Alley cropping has a lot of advantages and scales well depending on one's goals. If you wanted to have large combines, you can simply make the alleys wider. Its all about tradeoffs. I'll have to look into Kentucky coffeetree, I imagine that their bean pods would make good livestock fodder.
Regarding the alfalfa wheat intercrop, the goal is actually to harvest the wheat for grain, with the alfalfa functioning as a sort of fertilizer crop (that's still harvested for forage after the wheat is harvested). There are a lot of barriers, so it's an active area of research, but it's a really interesting topic.
Breeding Crops for Polycultures
Multicropping systems, defined as growing multiple species in the same field throughout a season, have potential to maintain high yields while reducing energy intensity and ecological damage.
Gifts of Nature, Maladies of the Market | How markets shape chemicals derived from nature
Sucrose, common table sugar, chemical compound C12H22O11. Traditionally, humans found sucrose, along with other sweeteners such as fructose, through natural means. Keeping bees, tapping maple trees, extracting juice from sugarcane stalks. Sourcing sugar through these processes is incredibly labor-in...
I think ocean iron fertilization has some promise to it, and it has the benefit of being able to be experimented with at a small scale and subsequently scaled up responsibly to measure effects. Aerosols are kind of a one and done solution, and if for any reason its suspended, their is a boomerang effect that drives warming even higher
It's also ridiculous how many products are just trucking water around from one place to another with a little big of active solution mixed in. We need more 'just add water' products available.
Definitely a valid critique of Mondragon in the modern era, its commitment to the 10% ratio has atrophied somewhat. It's still something that ebbs and flows, for example there is a current push to transfer 35,000 non-member workers in their retail coop into full members (from a total of 50,000 workers). From numbers I've seen, 85% of employees are still members, which is pretty good.
In the mountains of Northern Spain, in the culturally distinct region known as the Basque Country, lies the world's most successful cooperative.
Yeah, I think its useful to continue trialing out the technology and see if it can hold up to snuff. But at the same time banking on this idea as our only approach to decarbonizing protein (which is what the beef industry would prefer) is short sighted, imo
Are there any mechanisms where landlords can be driven to adopt the alternatives that homeowners are utilizing?
Fusion power doesn't utilize uranium or plutonium, it uses hydrogen. Any radioactive outputs have short half-lives, making storage less of a concern.
Keep your blade sharp, your bowl clean, and your motor running
It is a good sign that in some countries where leasing is still open, oil companies are buying a lot fewer permits
Future sister cities -- a strategy for climate adaptation
I'm reading a book titled Deep Time Reckoning by Vincent Ialenti which is about how we consider and plan for how the world will look in the far future. In it, he proposes a very Solarpunk idea called 'future sister cities' where communities will be paired with other communities that in the future have climates analogous to their own. This is intended to help share knowledge about how to design infrastructure, natural systems, and human endeavors to be more in line with the climates that towns, villages, and cities will experience in the future.
I'm not sure I would call that a monopoly though. Most farmland is owned by the operator, and a large portion of leased farmland is owned by retired farmers, descendants, or widows. Roughly 10% of land is owned by some sort of corporate or trust landlord. (This data is a tad old, but my general sense from subsequent years is that land transfers were mainly through inheritance, not sale, implying the situation is similar today). Price increases in land is due to different forces, and consolidation occurs mostly within communities (i.e. a big family farm purchases a small family farm, or when a farmer dies their kid retains the land and rents it, these are the processes behind consolidation and lack of land access, imo).
There's this idea called World Systems theory, that divides the world into core and peripheral countries, with the core countries extracting resources (natural, financial, or labor) and sends pollution back. This is maintained by military and/or economic power. That's the framework where this would be considered colonial. Personally, I prefer the term neocolonial
Can you elaborate on land ownership monopolies?
Agricultural policymaking in the United States is fundamentally broken.
Regarding irrigation, while it's not automation related, I enjoy Water for Every Farm: Yeomans Keyline Plan. In terms of charting and weather monitoring, I can share some different formulas and methods for calculating and tracking water budgets. I've written some R scripts to automate modeling water availability in my yard and can share how I did so if you're interested!
Also, I write a blog about agriculture, landscapes, and sustainability, if you're interested!
I mean for a lot of things there just aren't any real options. Lots of software packages are no longer available without a subscription. Heck, I've been looking for an app to guide me through evening stretches and I can't find anything that's just a single purchase.
How community institutions created capitalism
How Dutch water infrastructure built the institutions of the modern economy
Moisture would be an issue with such a set up, and could cause mold and mildew in apartment units
The only references I can find for such soils are when there are highly stratified C horizons where a component may be sandy clays, like the Lohmiller series, at least that's my interpretation of the description
https://soilseries.sc.egov.usda.gov/OSD_Docs/L/LOHMILLER.html
https://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app/
Use this tool. Click the green button on the webpage, search up your location, on the toolbar click on the red square and draw a box around your yard, click soil map. On the left of the screen, you'll see a list of soil types on your property with their textures
While it has lots of benefits, the economics just don't work.
A data driven assessment of the role of verticle farming in feeding the world.
“The economics of producing leafy greens and lettuce in vertical farms can work, if electricity prices are low”
That's awesome! What sorts of lessons have you learned in navigating that transition?
That's kind of what I was getting at, I think both have their strengths and weaknesses, and I think the discourse should reflect that.
Tool libraries vs. maker spaces
I've been thinking about the advantages of tool libraries vs. maker spaces and why I think the latter would be more beneficial for creating access to tools for life and hobbies.
While I like the concept of tool libraries, I think providing larger sets of work spaces: art studios, carpentry spaces, bike shops, kitchens, office spaces, sewing rooms, etc. makes a lot more sense. For most of these activities, you need access to a variety of tools at once, and not everyone has space at home to work on refinishing furniture or spinning pottery. To me, the dream is having a series of community centers in every neighborhood that has various labs for community members to access to partake in hobbies, repair their stuff, etc. I do think integrating tool libraries into these spaces would be useful, for instance, the carpentry studio could have a wall of tools for you to check out if you need to accomplish something at home.
There are of course applications where tool libraries make more sense t
Soil Bio-Products are Risky; Ask Questions
TLDR Biological soil amendments can be quite elusive in terms of results. Be wary and investigate the actual need the product is fulfilling and whether or not it's claimed mechanism is reasonable and effective.
Who wouldve thought hosting COP in a petrostate would've led to a conflict of interest!?
Eliminating fraction of current beef production could remove three years’ worth of global fossil fuel emissions
TLDR: Pasture in former forestland, such as New England, can quickly be returned to forest, soaking up carbon. There is an interesting opportunity for synergy here, as removing cattle from a relatively small amount of land can have outsized impacts compared to the larger grazing areas in the prairie by pairing the removal of cattle with reforestation. These high opportunity areas could be a highly effective investment and much more financially and politically feasible.
Study discussed in article: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2405758121
Our Business is Making Money | On the culture driving the atrophying of our economic and industrial capacity
The Limits of Studio Ghibli | How art can lead us in the wrong direction
Hayao Miyazaki, the beloved helmsman of Studio Ghibli, is a titan of environmental media.
Nijsse and colleagues find that due to technological trajectories set in motion by past policy, a global irreversible solar tipping point may have passed where solar energy gradually comes to dominate global electricity markets, without any further climate policies. Uncertainties arise, however, ove...
Bringing flax back to North America
On a humid summer day in southeastern PA, farmers have traveled hours to Pasture Song Farm to see flax in the field. Farmer Jeremy Dunphy stands next to
This article really highlights to me how critical infrastructure is to achieving a sustainable food system. There are plenty of people growing food in an ecologically mindful manner, but they're so atomized that they need to do everything themselves. And the infrastructure is so centralized that you're forced into the industrial model if you want to go beyond the farmer market level. We need more meat lockers, local grain mills, oil pressers, etc. to build out regional food production networks.
Our Future is Life | The life sciences are essential to drive the sustainable transition
Bringing about the Solar Age | The energetics of Solarpunk
Our species has the potential to bring about an era of abundance and luxury for every person on the planet.
Solarpunk Academy Class List
Discover the magic of the internet at Imgur, a community powered entertainment destination. Lift your spirits with funny jokes, trending memes, entertaining gifs, inspiring stories, viral videos, and so much more from users.
Just noodling around with what majors/classes would be available in a solarpunk world. Open to suggestions!
A little extra TLC can turn your wooden cutting board into a family heirloom
Off to purchase some coconut oil!
