Location: When I dare to be powerful -- to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
Posts: 9,455
My major annoyance of the year... monocropping. Want to discuss?
So I am here, in western WA the home of logger, spotted owl, and the logging debate. And I love it here! As I drove to my friends house (a full hour into the country) I was seeing all of these beautifully replanted areas that the loggers are so proud of. Rows and rows (uneven and pretty 'natural' looking) of Douglas Fir trees. Thousands of them. On previous clear cuts.
There are so many sides to this arugment I am not even sure where to start. Right now, our state has two crops. Apples, and lumber... our smaller exports; cherries, wine, etc, are not causing the problems that the lumber industry is. They are ONLY planting doug fir. It is a mono crop at it's finest. And they think they are doing a good thing. I guess when you compare it to the clear cuts where they let nature take it's course and it took 150 years to regrow then, yes. It is an improvment... but come on guys? Do you actually think that nothing but doug fir grew in that area over those 150 years???
Then I look at the corn industry. As we get off of oil, we are slowly monocropping corn for our oil needs. I found out yesterday that someone bought all the rights to all of the waste veggie/corn oil in Olympia and is planning on refining it and selling it to biodisel groupies. All I gotta say is it was bound to happen. But think about it. As we get more dependent on corn (which is already dam*ed near EVERYWHERE; in food, in ethenol alcohol, etc) it is hard to imagine that needing more corn is a good thing. Planting more corn can't be good right? More of our farmland, reduced to corn? And most likely the most GMO toxic corn that we can get, cus heck, we arn't going to eat it... right? That just can't be good. People think they are doing good by getting biodisel but in honest, they are supporting a whole other problem industry that is just waiting to explode.
I feel the same about soybeans, and even maybe maple trees to a point (but they last an awfully long time for that industry and I don't know near as much about it, except that there are millions of arces dedicated to it just north of us)...
What do you think about this pheomenon?
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Val; Living the dream we have been working towards for over 5 years.
Mama to Alex, Cyan, and Logan. Wife to my very best friend.
you mean like any joe blow can't go into Mc D's and get their old oil? It's spoken for?
I think it was Micheal Pollan either in his book (Omnivores Dilema) or on NPR who said that corn is not the answer.....one, it's a difficult crop to grow, requires tons of fertilizer, water, etc, and two....to shift our dependancy from oil to corn we'd need NINE planets to grow enough corn. Plus, what happens now, with 100K+ acres of corn under water in the midwest?
I'm not sure about the doug fir issue, maybe other types of trees will sprout naturally???? Or are they only planting them to harvest again later. I think Weyerhauser has a tree they plant that grows super fast, like 15 years or something!!
I guess planting Doug Firs is better than McMansions right???
Location: When I dare to be powerful -- to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
Posts: 9,455
Yes, they are planting for reharvesting. Which to me is fine. I have watch several of those crops grow and then be harvested in my lifetime... some of them on the exact same land... it just distroys the natural diversity that would be on that same space, making it hard for animals to adapt.
Corn is not the answer. And yes, all of the 'waste oil' is spoken for around here right now. Sucky huh? That is what I have heard anyway. We will not be making that switch. I gotta give credit to those who have though. If we are going to eat crappy food, at least someone is benifiting from it.
I love the idea of water burning cars.... but who knows what it will be when they finally actually start working on this problem of oil. Did car's always run on oil? I just don't know.
Location: firmly planted in the postmodern pastoral economy
Posts: 12,027
I started a reply but didn't finish.
But yeah, corn is so not the answer. It makes me sick to think of people growing corn for fuel. Corn and soybeans covers so much of the Midwest, that it is sad. We need small diversified farms that sell to their local population. We do not need to truck anything anywhere on big semi's. Or not very far (maybe from rural to urban areas, but I believe having farms on the edges of urban areas is still possible too).
Corn is a monocrop around here, but then we're talking no more than a few hundred acres even on the biggest farms. And Christmas trees! Which they spray with pesticides. Lovely.
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Yeah just got back from visiting my family in OH and there is so much farmland taken up by large monocrops of corn and soybeans. Likely monsanto specials too - ugh!
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