Less dramatically, How to Green the Desert and Reverse Climate Change
I just saw this and wanted to get opinions. I’m also sharing it with my favorite source on climate change, Skeptical Science and a couple of skeptical thinking forums.
Not so much “Cows” as “Cows on the Move”?
He is absolutely, 100% spot-on. Masanobu Fukuoka had a similar concept back in the 1970’s, but nobody took any notice, of course.
People - especially scientists - have such awful tunnel vision these days. I suppose it’s an inevitable outcome of subject specialisation. But as the old aphorism goes, when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like nail. “Experts” instinctively try to apply the lessons of their own narrow discipline to whatever problem they observe, instead of asking, “what new stuff do I need to learn about here to make my existing knowledge useful and applicable?”.
My observation in the tropics is that land erosion is a huge issue. It happens in temperate climates, of course, but it’s slower. Here - and presumably in those regions where desertification is creeping in - the weather is absolutely unforgiving. If you take off the vegetation (ground cover) from any piece of land, you destroy it, instantly. Within one season. There is about an acre on the Danshui riverfront where some idiot has levelled the ground (I’m guessing they were going to build on it and couldn’t get planning permission). It was originally dense with vegetation. It now has a saline crust and nothing at all is growing there, not even weeds, a year later. Do this on a big enough scale and you will end up with desert. You can see this happening all over ‘poor’ countries in Africa, where people get a few miserable crops from a patch of bare dirt with all the nutrients washed or blown away.
My little bit of land near YangMingShan had been comprehensively fucked over, in typical Taiwanese style, when I acquired it. The landlord rented it to me (for next to nothing) because it was useless. I simply dumped three tons of manure on it, along with logs, leaves, grass and other garbage that the neighbours hadn’t got around to setting fire to, and six months later it’s productive farmland. It’s pathetically simple. Sure, it would take a great deal of time to ‘bootstrap’ this process without bringing in raw materials - starting with grasses and nitrogen-fixing trees, a small flock of grazing animals - but I have no doubt it could be done. How you might convince entire countries to actually do it, though, is another question entirely.
[quote=“Vay”]Less dramatically, How to Green the Desert and Reverse Climate Change
I just saw this and wanted to get opinions. I’m also sharing it with my favorite source on climate change, Skeptical Science and a couple of skeptical thinking forums.[/quote]
This is absolutely hilarious. Thank you for the best laugh I’ve had in weeks. I mean that quite sincerely.
The reason that I say that is this:
[quote]As a young man he thought the blame also lay with an overpopulation of elephants, and so, despite a deep love for these animals, he recommended and supported the culling of large herds. Over the years this practice has resulted in the intentional killing of more than 40,000 elephants, but no real improvement in the health of grasslands.
Realizing what an error he and others had made, Savory confessed, “this was the saddest and gravest mistake of my life.”
“Clearly we have never understood desertification,” he added, “which now threatens us globally.”[/quote]
In other words, all the bitching by the radical environmentalists and PeTA protestors and vegetarians/vegans about how “cattle ranching destroys the environment!!!” has been complete bullshit (hah) for all these years. All that garbage about how fragile ecosystems were being destroyed by grazing is now admitted to be a “sad and grave mistake”.
And you think you can understand “climate change” and make recommendations on that, when you greenie-weenies don’t even know that spreading fertilizer on marginal land is a good thing?
Did you even read what the guy wrote? He was saying elephant culling was a grave mistake. He didn’t say ranching was a-OK.
Cattle ranching as currently practiced does destroy the environment - because people cut down forests to graze the cattle. Rainforests grow on fundamentally infertile soil. So you need huge acreages to raise a pathetically small volume of cattle. Eventually it gets cropped out and abandoned. But raising animals per se is not destructive, if it’s done properly.
Is that so? I’ll agree with you that sometimes a targeted application of synthetic soil amendment is the correct thing to do, but your statement is so vague as to be almost meaningless. What is “fertiliser”? What is “marginal land”? Under what circumstances is it a “good thing”? What is your desired end result?
Apples and oranges, buddy. It isn’t me/us posters or “greenie weenies” who are relevant to the understanding and recommendations regarding global warming, it’s a vast consensus of experts in a field. Quantum physics is a pretty farging complicated topic as well, but after decades, scientists have a pretty good reason to think they have an inkling of how that works. So are you “skeptical” of QP as well? Or is it only towards the science that you have an ideological reason to quibble with that you’re suddenly “skeptical”? Assuming the 2nd case, this kind of inconsistency is a big red flag for motivated reasoning.
And in both cases (AGW and QP), it isn’t just the experts’ opinion that they know something; there are actual reasons for non-experts to believe them. These reasons are the identifying characteristics of science as opposed to pseudoscience. For anyone interested in knowing what those are, I really recommend this book:
Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk
But here’s a not-bad video primer:
And another on the web:
Vay, re. books in the other thread, you might enjoy “Bad Science” by Ben Goldacre. It’d be preaching to the choir, but it’s a good read. The problem is that the people who most need to read that sort of book, don’t. Or at least don’t understand them (it gets quite technical).
There’s also a (more accessible) article by Richard Feynman on “Cargo Cult Science”, which I recommend to absolutely everybody on the planet.
Did you even read what the guy wrote? He was saying elephant culling was a grave mistake. He didn’t say ranching was a-OK.
Cattle ranching as currently practiced does destroy the environment - because people cut down forests to graze the cattle. Rainforests grow on fundamentally infertile soil. So you need huge acreages to raise a pathetically small volume of cattle. Eventually it gets cropped out and abandoned. But raising animals per se is not destructive, if it’s done properly.
[/quote]
He also states explicitly that traditional ranching is destructive because herds remain more-or-less stationary and eventually destroy ground cover, while in a natural environment herds had to stay on the move to avoid predators.
Anyone starts talking shit about Quantum Physics and it’s going to get ugly.
We visited Mr Fukuoka in Shikoku back in the early '90s after reading his book. He was very friendly and humble, but when I saw his small patches of land I thought that all his theories sounded good and seemed to make sense, but probably didn’t work on a greater scale. It’s something nice to experience with in your own small garden, though. Not sure if people have tried his approach on a larger scale later on.
Wow … that must have been an interesting visit, I wish I’d been able to do that before he kicked the bucket. The thing with Fukuoka’s ideas and methods is that they represent a good starting point for thinking about the problem. They’re not a recipe for solving it (in fact it took me quite a while to figure out the details of his method - he’s not very explicit about them). People these days hate thinking: they just want to follow the recipe and get an instant result.
I think the preface to one of the books says that the specific implementation of his rice method is targeted at that climate and area. It took him years to get it just-so. Sure, someone trying the same thing would be able to skip over a lot of his early mistakes, but there would still be a lot of experimentation. Commercial farmers don’t have the time or the inclination for that.
OTOH a lot of his basic concepts have been adopted on a commercial scale. Growing legumes as a cover crop on a minimal-till field is being promoted by the USDA and other organisations all over the world - because it works and it’s profitable. There are videos on YouTube of people experimenting with his ideas (mixed with some permaculture theory - there’s a lot of overlap) to push back deserts. What’s NOT happening is economists and politicans - the ones who pull the pursestrings - taking notice of the results. I’m convinced this is because the average private-school educated Suit has a deep fear and distrust of dirt, and assumes that nobody in their right mind would want to put their hands in it. They therefore push for more mechanisation, more chemicals, more expensive technology, while simultaneously wringing their hands about unemployment. They’re a bit slow on the uptake, but they might eventually see the contradiction there. All that’s required for scalability is more people working and living on the land (I think Fukuoka estimates about 1 person per hectare, full-time), instead of locked up in call centres like battery chickens.
Wow … that must have been an interesting visit, I wish I’d been able to do that before he kicked the bucket. The thing with Fukuoka’s ideas and methods is that they represent a good starting point for thinking about the problem. They’re not a recipe for solving it (in fact it took me quite a while to figure out the details of his method - he’s not very explicit about them). People these days hate thinking: they just want to follow the recipe and get an instant result.
I think the preface to one of the books says that the specific implementation of his rice method is targeted at that climate and area. It took him years to get it just-so. Sure, someone trying the same thing would be able to skip over a lot of his early mistakes, but there would still be a lot of experimentation. Commercial farmers don’t have the time or the inclination for that.
OTOH a lot of his basic concepts have been adopted on a commercial scale. Growing legumes as a cover crop on a minimal-till field is being promoted by the USDA and other organisations all over the world - because it works and it’s profitable. There are videos on YouTube of people experimenting with his ideas (mixed with some permaculture theory - there’s a lot of overlap) to push back deserts. What’s NOT happening is economists and politicans - the ones who pull the pursestrings - taking notice of the results. I’m convinced this is because the average private-school educated Suit has a deep fear and distrust of dirt, and assumes that nobody in their right mind would want to put their hands in it. They therefore push for more mechanisation, more chemicals, more expensive technology, while simultaneously wringing their hands about unemployment. They’re a bit slow on the uptake, but they might eventually see the contradiction there. All that’s required for scalability is more people working and living on the land (I think Fukuoka estimates about 1 person per hectare, full-time), instead of locked up in call centres like battery chickens.[/quote]
It’s been a while, so I don’t really remember much of what I read in that book and what we were talking about while in Japan (we had a bit of a language barrier, I remember sitting in his hut, drinking tea and saying nothing, just nodding every now and then, I think we talked to his daughter a bit, well anyway, long time ago). As I recall, he was big on doing nothing, just let nature do the work, let things grow in the garden without much of a system and be satisfied with the things you have, not longing for more and more. Well, not exactly the lifestyle young people are yearning for these days.
Here is a short introduction to what he did for those who never heard about the man.
permaculture.com/drupal/node/140
He was a bit of a hippy, I guess - he was satisfied with a hut, tea, and gruel, but I wouldn’t be. That’s OK though. The basic principle still applies. I grow stuff without chemicals; I just put the seeds in the ground, water them until they’re established (the only real hard work part), and then let them grow. Sometimes the bugs take things. Cowpeas struggle. I can’t grow broccoli at all. Both of them get eaten. There are plenty of other things I can grow that simply don’t get touched - even related species (other brassicas and legumes are just fine) and things that would surprise you, like strawberries.
“Without much of a system” is not the idea though. There absolutely is a system, but it’s a bit of an ad hoc one that may only work in your particular locale. Clover didn’t work for me because there seem to be no suitable rhizobium in my soil (I have exactly two red clover plants that are thriving - I’ll save the soil and roots and plant more). I leave lots of weeds growing until they start to flower, because the bees love them, and bugs eat them. I grow borage mixed with fenugreek and wheat everywhere because it gives rapid, self-composting ground cover and seems surprisingly drought-tolerant. I put a thick layer of manure and mulch on the soil to encourage burrowers (earthworms, mostly). I never kill insects on my plants because, in my experience, two days later something else will move in and eradicate them. If that doesn’t happen, it’s no big deal because I have plenty of other stuff. My main problem this year is that I couldn’t estimate growing times, and have too many plants I didn’t track properly - so I got gluts of stuff I didn’t really need. It’s a learning process.
Yeah, but it’ll all be taken away from them one way or another. I have a (Taiwanese) friend who was just telling me about his son, who went on a shopping trip to HK with his wife and blew US$30K on brand-name shit, like designer watches. Watches. WTF? Does that really make him happy? What on earth is going on in his head, if that’s all he dreams of? The youth of today, I dunno, I despair, I really do.
Fascinating stuff, I mean your garden. I would love to do that too, growing stuff and experimenting with different plants. Need to move to another location to do that, though. The beauty of a diverse natural environment is that whenever a population (insects) grow out of proportion, predators will move in and keep the numbers in check. I think it is all about diversity. Like you say, you plant a lot of different vegetables and some make it some not, but you are not going to have nothing in the end, and then you learn from experience and adjust your strategy. Simple, but ultimately very satisfying way of spending your days. It all starts to change when you have mono cultures and do agriculture for profit.
And of course I agree with you on the young generation. The addiction to smartphones and the Internet etc. is really worrying. But then, it has always been that way. The older generation shaking their heads over the younger generation.
Right, diversity is the key. In engineering we call it redundancy, but farmers seem to ignore this principle because the government will bail them out if/when things go pearshaped. As for profit, this isn’t just for fun: I’m pretty confident I can do this and make more money than I would (say) growing an acre of rice. I reckon I could make a very comfortable living from about 1 hectare and manage it (mostly) by myself without undue effort. Monocultures are hopelessly inefficient - people do it because that’s the way you “plug in” to agribusiness. Unfortunately, land in Taiwan is so ridiculously expensive (driven by speculation and illegal construction) I’ll have to go back to the UK to do it. I need to get a lot more organised though; as I said, it’s my first year and I’m still learning, but what I see so far gives me a lot confidence.
The sad thing about Taiwan’s building laws is that they could be the basis of an advanced, sustainable society. On paper, the law says that you can build on 10% of 2500m2 if you operate the other 90% as a farm. Planning officials routinely ignore this requirement and let the rich bitches use the 90% for a carpark instead. If Taiwan would just enforce its own laws, just for bloody once, all sorts of good things could happen.
I think it’s a bit different this time around. When I was young, we were mostly interested in motorbikes and getting laid. Neither pursuit was especially expensive. Kids seem to expect far more material things than is healthy these days.
A documentary which you might find interesting:
The guy rambles a bit (it could have been easily edited down to 20 mins) but it’s still worth watching.
Pretty harsh response to Allan Savory’s TED talk in the Guardian:
Eat more meat and save the world: the latest implausible farming miracle
There are plenty of sourced responses to Savory’s specific claims, but from my own experience, this bit stood out to me:
Mentioning Galileo and wordy answers to simple questions always get my force-fields up for sure.
I was about to send this off to my Ex to lift her spirits but then realized it was non related.
Interesting, but something doesn’t stack up. Savory is a bit of a slow talker, but he doesn’t ramble or go off on tangents in his TED speech. His website is not incoherent or filled with new-age bullshit. He has won a couple of prestigious prizes; if he’s a fraud, then he’s the eco-wonk equivalent of Bernie Madoff.
So apparently Monbiot is the only person on the planet who finds him to be a demented old nutcase with nothing useful to say. Ah, no, wait, also (if you check Wikipedia) the USDA, which finds no merit in his claims. That’s about as surprising as the NRA dismissing negative research about gun ownership.
I’m not saying Monbiot is lying - I just find it really, really odd. Was Savory drunk or something? Was he just overawed by doing an interview for the Guardian and got a bit carried away? Was Monbiot antagonistic or supercilious? I get the impression he could be if he wanted. Whatever: for me, results are what matter. Are people getting results using livestock in a rotating-paddock system? Absolutely. Farmers are doing it all over the world, in many different climates. They might not be getting the yield that CAFOs produce, but that’s not their aim. They want to make money, and the want to run a sustainable operation. Those are the metrics, and the system works for them. Some scientists dismiss these results as “anecdotal”, an act of astonishing arrogance. You can’t pretend something is an outlier or a fluke simply by labelling it “anecdotal”, especially when you have hundreds or thousands of such “anecdotes”. That’s data.
We also know for a fact that animals are a critical component of most ecosystems, often in surprising ways.
Monbiot makes a couple of completely off-the-wall assertions and misunderstands a couple of points:
First off, Savory never asserted that eating meat is going to save the world. Using a headline like that is misrepresentation unbecoming of a real journalist. IIRC, Savory didn’t even describe his method as farming or ranching. Meat was, certainly, a plausible byproduct, but not an essential one.
Secondly, he never suggested grasslands should be stocked at the sort of unsustainable level you see in factory-farming: stocking would be high for a very short period, and then cattle would be moved on, mimicking natural grazing patterns. Average stocking density (over time and area) would be, I imagine, very low - a few head per hectare, or whatever is sustainable in the area in question.
Monbiot also seems to be implying that desertification is a completely normal process and we shouldn’t attempt to stop it:
Finally, Monbiot doesn’t really seem to get that natural farming - or rangeland management - is more art than science. People like chemical-fed agriculture because it’s completely predictable: put seed in ground, drench with chemicals X, Y and Z, and you’ll get a yield. If you decide upfront not to use chemicals X, Y and Z, then it gets a hell of a lot more complicated. A lot of trial-and-error is required, a lot of measurement, adjustment, and feedback (as Savory takes pains to point out). For example, what works with buffalo might be an absolute disaster with goats, and stocking density is obviously a critical parameter that needs continuous monitoring. And it takes time - at least five years to be confident about what you’re observing.
Scientists bloody hate stuff like that. They want to set up the experiment with some set of conditions, let it run for a few weeks or months, and then plot some charts in Excel or SPSS. Perhaps Savory is not so good at expressing himself, or perhaps Monbiot is a bit too far up his own ass: but Savory is correct that natural farming methods do not submit easily to scientific investigation. Fukuoka (who had an academic background similiar to Monbiot) made exactly the same point in his writings. But it’s really not the job of farmers to solve the scientists’ methodological headaches.