“Soils are a massive carbon store, holding four times as much as the atmosphere and three times more than the world’s trees”, John Gribbin.
As a result of agricultural cultivation and deforestation, soils that have been exposed to the air become oxidised, and release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere .
Plants in the process of photosynthesis capture carbon dioxide and return it to the soil. The process that raises the Earth’s carbon storage level is also called organic gardening, and it can reverse the greenhouse effect more quickly than planting trees.
Ninety-five percent of the composition of plants is made up of carbon (C) absorbed as CO2 from the atmosphere and water (H2O), taken from the soil. By composting all plant matter – kitchen scraps, leaves and stems from the garden we are not only recycling carbon, but building up our soils organically.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if the government subsidised us for composting as they do for tree planting?
You may not be aware that what we eat has a dramatic impact on our planet's ecology. Twenty one per cent of the Earth’s energy is used in the production and distribution of food. If we grow our own food, (and there's enough space in the typical backyard to be self-sufficient in fruit and vegetables), we would be substituting human energy for non-renewable fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are needed to plough, to harvest, transport, package, refrigerate and distribute our food. Every step along this distribution trail reduces the nutritional value and freshness of food.
But not all food is ecologically equal. It takes 20 times as much land to produce beef, compared with that needed to supply the equivalent food value of grains, fruit or vegetables.
Why Eating Beef Destroys Rainforests
Poultry, despite concerns about avian cruelty and reliance on antibiotics, can produce 12 times as much as beef in a given area, and because it is hardly ever exported, it does not cause the destruction of biodiverse rainforests as the increasing production of beef does.
If beef production is an incredibly inefficient way to use land, it is also the most inefficient consumer of water. Every time you buy 1kg of steak you are in effect demanding 100,000 litres of water. This 100,000 litres of water will produce 3 times as much poultry meat, and 15 times as much potatoes.
As demand for beef increases, particularly from the third world consumers, land is cleared that supports birds, animals, plants and insects (i.e. biodiversity), and replaced by a one dimensional pasture instead of trees and shrubs. When we export beef from Australia we are in effect exporting precious soil and water. Poultry, unlike beef, doesn't enter the export trade because it is produced regionally so production can expand with considerably less ecological impact.
So next time you order a 400 gram steak at the local pub, remember you are consuming 40,000 litres of precious water. That steak poses the same threat to our precious rainforests as demand for wood chips.
How Cotton T-shirts Kill Birds, Fish and People.
In 1984 at the Union Carbide's Bhopal factory in India, 8000 people died from a toxic release of gas used in the production of pesticides for the growing of cotton. Cotton is the world’s most popular fibre. It is so dependent on pesticides, $2.6 Billion worth of pesticides are sprayed each year to produce a crop. Extremely hazardous organo-phosphates like parathion and diazanon are used, which have devastating impacts on birds, fish and other wildlife, not to mention human beings. Apart from ecological contamination, cotton is a very thirsty crop that uses up precious water.
Should we give up buying cotton T-shirts because they are destroying our planets ecology? There are simple answers to the question. Instead of buying new T-shirts we could wear our existing T-shirts until they were threadbare, or we could go to the Op. shop. Both these options protect our soil, our water and the health of farmers around the world. But organically grown cotton is available, so ask for it, because it is produced without synthetic pesticides and fertilizers.
Don’t Buy Fertilizers - Grow Your Own
Most Australian soils contain less than 1% of organic matter which is mostly contained in the top 10cm layer. This is only about a third as high as is desirable for the long term supply of nitrogen, and to hold water during our hot dry summers. By adding compost, blood and bone, composted poultry manure or fish wastes, we will provide the food for micro-organisms to decompose, releasing a steady stream of available nitrogen.
As well as recycling, you can grow your own fertilizer by growing plants from the legume family (peas, beans etc), which produce nitrogen nodules on their roots from atmospheric nitrogen dragged down into the soil. They can also be dug into the soil as a green manure.
By planting peas and broad beans in winter and French beans in summer, we can harvest a crop that gives us delicious food as well as adding nitrogen to the soil. You can grow your own lawn fertilizer by over sowing the lawn with another legume – dwarf O’Connors strawberry clover. By cutting your lawn with a mulching mower, nutrients are returned and recycled from the leaf blades back to the soil.
Why We Don't Need Pesticides
Ninety percent of the purchases of home garden chemicals are unnecessary! If gardeners had healthy organic soils and a diverse range of plants, then the conditions don’t exist for the multiplication of pests. Pests attack weak plants just as humans succumb to colds when our resistance is weakened by poor nutrition or exhaustion.
A biodiverse garden encourages the good predatory insects to prey on the destructive plant-eating insects, keeping a natural balance. By spraying broad-spectrum pesticides, the beneficial insects are killed, which encourages an imbalance and forces further sprays.
Farmers of today lose a greater share of their crops to pests than they did before pesticides were available. Not only don’t we need pesticides, they are so destructive to our environment, we should ban them from our backyards!
Supporting Organics
Whilst the organic sector is growing rapidly in Europe and the USA, reaching up to 10% of production, in Australia, organics only account for 1%. It will rise dramatically if we use our buying power as consumers to demand organics. Don’t underestimate the impact of our purchasing vote. When consumers desert a brand that push the company profits lower, they will immediately respond by changing behaviour.
McDonalds™ reacted to consumer pressure about junk food by increasing its range of salads last year.
So if you really care about the environment, don’t feel helpless and wait for the governments to act, you can take action immediately.
Living The Good Life Sustainably
With the advent of water restrictions last summer we stopped watering our lawns at both Heronswood and St Erth. Our lawns did not die, they just became dormant (cutting our water bills by 50%), and then they greened up so quickly with the autumn rains, that we wondered why we didn’t cut back on watering decades ago.
We are convinced that taking bolder ecologically necessary steps to live in harmony with nature, is not only easy, but empowering.