![]() | A Flow Chart ~ The Roots of Fertility ~An Ecological Synergy(tm) educational page on microfarming fertilizers of exceptionally high plant-nourishing quality. | http://www20.brinkster.com/microfarm/IBS_Flowchart/IBS_Flowchart_01.html http://plenty.150m.com/IBS_Flowchart/IBS_Flowchart_01.html |
![]() | A simple MATH view of Integrated Biological Systems (IBS) Microfarming Productivity Increases: How Synergy Emerges from Linked Foodchains. | http://www20.brinkster.com/microfarm/IBS_ECOSYN_01/IBS-ECOSYN-01.html http://plenty.150m.com/IBS_ECOSYN_01/index.html |
74 living species were exterminated in the past 24 hours, 3 per hour, 1every 20 minutes. Scientists call this rate of disappearances a "MassExtinction Event." There have only been five others of this magnitude inthe entire historyof Planet Earth.
Call for volunteers to be heros/heroines for the environment. You canmake a difference, do something important, have a rewarding and meaningfullife by helping save the lives of millions of the voiceless species. Become a Life Savior!
This voice for the millions of species at risk is maintained by Lion Kuntzon Eugene Free Network, Eugene, Oregon, USA. Email LKuntz@EFN.org or LionKuntz@Yahoo.com
Please bookmark this site as a favorite place and come back often. Themany links will transport you to other webpages with good information, butfew of them have links to get you back here again.
If you do not understand the issues of MASS EXTINCTIONS or that millionsof living beings, plants, animals, fungi, microbes of all varieties willbe wiped out within 50 years, you need to do your homework and study up onit.
There's enough work for everybody. Living simply is not enough -- thenatural world and nature's diversity is disappearing too fast to sit onthe sidelines. The biggest cause of loss of species is elimination oftheir habitat. If they are homeless, how can they live? A second bigreason for species extinctions is the poisoning of them where they livethrough chemicals, sewage and other toxic wastes dumped on them.
Solving these problems means solving a variety of other problems first.Habitat lands have to be acquired and then either used intelligently andwisely, or else walled off from people's harm and guarded vigorously.Life Saviors have to be able to obtain the money to get habitat lands, andthe means to keep making progress towards the goals of preserving thehabitat while preserving their own ability to keep going. It is more aspiral than a circle, with each go-round escalating progress a bit -- withthe faster the cycles turn, the more species which are saved from theBiotic Holocaust.
The Action Plan presented here depends on two kinds of land occupancy: (1)Intentional Communities of compatible people, and (2) Single Family units.Both choices would be synergistically connected through webpage nodes likethis one. An early priority would be to establish a Life Saviors webpageshosting service with short easily remembered domain names, withoutdistracting advertising.
Help in the beginning has a greater value than later on. The foundationis always the crucial moment where even small differences are compoundedover time into large divergences. Being a hero of the environment laterwhen success is immanent is easy; being a hero now is what is tough.30,000 species per year are at stake, and turning that tide is the hardestjob you will ever attempt. That is the difference between being a heroand being a SUPERHERO.
Sometimes you have much to offer and it doesn't even occur to you that itmight be useful in ways you haven't thought of. Right now, more computeraccess time is a valuable commodity to me, and someone might have hours ofuse to spare for projects like this in the Eugene, Oregon area. It mightbe a small thing to you, but it means the difference between finishingthis page sooner to me. Tick, tick, tick, one every twenty minutes, somebutterfly, some chameleon, some parrot, some beetle, some ant, somepollinator bee, some orchid is extinguished.
Any serious investigation of both modern (the "green revolution")agriculture and older third-world peon agriculture will find the majorcauseof habitat loss.
The author has found that free-living animals will routinely share theirhabitat space with human without suffering if the humans leave them thetwothings they require: (1) habitat space, and (2) life-sustaining resources.The Action Plan gives the wildlife what they need tokeep living forever.
Ecological Synergy(tm) has been designed to accelerate throughthespiraling progress cycles faster than any other solution. There is an awesome growth potential which could absorb 8,000,000 Americans intosustainable agriculture and form a solid voting block which could have aninfluence out of proportion to their numbers. With financially stablemembers of Ecological Synergy(tm) having more than the usualamountof free leisure time to engage in advocacy and activism, America could bethe fulcrum of the lever that lifts the world.
Ecological Synergy(tm) is an intensive use of a portion of theland with tremendous productivity. Under the right circumstances, and therightstewardship, there can be ten or twelve times the agriculturalproductivitycompared to neighboring regular row-cropping as commonly seen on farms.There are big savings by not having to go into debt to buy ten times theacreage, and with less land there is less machinery debt needed too.
Using knowledge and techniques of organic management there is less expensefor fertilizer, which is grown or produced right on the land from plantwastes and animal manures (and byproducts). There is no outside expense,for pesticides (which are also grown on the land) and no expense forherbicides (which are not used at all). There are no chemicals bought andused for growing on an Ecological Synergy(tm) farmstead.
Beyond organics as commonly practiced, and beyond the principles ofPermaculture(tm), this new system gets down to the bedrock of fertility.
Mention worms and bacteria to most people and they want to go wash theirhands, but these are the superheros of the underground. Although the airbreathe is 80% Nitrogen gas, and it is necessary that Nitrogen be fixedinto a water-soluble form for plants to use, only a few bacteria andfungican do this chemical magic. Not a single visible species of the plantkingdom can fix Nitrogen from the air -- Not Even Legumes!
Legumes have a false reputation for fixing Nitrogen, but really they buyit.The currency legumes use is to build "bed and breakfast" nodules for symbiots use in their roots. The lodgers (rhizobacteria) are paid insugarsand starches for their water-soluble Nitrogen output. Rhizobactor canalso be found free-living in the soil where they benefit all plantsequally,both legumes and non-legumes. Rhizobactor and the mysterious substancecalled humus are the world's natural fertilizer factories.
Ecological Synergy(tm) creates abundant humus and uses worms toturn the whole soil bed into something akin to legume nodules. Thegrowingsoil is never plowed, rototilled, or disced. Two kinds of worms are hired(and are very well paid with great benefits from a worm's-eye view) tostir the soil constantly. The worms turn the soil into amazing structure,water-holding yet well drained and aerated. The microherd of beneficialsoil organisms finds the swiss-cheese holes of the worms to be perfecthabitats, with well stocked larders. The Tilth, or soilstructure,is also ideal for plants who spread their roothairs rapidly down theexcavations to get deep water and access to minerals churned up by theworms.
There is no better soil, natural or artificial, to be found in the world,and Ecological Synergy(tm) makes it in large quantities.
When bioengineers sometimes talk about gene-splicing from legumes to cornthe gene to fix Nitrogen they are publically displaying their ignorance.The genes are in the rhizo-bacteria, NOT in the legumes. This is the kindof arrogant ignorance which is killing the Earth's biodiversity. Themindset is to enslave and exploit other species, rather than hire them atgood wages to do what they most want to do anyway.
Humus is the organic residues of zillions of living beings whose lifechemicals take varying periods of time to decay. Humus is also arestaurant for zillions of little creatures who cafeteria-style munch andgraze on those particles they find delicious and nutritious. The livingmicroherd and the remains of their departed are tiny time-release capsulesof soil fertility. A chemical test which measures Nitrogen only measuresthe free water-soluble Nitrogen, and misses what will be released in thenext hour, the next day, or the next month. Humus and a maximizedmicroherd never need the addition of store-bought, factory-made artificialNitrogen sold at farm supply businesses.
Neither the microherd nor worms have any teeth. Composting is one way toget towards humus creation but it is poorly understood and poorly used bymost organic farmers. Worms do a cold-composting and their worm-castingsmake a better faster nutrient supply for both the microherd and the cropplants. Animals with teeth partially digest their foods and then excretemanures which hasten the humus building cycles. Everybody gets eateneventually. The plants get eaten by the people, animals, fish, worms andmicrobes. The animals get eaten by the fish, worms, microbes, people, andeventually by the plants. The food-chain webs keep turning, wheels withinwheels.
Learning all about Ecological Synergy(tm) is never going to happenon the internet or world wide web. At best you can get an introductionandexplore the resources which can educate you more. At worst, you can foolyourself into thinking that you know more than you do, and speed forthinto failure, giving yourself a bad experience, and giving EcologicalSynergy(tm) a bad name. That is why the name is trademarked -- tokeep people from abusing the name by applying it to half-baked growingsystems.
Ecological Synergy(tm) uses raised beds intensively planted.Overtime the beds are made permanent land features with enclosed walls aboutonefoot high, and some with removable (cloche) covers. In areas with gophersand other ground-burrowing rodent pests, subterranean barriers are added.The walled beds cannot erode topsoil or liquid runoffs to pollute localsurface waters. This is conscientious conservation. No toxic poison orhabitat pollutant is ever released into the surrounding environment.
The intial walled beds are used for worm production and sometimes also formushroom cultivation. Permanent drip irrigation is added at an early timeto eliminate the chore of watering, and to conserve the liquid resource.
Mushroom cultivation transforms low-nutrient cellulose straw into highervalue mushroom compost and a salable mushroom crop. Worms continue the digestion process on the mushroom compost making two more valuable crops:worm castings and the worms. Some of the worm harvest is fed to thechickens, ducks, and fish crops. Some of the worm compost is fed to theplant crops which follow.
Cardboard waste (where easily available) also makes an excellent beddingsand feedstock for the worms.
Worms are moved along to freshly prepared beds and increase rapidly underthe care of ecological synergy stewardship.
Grow beds are stocked with a second breed of worm which lives permanentlyon that plot, burrowing to eight feet of depth, cycling up nutrients,providing drainage above, and capillary rising of water from below.Pre-existing hardpan conditions disappear. The plant growing zone islargely composed of the compost/castings mixed with various strata of soilparticles.
Any long-persistent chemical traces left from prior agricultural historyisso buried and diluted that this system is as pure as the modern world canhave. Conventional organic farms, bio-dynamics or Permaculture(tm) have no soil purification system at all, let alone any which can compare.
Pure soil, weed-free (the weed seed elimination steps have not beendescribed here), highly fertilized naturally is only part of the system tovastly increase productivity. Companion cropping, intercropping andmid-season crop rotations all hold the pests at bay. Such spoilage asthere is goes to feed the rabbits, ducks, chickens, fish, and of course,the worms.
Plant starts are germinated on greenhouse benches eliminating the stoop-labor associated with thinning. The vigorous starts are plantedearly in cloche-covered walled beds before the last frost of winter andlater crops are still using these beds well after the first killing frostsof fall. In many areas some crops can keep going throughout the entirewinter. Extended growing seasons are part of the reason that the systemsproduce more per square foot of land than conventional row-cropping.
Intensive use of the beds adds productivity with closer plantings shadingout wind-blown weed seeds. Every time something is harvested anotherplantstart is inserted into the vacated space. Plants are thus constantlybeingrotated thereby breaking pest breeding cycles, keeping in mind that someofthe crops inserted are natural pesticide herbs and flowers (which aresalable crops in themselves).
The comparison to chemical farming (the green revolution style) is theyhave shorter growing seasons; wide lanes wasted for heavy machinery topass;hard-pan buildup from running heavy machinery over the land year-in andyear-out; the horrendous cost of seeds, fertilizer, pesticides andherbicides; the maintenance headaches of taking care of the heavyequipment;the debt-service on all that farmland and machines needed to do all this.Inthe end they have an inferior product chemically contaminated anddegradinglands that are leaking pollutants at the edges.
The comparison to organic farming is that they leave the land fallow orgrow a green manure crop especially to plow under, losing part of thegrowing year.
Most organic growers have to buy-in or truck-in some part of their organicfertilizer. Often they copy much of the land-wasteful techniques of theirconventional chemical-farming neighbors. Observing both groups might leadone to the mistaken conclustion that there are no great gains inproductivity awaiting to be introduced.
Ecological Synergy(tm) can prove this mistake idea has outlived it's time.In the very beginning the going is slow as the first walled beds areinstalled, the drip irrigation connected up, the fish and droughtreservoirpond dug in, the animal quarters built and the living populationsintroduced to start their multiplication binges. There is no instantone-year demonstration of a fully functional ecological synergy farmstead.Keep in mind that cane-berries (raspberry, blackberry, etc.) need twoyearsto begin bearing, and blueberries don't bear until the fourth year.
A large prototype farmstead will take a year or more to multiply the manymillions of worms needed.
Bye.