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Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

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Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#161

Post by jeffbee »

danans wrote: post #160
jessaustin wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can't just all be a UBI scheme for... Every one of my travels to western states and every conversation I've had with other cattlemen there and elsewhere implies that it is exactly that. Perhaps once upon a time it was something else, and as the situation changed our government didn't keep up. I imagine that numerous bureaucrats at BLM and other agencies have some personal interests in the disastrous way that thing…

The last sentence of my post should have read: "It can't just all be a UBI scheme for alpine beef ranchers, can it?" As in, I wouldn't be surprised at all if it were, but haven't had the conversations you've had first hand.

Main thing I’ve learned from reading about western water and land policy is if you ever think “it can’t be that!” maybe you’re just not using your imagination.

Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#162

Post by ZeroGravitas »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #150
dhd7r7eu3 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yeah. Big Ag is not incentivized to be sustainable, let alone be regenerative. Can you expand on this point some? I'm trying to understand but I don't really see the problem. Whether the nutrition comes from the soil or the fertilizer doesn't really seem that important. I get what other posters have said about vegetables in the past being more nutritious but it's not clear to me that this matters terribly much compa…

...where does the fertiliser come from? Currently, there's a lot of fossil fuels involved.

Ammonia created from fossil fuels accounts for 2% of carbon emmisions, but it seems likely that ammonia created from air and water with renewable energy will replace it in the future. Theres some pilot plants in existance.

Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#163

Post by ArnoVW »

armenarmen wrote: post #67
konschubert wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t it be easier to just plant something else every other year? I thought this was solved literally 1000 years ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-field_system

I was always confused by this as well. Then I spoke to a person working in agriculture, apparently chemical fertilizers are cheap enough to make crop rotation redundant.

Unfortunately we do not have an inexhaustible supply of fertilizer.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_phosphorus

Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#164

Post by mikeg8 »

JackFr wrote: post #129
ricardobeat wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Growing up on a farm" can have vastly different meanings across places - from living next to an industrial-scale operation to an idyllic, quiet small farm surrounded by nature.

> an idyllic, quiet small farm surrounded by nature. That sounds more like a country house — or a tax dodge— than it does a working farm.

There has been an incredible resurgence of small scale farms, in the range of 40-300 acres, that are a combo of country house and working farm. Some are capable of feeding thousands of community families. Not all food comes from industry.

Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#165

Post by minerjoe »

lambertsimnel wrote: post #157
minerjoe wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just food. Let's "localize" all of our needs. Every single one of them. Note that is "needs", not wants. There will always be room for trade in things that you cannot produce locally such as coffee, but for almost every other thing, there are local solutions. Open Source Ecology [1] attempts to go the high-tech route and they may get somewhere, but they are only one of many approaches to localizing. With the inte…

Does local production entail urban areas having smaller or less dense populations? Mightn't energy used for extra passenger transport outweigh energy saved by reducing freight transport?

Don't know. There are people in cities working on local food production such as aquaponics, vertical farming, rooftops, etc, but I live in a small town in western North America and that is the system I am attempting to analyze and influence. Its the low hanging fruit (ahem), in that if a small town can't do it, how can you expect a city.

Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#166

Post by hosh »

lambertsimnel wrote: post #157
minerjoe wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just food. Let's "localize" all of our needs. Every single one of them. Note that is "needs", not wants. There will always be room for trade in things that you cannot produce locally such as coffee, but for almost every other thing, there are local solutions. Open Source Ecology [1] attempts to go the high-tech route and they may get somewhere, but they are only one of many approaches to localizing. With the inte…

Does local production entail urban areas having smaller or less dense populations? Mightn't energy used for extra passenger transport outweigh energy saved by reducing freight transport?

For a good case study, check this out: https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/cubas-urban-farm...

Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#168

Post by LunaSea »

gdubs wrote: post #46

The book that got me into this was Mark Shepard's 'Restoration Agriculture". [1] His "New Forest Farm" in WI has been making use of these ideas for some time now. [2] Shepard got his inspiration from Permaculture [3] and the books, "Tree Crops", [4] and "The One Straw Revolution". [5] 1: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16441733-restoration-agr... 2: https://newforestfarm.us 3: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/…

Fukuoka's own apprentices declared that his methods flat out didn't work.

Lots of permaculture practices are pure dogma and don't have a scientific justification.

All the permaculture farms I could find were profitable thanks to free outside input or through selling training sessions.

Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#169

Post by dhruvkar »

depthroiler wrote: post #30
dhruvkar wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ernst gotsch is the name to lookup. Growing food under a forest canopy with plenty of pruning, which creates healthy soil and less/no need for fertilizers. It's an effort to mimic a forest ecosystem and let things grow in their natural way (livestock is another aspect).

Very cool. Thanks for the ref! Are there any books of his you'd recommend?

I don't have book recommendations, but this channel is worth watching:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf9s-yeskYZweEuKyq1ia6w

Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#170

Post by eru »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #156
eru wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I am somewhat suspicious of the complaints about sustainability. If modern agriculture is bad for soil in the long run, the owners of the soil surely will have an opinion about that. That's not even an externality. The only thing holding back soil sustainability would be high interest rates. But that hasn't been a thing in more than a decade.

My vague recollection leads me to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_phosphorus While they can pump in nitrogen and phosphorus, they can get away with trashing the soil as much as they want. But if phosphorus becomes scarce they'll be suddenly left with ruined soil and no cost-effective work-around.

A slight increase in phosphorus prices will conjure new supply.
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