I love and am fascinated with the soil, but soil health starts with a certain degree of water. The most vibrant soil goes dormant in the monsoon season without drainage and in the summer drought without irrigation. I’d say we need to build the soil health while there is enough water to do so. The most fertile soils are fertile because in the presence of plentiful biomass, they are biologically active for more days out of each year. The drivers are moisture with aeration and reasonable temperature with breakdown product (biomass and minimal nitrogen).
The law of the minimum: several players, but you cannot minimize the role of water. Use it when you have it to build soil so you can keep it!
Water and Nitrogen also affect efficiency along with other things. Does the system “burn biomass” like it is going out of style or does it slow cycle biomass while extracting every ounce of benefit. Sufficient water improves efficiency to keep the soil active while getting more soil benefit from every ounce of biomass.
On a counter point:
I live in Western, Oregon in what was once called temperate rain forest. I am observing mountain decertification here with 60 inches a year of annual rainfall and an ongoing production of Douglas fir. I suppose, imbalanced forestry is a type of mining. The more our mountain soils are mined of nutrients, the less productive they become at growing trees, and at holding water to feed the slopes and streams during the summer drought. Winter sees more rapid floods, summer sees all time low stream levels and changing flora.
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Published by Occupyconscience
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I don't believe in destroying what is here today. I believe in building a future that outperforms and solved inadequacies and failures of present and the past.
My driving intent and focus goes to empower the agrarian reality. I dream of and believe in the need for agrarian renaissance.
Agrarians are those rooted and sustained by the local landscape and community.
I believe that through agrarian success, the world can see a major shift in the human inflicted global ecological effect. We can see a symbiotic future that embraces, feeds on, and promotes ecological and cultural diversity. We can see people, through the natural living of their lives, effecting a rapidly regenerating global environment and reversal of longstanding global desertification.
Since we can, we should. Social engineering? well kind of, yeah. It is intelligent strategic paradigm development. Our civilizational paradigm tends to orient any and all diverse cultures to effect environmental harm/footprint. Therefore, we need to reorient the paradigm to naturally effect regenerative and symbiotic relationships with nature instead.
Agrarian society is in free fall as the paradigm orients cultures and societies around global financial economy with built in rewards and penalties (remember agrarian by definition is place and community oriented).
I believe it is not only possible but crucial to resuscitate and accentuate the infrastructure for global agrarianism and to do it in such a way as to enable renaissance/flowering.
That is my life's work, my passion, and what I live for and would be happy to die for any day of the week. This blog is my rough and in many instances unedited writings on the subject. These are not refined articles. They are a semi-formal journaling to log ideas I find important.
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