Tokyo Babylon

The Terra Preta post has been the most popular post of mine by a country mile. It seems there’s a great deal of interest in this subject. I am no expert on the subject however. In fact I deliberately spread myself across a wide range of interests so as to get the broad view. So readers should keep this in mind when reading what I write.

However it seems to me that even after considering the potential that terra preta has in the remediation of degraded soils, the capture of atmospheric carbon in soils and for growing soil to counter soil loss it is still only one of a number of methods, that are being studied pretty much in isolation from complementary methods, that if combined could well be greater than the sum of their parts.

Systems are complex however and establishing the outcome of systems quickly becomes like the doubtless apocryphal tale of the chinese man who for his services asked the King to pay him using an equation that would double his rice payment for every square on the chess board, starting in one corner with one grain. Of course 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 64 128 would mean that compliance with this request would mean a payment in rice of hundreds of thousands of tons. For organic systems the number of possible outcomes follows a similar pattern as the number of system components increases. That’s basically common sense.

On the other hand when I read about mushroom plant companion planting I see something which seems to have the potential for linking the fungal component of terra preta to plants. Now experiments with plants and mushrooms seems to show that this is very much hit and miss, but the results of one experiment show what is possible when you hit on the right combination.

Christiane Pischl of Fungi Perfect conducted an experiment whereby she planted brussel sprouts with mushroom spores. The result was that a brussel sprout elm oyster mushroom combination produced “4 to 6 times as much vegetable as those without’. Now that’s the mycelium plant combination. I would have to wonder what kind of result you would get from a char-mycelium-plant combination. It’s intriguing isn’t it?

Then of course you have your non-fungal EM “Enhanced Microorganisms’ experiments. Mr. Cho of the Korean Natural Farming Association provides a booklet in English for those who wish to make their own enhanced microorganism liquids from a variety of farm waste. His argument is that plants like people require different nutrients at different times and though I am no soil scientist that does strike me as something which is likely. I have a photograph of Mr. Cho pushing a 3 metre pole into the soil of his farm with little visible effort. Rather like pushing into a souffle.

Now consider some reports of Terra Preta soils replenishing themselves, growing like dough in a baking tin within a hole from which most of the black soil has been removed. I think of the souffle and the rising dough analogies together and I start getting a kind of tingling feeling.

If that were not enough consider what happens at the bottom of a compost heap, it leaches nutrients into the soil beneath it. Now something we already know from Terra Preta is that the char acts like a capture matrix removing nutrients from water that moves through the char layer. Alternatively, what would happen if you placed char under the leach field of a grey water system, which is somewhat similar to what comes out the bottom of a compost heap?

Now if it were possible to combine EM, Terra Preta and Fungi-Plant companion regimes what would you get? Would you get brussel sprouts the size of bowling balls? I have no idea what you could get. You could get Swamp Thing for all I know, but the thought is intriguing I think you’ll agree.

Now if you can increase the production of brussel sprouts by 400 to 600% by intensive management of natural systems it does have a bearing on the whole ‘let’s make the world’s farms into industrial agro businesses in hock to Monsanto, and agrochemical companies’ debate. I don’t know what kind of single crop yield improvement that Monsanto is getting from its sterile intellectual property seed with its capacity to be drenched in ever increasing amounts of agrochemicals, that seem to end up in our body fat to God knows what effect, but I somehow think it’s not a 400% to 600% increase.

Every technical advancement has political, economic and social ramifications as well. Now the whole idea of a small mixed farm run by a family seems far more suited to the idea of multiple products coming from the intensive use of small plots of land to create a variety of products, which in turn reduces their vulnerability to swings in commodity prices.

I think there’s about a couple of thousand research projects waiting in those last couple of paragraphs. These are my thoughts as someone who dabbles, perhaps someone with more technical skill than I will be as intrigued as I am and have the capacity to move things forward.

ZERI? What is ZERI I hear you ask. Is it zero in italian? Is it one of those wierd Japanese manga characters with the huge mouths and unreasonable eyes? Well, no, though they do suffer from being at end of any index. If you were to choose a company name the logic is to call it Aardvark or AA.

I’ll put you out of your misery. ZERI is the Zero Emission Research and Initiatives. Basically it’s a bunch of scientists doing good while they walk the earth like the Hulk’s David Banner. I say that because in the humble opinion of your commentator they’re green and they’re going to be huge.

ZERI’s leading man is a guy called Gunther Pauli. He was the guy behind the environmentally friendly detergent called Ecover, which is big in Europe. The green features of Ecover’s Headquarters reads like an environmentalist wrote a letter to Santa. In short he was a big success.

Then Gunther gave it all up and started ZERI.

What ZERI does is build systems, in this case Integrated Waste Management Systems. The rationale behind this is to design systems that work in harmony with nature. Distilled down to its essence it’s the idea that anything which is an organic waste will be food to something, and that’s those somethings will create value. if you’re poor and competing against a multinational you can’t afford to waste anything. Additionally by ensuring zero waste emissions it’s stopping environmental pollution at source.

I’m amazed by ZERI since it works within markets to make poor farmers from Brazil competitive with huge agrocorps whose actions are grinding small farmers down into the dirt. I would love to see ZERI combined with the Toyota Production System, which also believes in ZERO Waste, which also believes in adding value to products and people and never fires lays off an employee when the market ain’t buying.

I recently sat through what amounted to a small agricultural conference with people who work in agriculture in Asian Countries. I read their reports and literature and it makes for pretty dismal reading I can tell you. I’m a layman and a generalist. The title of the conference was Green Productivity and Organic Rice Farming. Not one of them mentioned Terra Preta, not one of them talked about Glomalin, indeed when I mentioned it to a soil scientist she’d never heard of it.

A Phillipine Agricultural Magazine had an article on a machine that can be used to burn rice husks in the open to address safety issues. I was stunned that they would do this. LPG costs are going through the roof in the Phillipines and wastefully burning what amounts to a fuel is insane. Rice Husks, the millions of tons produced each year in South Asia can be used in a furnace providing essentially free cooking heat for poor people and creating char for terra preta in the process.

They also had an article talking about farmers getting hurt by stepping on the plough shattered shells of snails and being infected with all sorts of tropical diseases the snails carry, mostly flukes and the like. The article had a paragraph on the chemicals that could be used to control snails. it didn’t mention that these chemicals are priced well beyond the reach of peasant farmers. It took me 90 seconds online to find a better solution; the Soaptree. it grows in Kenya. It has berries which is used as a natural detergent, which explains the name. This natural detergent also kills snails and only snails and has been used for hundreds of years. So planted in rice growing areas it would allow farmers to make their own detergent for washing their clothes, meaning they wouldn’t need to buy it from the shop and the simple act of washing clothes would wipe out the snails in their rice fields without affecting their rice crop. Three birds with the one stone - no purchase, clean clothes, no injuries. The tree would also provide animal fodder or compost material. If I researched further I am sure I could find other ways to utilise it.

A lot of people are really not thinking about multi-functionality in systems, nor are they doing even minimal research. ZERI, however does think about multifunctionality in systems, does its research, and so in my opinion are about 2-3 steps ahead of the experts I so recently encountered. Better lives and a better planet; what could be better than that?

I’ll talk a little about one ZERI project in my next post.

Keane has a song called “A Bad Dream”. It’s wonderful music to just close your eyes and let the complexity of the keyboard harmonies take you. On the other hand the song speaks so strongly to my own personal experiences that when you consider I have no capacity to self censor or even to shut up you’ll understand that I felt the need to share…

Why do I have to fly
over every town up and down the line?
I’ll die in the clouds above
and you that I defend, I do not love.

This seems to me like how environmentalists who hold themselves to higher standards in a world of waste must feel like. For Environmentalists, people who buy Limousines or Humvees are pretty unlovable but there has to be space for everyone in a world that’s fairer, cleaner and more supportive of our own well being. It’s a hard slog but you have to fight for everyone.

Some environmentalists are NIMBYs (Not in my backyard), other environmentalists prefer animals to people. I like to think of myself as someone who believes that people are important and that not in my backyard should mean in no-ones backyard. When people are treated better in a system that promotes respect for one’s environment animals will benefit. You can’t really ask people earning less than a dollar a day not to poach ivory. The solution starts with people and spreads from there.

.

I wake up, it’s a bad dream,
No one on my side,
I was fighting
But I just feel too tired
to be fighting,
guess I’m not the fighting kind.

Sometimes simply walking around can be walking around in a bad dream that y0u can’t wake up from. It’s not just the environment it’s how society treats the environment and individuals within it. For every puffing exhaust you have a laughing child breathing it in. For every caring parent you have the willful unconsciousness they have in not making a world that every parent should want their child to grow up in. Concern over this is the opposite of fighting, it’s about common causes and consensus building, not about police with sub-machine guns and tear gas. If it’s fighting then it’s a battle for hearts and minds. Funny saying that -sounds like a resource war.

Where will I meet my fate?
Baby I’m a man, I was born to hate.
And when will I meet my end?
In a better time you could be my friend.

.
We live in a world where so many choices have been taken away from us. It is difficult for anyone in the modern world to find their destiny, so many paths are labelled ‘Off limits”. Society and the day to day business of living places limitations on the kinds of things we can do. As hard as I try I find that I am doing damage because I have no choice but do so. I take a dump in the same pollution dispersion system that practically everyone in the developed world does. I am forced to buy food that is wrapped up in the cellophane that we’re pulling over the face of the planet. If I like chocolate, and I do, I cannot purchase it in a returnable container. No matter how hard I try I find I’m still part of the problem. The world we live in seems designed to place obstacles between us, such that even though we live, work and sleep scant metres from each other we might as well be on different sides of the planet. All that ties in with my concern over the technology of convenience as anti-social.

[chorus]
I wake up, it’s a bad dream,
No one on my side,
I was fighting
But I just feel too tired
to be fighting,
guess I’m not the fighting kind.
Wouldn’t mind it
if you were by my side
But you’re long gone,
yeah you’re long gone now.

Where do we go?
I don’t even know,
My strange old face,
And I’m thinking about those days,
And I’m thinking about those days.

This is more personal as my face is kinda strange. If you don’t know what I look like then try to imagine a plumper version of the actor who plays Dr. House then cross that picture with Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story and that’s what I look like. As you might imagine I believe that substance should take precedence over style purely out of self interest. My sense of humor might also be classified as reaction to the world that made fun of my face.

I wake up, it’s a bad dream,
No one on my side,
I was fighting
But I just feel too tired
to be fighting,
guess I’m not the fighting kind.
Wouldn’t mind it
if you were by my side
But you’re long gone,
yeah you’re long gone now.

That’s the whole song. Keane tends to write songs that are basically little interior monologues. Unlike Sting they don’t sing about the evil that was shipbuilding on the Tyne, or the disappeared in Chile under Pinochet. Unlike Billy Bragg and Dylan they actually ‘can’ sing.

Listen to the soaring keyboard harmonies in the middle of the song and despite my words of helplessness and hopelessness you will find your spirits rising. The melody runs counter to the lyrics, and so does hope in me overcome feelings of hopelessness.

I think above everything else hope is what makes us human and though I envision disaster and soon. I have to ask myself

‘Why do we fall?”

“So we can pick ourselves.”

“Things are never so dark as they are before the dawn.”

As you’ll probably have worked out by now, many of my ideas and opinions are based on collective community action and increased citizen responsibility for many of the things that the government, local government especially, is supposed to take care of on our behalf.

My ideas on the future of sanitation, bodily waste processed by the householder into soil by the householder for either use in his own garden or sale to farming areas would effectively put local government sanitation out of business, leaving local government with the role of system regulator rather than provider.

My ideas on the future of power generation, created by the householder by constructing building that generate a lot of their electricity, due to their construction focussing on energy sufficiency, would effectively put national power utilities out of business, delegating to them the task of providing power to electricity intensive industry, such as aluminium smelters and the like and/or provider of last resort to communities.

My ideas on the future of food production would effectively put supermarket chains out of business. The creation of farmer markets, whether that means walking around stalls talking to farmers or having food delivered directly to your home as you send your shopping list to the farmer down the street over the internet, would cut out the middle man meaning that customers get cheaper food and farmers get higher returns for their work. Walmart cut out warehouses from their system, so that delivery is straight to the store from the supplier. What is standing in the way of delivery direct from the supplier to the customer and missing out Walmart altogether?

I have a hard time thinking through all the implications of what I am thinking. It’s infrastructure light but process heavy, if you take my meaning. When everything you do is sourced in your own backyard a lot of the roads, pipes, step down stations, electricity pylons, malls etc, indeed all the stuff you need to move things around and store/present it, whether it’s energy, sanitation services, food and goods, disappears. I think that would be a good thing. It moves the money from outside providers to inside providers, from shareholders (the people who own it) to stakeholders (the people who use it). I think that would be a great thing. That would be water, energy, staple foods, sanitation etc

In a future where infrastructure is eliminated (because it’s un-necessary) a lot of the transportation would be by rail or air, and it would be point to point. I’ll talk about my ideas on that a little later, but consider what our world would look like with nothing larger than 2 lane roads in a world where trains, LTA heavy lift vehicles and personal urban transport systems make travelling by car something you only do to explore the back of beyond.

In such a system you would need a rail company (preferably public) and a system of airspace management to regulate people flying around to the tops of buildings to go to work.

But I have doubts too about the wisdom of this community utopia combined with Fritz Langs’s Metropolis.

Some might say that citizens can’t provide all their own services, either by themselves or through a community co-op, they won’t be able to supply everything. I think that’s true. People will still want glassware from Italy, Wine from Australia and fashion from Paris. Some things you cannot localise, so we’ll still need container ships and the like, but I imagine it would be much reduced to the benefit of the environment and society as a whole.

But what are the other implications?

There’s probably political implications, since when your community organization is providing for most of its services what happens to local government, what happens to taxation? I think there’s lots of room for abuse here. One of my big problems with it is that the world we live in today is so complex that a lot of how it works is not understood by the average man in the street. Having decisions made by the ignorant on the basis of which opinion is the more populist is a nightmare scenario.

There’s also the problem of justifying the enforcement of universal rights. What I’m thinking here is the famous Monty Python “Life of Brian” sketch turned on its head. What have the Romans ever done for us? In the sketch the answer went something like built roads, schools, aqueducts, provided security, ensured grain shipments etc etc etc. However when you have communities which could be to all intents and purposes self sufficient in many areas you could get something like Waco Texas, (where contrary to popular belief the authorities did use tanks and flamethrowers).

I spend a lot of time just thinking about things like this. It’s not the sort of thing I can think of effectively by myself though so maybe you could shout out your ideas on this issue?