PV solar ... although I like solar thermal 'coz its easier to generate higher voltages with a turbine.
Anybody ever noticed the cleared areas along large electrical supply routes tend to act like wind tunnels?
Seems like a logical place for a heap of mini wind turbines to me.

Human waste is good $#!+ man.

Urban encroachment on rural land? watched/seen it going on for as long as I can remember and almost everywhere I've been and I've never been able to come up with a viable/feasible scenario, except maybe the Pol Pot option on how to abate it. How do you make high density living look appealing?
As for the factor driving it, population expansion ... well I suppose the Chinese one child policy may inspire others. India had a go at limiting population growth ... offered free 'whistle-cock' operations, even resorted to kidnap and sterylising.
Umm ... failing voluntary non-procreation regimes, the thinning the population via war theme still seems like our most likely fallback option.

I've worked in some of those hot-houses/terrariums ... fortunately they're plastic, not glass ... still gets pretty steamy though.
Heaps (maybe most) of hot-house growers hand pollinate [or pay $20 p/h]. Hot-house tomatoe (and cucumber too I think) growers want bumble bees introduced to OZ because they 'buzz pollinate' which tomatoe flowers require, rather than most bees which just do accidental random wipes. The Blue banded honey bee is an OZ native which buzz pollinates and will live in terrarium conditions. Usually they dig singular nests in mud, but I've seen individuals nesting in aluminium tube. They're a bit bigger and hairier than Euro honey bees and have blue rather than black stripes, which vary from pale blue to deep metalic blue.

[Outlaw Yogi]

Eco-farming could double food output of poor countries, says UN
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... ood-output

A move by farmers in developing countries to ecological agriculture, away from chemical fertilisers and pesticides, could double food production within a decade, a UN report says.

Insect-trapping plants in Kenya and ducks eating weeds in Bangladesh's rice paddies are among examples of recommendations for feeding the world's 7 million people, which the UN says will become about 9 billion by 2050.

"Agriculture is at a crossroads," says the study by Olivier de Schutter, the UN special reporter on the right to food, in a drive to depress record food prices and avoid the costly oil-dependent model of industrial farming.

So far, eco-farming projects in 57 nations demonstrated average crop yield gains of 80 per cent by tapping natural methods for enhancing soil and protecting against pests, it says.

Recent projects in 20 African countries resulted in a doubling of crop yields within three to 10 years. Those lessons could be widely mimicked elsewhere, it adds.

[Outlaw Yogi]

Not carbon related, but a sustainability issue, and all economies including agricultural ones depend on sustainability to continue operating.

US farmers fear the return of the Dust Bowl
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/835907 ... -Bowl.html

'Since then,' says David Brauer of the US Agriculture Department agency, the Ogallala Research Service, 'we have drained enough water to half-fill Lake Erie of the Great Lakes.' Billions upon billions of gallons – or, as they prefer to measure it, acre-feet of water, each one equivalent to a football field flooded a foot deep – have been pumped. 'The problem,' he goes on, 'is that in a brief half-century we have drawn the Ogallala level down from an average of 240ft to about 80.'

[mellie]

Not carbon related, but a sustainability issue, and all economies including agricultural ones depend on sustainability to continue operating.

US farmers fear the return of the Dust Bowl
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/835907 ... -Bowl.html

'Since then,' says David Brauer of the US Agriculture Department agency, the Ogallala Research Service, 'we have drained enough water to half-fill Lake Erie of the Great Lakes.' Billions upon billions of gallons – or, as they prefer to measure it, acre-feet of water, each one equivalent to a football field flooded a foot deep – have been pumped. 'The problem,' he goes on, 'is that in a brief half-century we have drawn the Ogallala level down from an average of 240ft to about 80.'

Oil and gas are RENEWABLE resources
The ALP/Dem/Lib/Nat/Greens have an agenda to transfer our oil to foreign interests (pg2
The oil exploration giants CAPPED all of the good fields found in Australia in the 1950s
There is no world shortage of oil or gas.
There is no Australian shortage of oil, gas or coal
Wind and solar are jokes.
Since 1971 known reserves rose by 1,500 million barrels
In that time we consumed 800 million barrels
There are numerous alternatives to oil/gas for fuel
The sea bed (60 per cent of the earth) hasn't been fully explored
How they lie to you about nuclear energy
Oil Price Parity (OPEC Agreement) and excise make the biggest bite in our high prices.




Oil and gas reserves are renewable

Oil and coal don't come from decayed matter. There is no chemical relationship between the hydrocarbons in black coal and those in vegetation or dinosaur bodies. Brown coal is a different matter. It comes from decayed vegetable matter (peat, etc)

Oil and gas are condensates from the magma (the earth's molten core). Nearly all fields are being topped up from below. The top-up process is known as Abiotic Oil. The hydrocarbons come from geo-pressurised gas. Many fields considered "exhausted" have come to life again.

The Yates field in Texas is a prime example. Such fields stop flowing when the source of inflowing oil from below becomes blocked as a paper filter becomes clogged and impregnable. Nature finds another path and the oil field can be tapped again.

Russia is now a big oil producer because they understand the process and drill at depths better than 30,000 feet (9,000 metres).

Coal too is unlimited and renewable. It is driven of the magma (molten core of the earth). It comes up as gas, is trapped, condenses, and by a chemical bacterial process changes to oil and eventually to coal.

The bacterial change is an observable process At Laverton (Vic) in the RAAF, we had a Fuel Section dedicated to solving the problem of aircraft fuel tanks and underground tanks. We grew the various contaminants in glass tanks.

Huge grotesque black shapes grew in those tanks (as they did in aircraft tanks). They did no harm in glass tanks, but when they broke up by vibration in an aircraft, they stopped fuel flow through the fuel lines, so the pilot and crew had to walk home.

CAPPED OIL EXPLORATION IS "EXPLOITATION"

The oil barons drill to test quality, using speculators money, find the hydro-carbons they knew were there, declare the finds uneconomical, cap the wells, and sit back as the share values plummet to zilch, and then they buy them up. The oil barons never relinquished one oil lease that they declared unviable because they knew they could go there any time and get the oil we paid to find.

http://members.iimetro.com.au/~hubbca/O ... %20job.htm

[Pastafarian]

Oil and gas are RENEWABLE resources
The ALP/Dem/Lib/Nat/Greens have an agenda to transfer our oil to foreign interests (pg2
The oil exploration giants CAPPED all of the good fields found in Australia in the 1950s
There is no world shortage of oil or gas.
There is no Australian shortage of oil, gas or coal
Wind and solar are jokes.
Since 1971 known reserves rose by 1,500 million barrels
In that time we consumed 800 million barrels
There are numerous alternatives to oil/gas for fuel
The sea bed (60 per cent of the earth) hasn't been fully explored
How they lie to you about nuclear energy
Oil Price Parity (OPEC Agreement) and excise make the biggest bite in our high prices.

See its posting stuff like this which makes me skeptical as to whether you attended uni at all or even passed if you did. You've posted a web page which states this with no references whatsoever. My BS antenna is further raised when the same author has links to pages on illuminati, free energy, ufos and new world order.

[mantra]

The site is dodgy - no doubt one set up by a Texan oil baren to spruik propaganda. I like the claim that the sea bed (60% of the earth) - hasn't been explored. In other words - let's rip up the rest of it drilling for oil.

[Pastafarian]

The site is dodgy - no doubt one set up by a Texan oil baren to spruik propaganda. I like the claim that the sea bed (60% of the earth) - hasn't been explored. In other words - let's rip up the rest of it drilling for oil.

Also had a further search, usual anti-vaccination, anti-fluoride BS