https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=xbBdIG--b58

Pretty interesting lecture series here. Trees are less fragile than grain-yielding grasses, not vulnerable to weeds. Nuts are a high-calorie food, so why not get bulk calories from nut-orchards instead of fields of broadacre crops?

• https://youtube.com/watch?v=CJpitVC4mzs
• https://youtube.com/watch?v=vINVDKJQKcU
• https://youtube.com/watch?v=N862oye1HTY
• https://youtube.com/watch?v=y1NB1O7sLMs
• https://youtube.com/watch?v=-ZzT6lF2Fjc
• https://youtube.com/watch?v=3PWjMQllTpo
• https://youtube.com/watch?v=IsW0icwlnuo
• https://youtube.com/watch?v=jpTXVWmv4I8
• https://youtube.com/watch?v=ErgHXYIJidU
• https://youtube.com/watch?v=E73t7DU6zZI

The paper looks at breadfruit, air potato, carob, chestnut, Enset, banana/plantain, sago palm, evergreen oak/encina, yeheb nut, Mayan breadnut, perennial beans, almonds, nuts, olives, coconuts, avocado, honey locust pods, and tahitian chestnut and their potential to replace part of the dependency on cereals.

It would be great if we could get more of our food from trees. It would reduce labour input and pesticide input.

You can also multitask the land better often with trees. My grandfather used to have cattle among breadfruit trees on his farm. Breadfruit is great stuff, lots of uses.

This article makes me want to take a closer look at Brazil nuts. Figure 3 shows a yield close to 5 t/ha and being nuts they are more nutritionally dense than boring starches. (There's a lecture series you can find on youtube called something like 'nuts as a staple food')

Then around Figure 4 they talk about how trees growing perennials would lock up more carbon than cropland.

Abstract

Ecological intensification of agro-ecosystems, based on the optimization of ecological functions such as biological pest control, to replace agrochemical inputs is a promising route to reduce the ecological footprint of agriculture while maintaining commodity production. However, the performance of organic farming, often considered as a prototype of ecological intensification, in terms of pest control remains largely unknown. Here, using two distinct meta-analyses, we demonstrate that, compared to conventional cropping systems, (i) organic farming promotes overall biological pest control potential, (ii) organic farming has higher levels of overall pest infestations but (iii) that this effect strongly depends on the pest type. Our study shows that there are lower levels of pathogen infestation, similar levels of animal pest infestation and much higher levels of weed infestation in organic than in conventional systems. This study provides evidence that organic farming can enhance pest control and suggests that organic farming offers a way to reduce the use of synthetic pesticide for the management of animal pests and pathogens without increasing their levels of infestation.

....melting ice sheets dumping vast quantities of freshwater into the ocean could change the currents of the Atlantic Ocean. The new modeling suggested, though, that complete collapse of the Atlantic Ocean’s current system is no longer “theoretical” and could occur much faster and more completely than anticipated.

....“We’ve done surprisingly little preparing for these kinds of shocks,” said Roni Neff, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Center for a Livable Future. When Neff and her colleagues surveyed local governments on food system resilience, “the people that responded were those that were already thinking about this, and of those that responded only 10 percent considered their local jurisdiction to be prepared.”

....While the U.S. Department of Agriculture does have grants and loans for building a more resilient food system, that’s far from being a comprehensive plan for responding to giant climate shocks. “Some of us in academia have been trying to push the governmental agencies to take notice of this,” Puma said, “with little success to date.”

....study of New York City in 2016 estimated “the New York City food system holds roughly 4 to 5 days of regular consumption of food stock on average”—not an encouraging figure if one were to imagine incoming supply chains being disrupted.)

....there’s “low-hanging fruit” like fighting the increasing “consolidation of farmland,” reducing overreliance on fertilizer and pesticides, and being a little more skeptical of so-called smart agriculture: “If you’re introducing the use of drones into the agricultural system, that’s a new type of risk to take into account.”

hate the word "masterclass" but a great lecture nonetheless

Farm owners or workers mother fucker?

OWNERS OR WORKERS MOTHER FUCKER?!

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1008490

(horrifying Lovecraftian entity shifting in 5d, lasers and holograms shifting in incomprehensible geometry as rice is threshed in ways that drive small minded western liberals insane) :scared:

Winter is over and things have gone great.

The broccoli is starting to get florets. They are a bit later than we were expecting but that's what happens when you live further from the equator. We've got some cabbages cauliflower and Korabi as well but they aren't quite as far along.

The first 2 clutches of chicks are getting their wing feathers. Pretty sure we got lots of boys. We managed to sell them all last season so fingers crossed. We've sent off almost 150 eggs for hatching and we were just starting this time last year.

The Garlic is going gangbusters with 4 more months to go. We had to freeze a few kilos from last season's harvest because they started to rot. Its kinda disappointing because we lost well over 5 kg but now we know how long it will last and how much fresh stuff we should keep for eating and thus how much of our harvest we can sell.

Our Parsley is going amazingly and the broad beans are just starting to flower.

Last seasons Pumpkins have ripened really well. We had to harvest them a bit early and we weren't sure how they'd but they have lots of pumpkin flavor and they aren't too sweet. (I find really sweet pumpkins ruin soups and things that are meant to be more savory)

We are still getting chillies and the odd capsicum from last years plants in our glass house and we've got some seedlings to relace the ones that didn't make it through the winter. and I'm in the process of building another glasshouse for our tomatoes.

Lots of work to do but barring some disaster the future is looking bright.

I spent most of yesterday and a bunch of the day before helping a baby Chicken get out of its shell. You aren't supposed to do that but it was over a day behind its siblings and hadn't been able to pop the shell.

It was cold and alone in the nest while mommy and her babies were running around. It would have died but my lady felt it wiggling in the egg. We could feel it tapping and hear its little chirps but it couldn't get out. We got a hot water bottle and made a wam nest for the egg in a beanie (toque for you Canucks) We figured it would die in the egg when its air sack ran out or maybe us helping could save it. So we shaved a tiny hole in the egg where it was tapping. Beanie, as we started to call it, wasn't going to die gasping.

We put the egg in with its momma overnight hoping she could handle the rest herself and momma would wake up with her last baby hatched.

Beanie wasn't out of her egg in the morning. The hole we made was much larger and we could see a little beak but the chick hadn't been able to spin around to "unzip." We brought her back inside into the beanie hot water bottle nest. We got a wet cloth to help keep the membranes in the egg from drying out and shrink wrapping around beanie. we did some more research and found someone who had performed the blasphemous procedure we were attempting. We chipped away bits of the shell being careful to not disturb the inner membrane as the chicks circular system is attached to it. The first little mistake made us slow down dramatically. I felt so bad as the little red spot grew and relived when it stopped growing. Once there was a large enough hole in the egg the membrane started to dry out as Beanie pulled all the blood out of it.

Beanie was kicking but but still seemed unable to get free for the egg. The membrane was too strong and too tight. So we got some warm water and a cotton tip and started rehydrating the membrane where Beanie was putting pressure. suddenly the membrane ripped. We kept moistening as beanies little feet and wings pushed out until finally we had an empty egg and a sweet little peeper.

We coddled her in her beany for the rest of the day worrying about whether her feet were messed up or if her feathers would fluff up properly. By the time all the other chooks were in bed she had fluffed up revealing her to be a beautiful golden girl. We put her with her mom and 10 siblings overnight because keeping her warm is hard work for people.

This morning she is still a bit slow compared to her siblings so she is hanging out with me and eating the crumbs off my shirt. She is happy and healthy and a pest.

The combined effects of the disruption of the Russian Revolution, which decreased the supply of wheat and other commodity crops, and World War I increased agricultural prices; this demand encouraged farmers to dramatically increase cultivation. For example, in the Llano Estacado of eastern New Mexico and northwestern Texas, the area of farmland was doubled between 1900 and 1920, then tripled again between 1925 and 1930. The agricultural methods favored by farmers during this period created the conditions for large-scale erosion under certain environmental conditions.

"large scale erosion" innocuous words for God's ongoing plagues and apocalypses in response to selfishness and greedy exploiting his creation

The widespread conversion of the land by deep plowing and other soil preparation methods to enable agriculture eliminated the native grasses which held the soil in place and helped retain moisture during dry periods. Furthermore, cotton farmers left fields bare during winter months, when winds in the High Plains are highest, and burned the stubble as a means to control weeds prior to planting, thereby depriving the soil of organic nutrients and surface vegetation.

bruh whats the deal with kulaks and lighting food on fire lol...typical demon praxis

The dust clouds blew all the way to Chicago, where they deposited 12 million pounds (5,400 tonnes) of dust. Two days later, the same storm reached cities to the east, such as Cleveland, Buffalo, Boston, New York City, and Washington, D.C. That winter (1934–1935), red snow fell on New England.

Red Snow in Lovecraft country

The economic effects persisted, in part, because of farmers' failure to switch to more appropriate crops for highly eroded areas. Because the amount of topsoil had been reduced, it would have been more productive to shift from crops and wheat to animals and hay. During the Depression and through at least the 1950s, there was limited relative adjustment of farmland away from activities that became less productive in more-eroded counties.

animals are of course essential to fertilizing soil, but its all about profit, not regenerating life

Some of the failure to shift to more productive agricultural products may be related to ignorance about the benefits of changing land use. A second explanation is a lack of availability of credit, caused by the high rate of failure of banks in the Plains states. Because banks failed in the Dust Bowl region at a higher rate than elsewhere, farmers could not get the credit they needed to obtain capital to shift crop production. In addition, profit margins in either animals or hay were still minimal, and farmers had little incentive in the beginning to change their crops.

Capital-intensive agribusiness had transformed the scene; deep wells into the aquifer, intensive irrigation, the use of artificial pesticides and fertilizers, and giant harvesters were creating immense crops year after year whether it rained or not. According to the farmers he interviewed, technology had provided the perfect answer to old troubles, such of the bad days would not return. In Worster's view, by contrast, the scene demonstrated that America's capitalist high-tech farmers had learned nothing. They were continuing to work in an unsustainable way, devoting far cheaper subsidized energy to growing food than the energy could give back to its ultimate consumers.

high tech DSA redditors at /r/neoliberal: "degrowth wants to make us poor, my comrades are Walmart and Monsanto, who are trying to feed the global poor by replacing natural soil ecology with sterile nanotechnology. We no longer have a need for bees, we can just use bee-drones you fucking eco-Stalinist"

"did you see the latest meme from Aphids on Threads? So funny lol" - 12 year old Maoist farmer child who has joined forces with the pests against bourgeois capitalism because they were radicalized by a social media front group.

So-called dairying ants have a mutualistic relationship with aphids, tending them for their honeydew and protecting them from predators.

he protecc, he snacc,

Aphids are among the most destructive insect pests on cultivated plants in temperate regions. In addition to weakening the plant by sucking sap, they act as vectors for plant viruses and disfigure ornamental plants with deposits of honeydew and the subsequent growth of sooty moulds. Because of their ability to rapidly increase in numbers by asexual reproduction and telescopic development, they are a highly successful group of organisms from an ecological standpoint.

"nooo you can't weaken my commodities! Middle class Karens won't buy these vegetables if they don't look perfect!" haha honeydew goes drippp

Control of aphids is not easy. Insecticides do not always produce reliable results, given resistance to several classes of insecticide and the fact that aphids often feed on the undersides of leaves. On a garden scale, water jets and soap sprays are quite effective. Natural enemies include predatory ladybugs, hoverfly larvae, parasitic wasps, aphid midge larvae, crab spiders, lacewing larvae, and entomopathogenic fungi. An integrated pest management strategy using biological pest control can work, but is difficult to achieve except in enclosed environments such as greenhouses.

"enclosed environments such as greenhouses" PRISON PLANET