It is near the end of January and not everything is shutdown. Still it is nice to have some time to look to the future as snow and cold slow us down. I have a couple of essays planned on sewage sludge and holistic philosophy. (I knew you would be thrilled.) First here are topics of current interest.
At the top of my list of things to support and get ready for it the Global Earth Repair Conference sponsored by Friends of the Trees. It will be held May 3-5, 2019 at the Fort Warden Conference Center in Port Townsend. Over 96 presenters will be doing workshops on a multitude of topics. My favorite track is Regenerative Farming. There are already 46 tracks and registration is half full with a target of 500 participants. Costs vary but even if you cannot attend, PLEASE CONTRIBUTE TO THE GOFUNDME SITE.
In the meantime people send me links and links have links. So they can be like going down the rabbit hole. Nevertheless I want to share a couple of my favorites. The first one is to a “podcast” by Rich Roll interviewing Dr. Zack Bush. This is probably the best and most in depth discussion of the problems we face medically and environmentally and the solutions available through regenerative agriculture that I have ever heard. Unfortunately it is over 2 hours long and actually a video. So it takes up a lot of one’s data allowance. With Hughesnet I can get up at 2 AM and not spend any of my data. Possibly it is really just “audio” on some cell phones and will not be a data issue for you. At any rate it is ENTIRELY WORTH THE TIME: https://www.richroll.com/podcast/zach-bush-414/. (Thank you Amber!)
A website associated with Zach Bush is http://farmersfootprint.us/. There is already a lot of good content there but it will develop much more as some movies about these subjects come out. Unbelievably, farmers can be making $400 to $500 profit per acre annually using regenerative agriculture but stick to making $40/acre using chemicals. They face huge social and political pressures that this website was built to address.
Another podcast in this series features Dr. Bush again, https://www.richroll.com/podcast/zach-bush-353/. It is also very good and deals in more depth with the medical implications of what we are up against.
Given the dustup over wolves and grazing cattle on forest land in Northeast Washington, this next pair of links may seem weird. But I have come to believe that grazing cattle in the forest can actually be good for the forest – improving the soil and reducing the danger of fire – and good for the cattle if it is done in a way that imitates or includes the effects of wolves.
https://civileats.com/2019/01/07/silvopasture-can-mitigate-climate-change-will-u-s-farmers-take-it-seriously/ This first link goes to a short article on silvopasture, using pasture under trees. If you are interested, there is a facebook group that discusses this practice. I’m very interested in talking to anyone who has experience with this.
This final link is a bit more general. It goes to an article on things corporations are doing that are actually encouraging. They include development of Regenerative Agricultural Certification and restoration of a huge 27,000 acre mangrove forest in Columbia. https://www.fastcompany.com/90279292/the-most-exciting-corporate-sustainability-moves-of-2018
Mangrove Swamp in Columbia – a huge carbon sink
Please take some time to check out these links. I find that media and politics tend to ignore what are really our biggest problems and what most needs to be done about them in favor of what generates the most emotion and attention.