I spoke with a friend the other week who has a masters degree in agriculture. We discussed the Fukuoka process. He became obsessed with the nitrogen. Continue reading →
A big shout out and thank you to Kaelem for the coffees he tossed my way on the “buy Me a Coffee” link on the website. Much appreciated as were your kind words on episode 266.
Now to today’s matters. Who owns the world’s seeds? Who indeed. Way back in 1980, which is an odd thing to say having lived through that year but I digress, bat in 1980 the US patents office approved a patent for a biological entity, a bacterium. This one ate oil spills or some such thing. This opened the floodgates and before you knew it the Monsantos of the world had piled in.
Continue reading →
Decarbonise the Air, Recarbonise the Soil!
The Change Underground Movement indeed!
Over the past month or so I’ve been going through a kind of life realignment. World Organic News and I have been so intertwined since I started the blog back in 2014. It’s almost a part of me, and I hope it’s been a useful part of my listeners’ and readers’ lives too. Continue reading →
Today we’re going to discuss regeneration in particular regeneration of the soil and ecosystems. Over the last 50 to 75 years, basically since the second world war we’ve gone through a period of destruction. In effect a faustian bargain in which we gave up 1% of our topsoil every year in return for production returns.
We did this by using chemicals: chemical fertilizers, chemical pesticides and herbicides and fungicides and it worked. There were lots of famines and people starving in the 1970s. A lot of the techniques developed with chemical inputs saved many people, kept them alive. But the cost! That bill is coming due and we need to pay for it now. If we wait, the cost will be so much higher. Continue reading →