U.S. declares drought-stricken states largest natural disaster area ever

Originally posted by Ilyich
reply to post by silent thunder

 

Just giving ya'll a what's up from Beautiful British Columbia, Canada. It's lush, green, our produce is ripe, our fruit juicy, the rivers and lakes have been at record levels, and we've had plenty of rain. What does this mean? Stop going to war with people and causing violence and you'll get some rain. lol. I really don't know why You're suffering from a drought but if god was going to punish anyone, well I don't need to say anything else.

I'm also from BC and you've brought shame upon British Columbian's with this post, you certainly don't represent my point of view. What an insensitive thing to say. Count me out of the punishment by God on America hypothesis. This will affect Canadians and everyone else because of the food shortages not to mention inflation of prices. I'm not sure how a thread about the *worst natural disaster ever* in the areas listed, warrants such a self righteous arrogant attitude towards people in the U.S. who are little different than us. It's in bad taste in my opinion.

If this global warming continues like it is, Canada may be more fertile than ever.

Get ready Canada. Farming is the New Black.

Originally posted by mytheroy
reply to post by Grumble

 

If you really want to know how bad it is, just look what our farmers have to say

www.agweb.com...

It's much scarier today, than it was 2 days ago. THIS IS NOT GOOD! You know what makes me REALLY UPSET....there are 8 billion farmers on this planet...and none of them are doing their JOBS. Farming is not easy! It's hard work...but isn't that what we're here to do? Aren't we here to be FARMERS? I hope those 3D t.v.s fills their stomachs, when the food runs out.

reply to post by SpittinTruth


I recommend permaculture.

I visited the most traditional village in Morocco where the people have lived for thousands of years -- a Berber village completely cut off from the government, etc. -- and the village relied on humanure compost -- just went in the barn in the straw and then composted their waste to transform the desert mountains into fertile soil for vegetables, wheat and potatoes, etc.

John Jenkins has a great book on humanure composting but also there is a book on how Asia has relied on humanure composting -- for thousands of years -- Farmers of Forty Centuries: Organic Farming in China, Korea, and Japan yeah that's free online somewhere -- just search it for a free download.

O.K. so through this method any clay soil can be turned into very rich soil -- it's the aerobic bacteria and the oxygen mixed with humanure and a 30 to 1 carbon to nitrogen ratio. So since there is carbon in everything it's actually about a 3 to 1 ratio -- I use an invasive species to make

"biochar"

biochar is the secret to farming in the Amazon - "terra prima" - it's alive compost that regenerates itself from the nanopores that house the aerobic bacteria in the charcoal.

So charcoal sanitizes and then recycles the waste -- this is also the concept of Ecosan an engineering firm promoting humanure compost in the developing countries.



It's absurd that people waste clean water and great nutrients for growing food every time they need to go to the bathroom.

I read how in Korea during the war the farmers would beg the U.S. soldiers to use their outhouses so that the farmers could get the compost to grow food.

Fecophobes --

Yeah my sweet corn is tassling earlier due to the heat but I planted it in staggered times so well see what happens.

Otherwise I have a bumper crop of tomatoes coming in and crooked neck yellow squash, potatoes, beans, peas.

I bought 100 pounds of pea seed with bacteria innoculation -- this is another great secret to transform soil as the bacteria mixed with the seed then allows the peas to "fix nitrogen" from the air -- and so the peas grow great in poor soil. Then you can just blend up the pea greens and peas and mix it back into the soil and then plant corn or whatever.

So mixing crops -- I have beans in with the corn since the beans also fix nitrogen for the corn.

Yeah you can read John Jenkins book online too free download to learn how to make humanure compost -- he mixes the urine in with the manure along with the carbon source as then there's more moisture for the bacteria.

Jenkins just uses a bucket system and then cover up the waste right away and then haul the buckets to compost and then he composts it for 2 years -- and then he grows food with it.

The biochar actually increases the composting time as the charcoal increases the heat and also sanitizes better and provides excellent habitat for the bacteria.

Then there is also rainwater collection -- I have a tarp that collects about 30 gallons and then a few garbage cans and buckets and a kiddy swimming pool.

So there is less water use since the toilet is not being flushed all the time and then you use rainwater also. Then there is no need for synthetic fertilizer and if you plant crops together this also cuts down on need for pesticides.

Also planting fruit and nut trees -- there is a new program for people to plant fruit trees on public land or donated land and the harvest is donated to homeless people or poor people.

I planted about an acre of fruit bushes and chestnut trees.

reply to post by fulllotusqigong


Update: The midwest farmland looks totally trashed. Here's a CNN map:
Scroll to the right to see the drought level legend.



www.cnn.com...

Originally posted by truthinfact
If this global warming continues like it is, Canada may be more fertile than ever.

Might want to reconsider your understanding of the situation

Weeks of drought have turned much of Ontario’s prime agricultural land into a dust bowl. And it is corn farmers, especially in the southwest and eastern parts of the province, who have been the hardest hit.

www.theglobeandmail.com...

We have a local multi-millionaire controlling the town board that passed a new anti-Hmong farmer ordinance stating they can't work before 7 a.m. nor after sunset nor can they have a total of more than 40 acres or 15% of the land which every is smaller rented from a land owner.

So the farmers markets have exploded in the Twin Cities Minnesota and the whites are putting in new markets when previously it had just been the Hmong selling their farm produce.

So with the rise in food prices I think some people are filled with greed just like Saudi Arabia buying up Africa for monocultural farming that kicks out the local African farmers.

Meanwhile this local multi-millionaire gets welfare from the feds for a big conservation easement track.

I'm sure he pays a lower tax rate than the Hmong who have regular jobs along side their farm work.

A local farmer told me she heard that some of the Hmong are "unsavory" but I think this refers to the new ordinance saying the Hmong have to put in water plumbing -- as if thousands of years of farming by the Hmong without indoor plumbing can just be ignored.

I think Western civilization will learn a difficult lesson as the rich don't understand the crucial role of composting and instead make the land infertile and then have to use synthetic oil based farming with oil prices increasing and then causing more global warming.

Westerners instead flush their manure into clean water, using electricity to do so and then try to clean the water again. It's absurd while composting is the leverage of ecological aerobic bacteria as promoted by the Stockholm Environmental Institute.

Instead we have a bunch of fecophobes who don't understand who aerobic bacteria with a 30 to 1 carbon to nitrogen ratio completely sanitize waste into fertile nutrients for farming.

I think Morocco is running out of phosphorus to export to the West while the traditional Berbers of Morocco use humanure to grow all their food.

Even though the size of North African reserves is uncertain, Australia’s agricultural systems are nevertheless inextricably bound to Morocco and Western Sahara. We are heavily dependent on political stability in that region for a secure phosphate supply. A disruption to the supply of phosphate rock from the Western Sahara could result in an agricultural crisis in this country and internationally. A reliance on other countries to supply our phosphorus, especially where that supply is unstable, increases Australia’s economic and nutritional vulnerability. Consequently, a food-secure future for Australia is by no means guaranteed.

adults excrete 98% of the phosphorus they consume!

If you wanted to really mess with the world’s food production, a good place to start would be Bou Craa, located in the desert miles from anywhere in the Western Sahara. They don’t grow much here, but Bou Craa is a mine containing one of the world’s largest reserves of phosphate rock. Most of us, most days, will eat some food grown on fields fertilized by phosphate rock from this mine. And there is no substitute.

yeah...

The world is not about to run out of phosphate. But demand is rising, most of the best reserves are gone, and those that remain are in just a handful of countries. Dana Cordell of Linkoping University in Sweden, who runs an academic group called the Global Phosphorus Research Initiative, says we could hit “peak phosphorus” production by around 2030.

So humanure and "liquid gold" are now becoming mainstream -- too bad the Hmong are still being targeted.

Composting crop residues would be a good way of recycling this valued nutrient back into the soil, cutting the need for new applications of fertilizer — so would capturing some of the 3 million tons of phosphorus that cycles through human bodies annually, after being consumed in our food. Cordell says we should give top priority to recycling our urine, which contains more than half of all the phosphorus that we excrete.