Restoring our soils

This is a book review of David R. Montgomery's book, Growing a Revolution; Bringing our soils back.  I highly recommend the original.  Besides being a real eye opener, it's a good read.


If you prefer, here is the author talking about the book on Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4p-kQ6D8aA

Prof. Montgomery has traveled the world and documented the work of farmers far and wide who are using these techniques with amazing results.  Even more amazing is that when there is one of these farms right beside another which uses "conventional methods" and the difference in production is blindingly obvious  even at a casual glance, these so called conventional farmers who are using large inputs of agricultural chemicals, very often  stick with their methods.  Prof Montgomery suggests why this is.

In his book you won't find reports of great research done by the agricultural departments of universities.  No university can allow this sort of research on their campus that has led to these methods.  As the world becomes more and more of a corporatocracy, and multinationals find ever more inventive ways to avoid taxes, government funds have dried up and almost the only source of funding remaining is from these same tax avoiding companies.

No company is going to fund research that leads to less  of their products being used.  If, for instance, a university's agricultural department is being funded by a producer of Phosphate, they will think twice before even having an independently funded research project on site that will show that you can reduce or dispense (for a time) with more additions of phosphate.

Let me quote a small section from the book.  It regards Rattan Lal, a researcher who went to Africa and worked out methods to improve the agriculture of subsistence farmers.  These methods are right in keeping with what is described in Montomery's book.

"Within two years of his departure from Africa, trees were growing through his experimental plots.  The grand experiment was over.  He'd figured out something that would work for subsistence farmers .  So why were his findings all but ignored?

Funders and aid agencies alike wanted breakthroughs and rapid revolutions, not gradual improvement of the soil.  Commercial interests pushed to develop solutions that could be commodified, they wanted petrochemical products, not practices that anyone could adopt for free,  No modern, forward-looking foundation or agency wanted to hear about mulching or growing a diversity of crops.  Such simple answers did not - and still don't - fit the technophilic narrative of progress."

But in case you think that the methods described in Montgomery's book only apply to small holdings or subsistence farmers, think again.  The book is mainly about large ranches, dairy farms and the like.

What is needed is demo farms in as many districts as possible run by farmers who are willing to try out these methods, on at least  one of their fields and keep at it for at least three years.

The type of farming mentioned in the book, leads to  a greatly reduced use of fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides and fuel. Note I said reduced, not eliminated.

What is reported in Growing a Revolution is the work of many farmers around the world, for the most part with no connection with each other.  These farmers would qualify, by any definition, as true scientists, trying things and recording their results and trying again.  There are variations on a theme but what is also amazing is that all these farmers, farming in widely diverse climate and soil types, political regimes, cultures and farm sizes  have converged on the same basic realizations.  It has taken many of these farmers decades to come to these methodologies.  Mr Mongomery's book is an attempt to smooth the way for other farmers so they don't have to go through the same lengthily process.

What then does Mr Montgomery claim that this sort of farming achieves.  Actually, I should rephrase that.  What has he observed that farmers around the world are achieving with these methods.  And notice the emphasis on methods in the plural.  While each method shows some positive results, these methods only truly revolutionize farming when used together. First the results of this type of farming.

Results of this 'new'  type of farming


#  Reduced  inputs including diesel, chemical fertilizers pesticides and herbicides resulting in greater profits even if yields only match "conventional*" farming.  In fact, yields more often than not, rapidly (in a few short years), exceed those of chemical farming.  Profit equals gross revenue minus inputs costs.

* We now think of farming with chemical inputs as conventional since we are used to seeing this type of farming but it is actually a very new way of farming. When we get on to methods, you will see that many of the methods are very old school but modified by recent insights into the biology of soils. So called conventional farming necessitates large amounts of fossil fuel just to produce the materials used in farming.  Add to this the fuel to run the tractor and you are right in the middle of unsustainability.  Reducing these inputs has to be a good thing from many points of view.

#  Increased infiltration of water into the soil and the  corollary, reduced or eliminated  surface run off, thus stopping the export of our soils into the ocean*. The other corollary of more infiltration, especially with reduced evaporation is less dependence on irrigation and,,, in the case of dry land farming (farming without irrigation) the difference between a crop and no crop.

* We have visited Pompey in Italy and Otterton in the UK.  Both of these towns used to be sea port towns.  They are now a considerable distance from the sea despite the gradual rise of sea level of about one mm per year, now increasing to around 3mm per year.  The land in front of them has been filled with soil from their hinterland, due to deforestation and even more so from plowing.  All around the world this is a common story.  

# Greatly reduced export of  soil into the streams if there is a "weather bomb" and runoff does occur.  Weather bombs seem to be occurring more often with climate change.

# Elimination of wind erosion

#  Greater drought resistance since rain has infiltrated and soils are always protected by a cover crop and/or mulch, which decreases evaporation.

#  Greater flood resistance for the whole catchment since the soils can take up much more water without sending it straight down into the nearest water way.  If a whole catchment of farmers adopted these methods, flood peaks down stream would greatly decrease and with it, the damage to downstream property.  Once the water is underground, it flows much more slowly toward the sea. Not only are peak  flows  reduced but low water flows are increased as this ground water slowly percolates back into the river systems.

# Water purified before flowing into the streams.  When water percolates through a rich organic soil containing reduced carbon*, the fauna of the organic soil scavenges nutrients from the water, reducing or eliminating the flow of P and N into the adjacent stream.  By contrast when water flows through soils onto/into which chemical nutrients have been added, the water is contaminated.  Fertilizers, especially Nitrogen fertilizers are very soluble in contrast to organic material containing nitrogen.  Organic material rich in Nitrogen gradually releases its nitrogen as it breaks down in the soil allowing the crop to take up the nitrogen as they need it.

Note also that, pathogens don't have a chance when they enter a rich soil ecology.  It's like dropping a European rabbit into Africa.

* Reduced in the chemical sense as opposed to oxidized.  Reduced carbon is an energy source which plays the same role in the soil that sunshine does above ground. For most commercial crops, the part that we utilize is only a fraction of the whole.  For a grain crop, for instance, we utilize the seeds.  The rest of the plant is a store of solar energy now in the form of chemical energy.  If this store of chemical energy is incorporated into the soil, it powers the whole soil ecology.  If  it is left as mulch on the surface of the soil, it cools the soil, hugely reducing evaporation, and greatly increases infiltration of rain.  The soil organisms at the interface of the mulch and the soil utilize this energy source and pass it on into the soil. 

#  Nutrients are held in the soil in a form which is accessible to the next crop in a slow release form rather than a highly soluble form.  This stops the export of nutrients to the nearest stream via the ground water. Streams flow clear again and if adopted widely, dead zones at the mouth of rivers from eutrophication* would be a thing of the past. As a result, aquatic life in the streams recovers.  Salmon and trout prosper.

* So much nutrient entering a body of water that dense algae blooms develop, die and use up the oxygen in the water creating a dead zone.

#  Weeds are much less of a problem despite  the use of no-till agriculture and reduced or eliminated use of herbicides.  Weeds are the bane of a farmer's existence.  Montgomery describes how farmers have solved this problem.

#  It is believed here in New Zealand that on well drained soils, when a cow urinates, the urine goes right through the soil into the water table and hence into nearby streams. Organic material is a sponge which soaks up liquid, whether water or urine.  If the organic material increases, not only at the surface but also at deeper and deeper levels of the soil, so much the better.  The following methods increase organic material throughout the soil, both shallow and deep.  Once the liquid is held in the soil, the fauna in the soil scavenge the nutrients from it.


#Incorporation of large amounts of carbon in the soil. The soil, as a result of plowing, has vented large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.  It is time to return it.

Incidentally, the new perennial wheat known as Kernza may have a role to play in this process.  It crops year after year without resowing and has a very extensive root system both in width and depth.  It is not yet up to the yields of regular wheat and needs more genetic work done on it but it is an intriguing possibility.
 
So what are the methods David has observed which are creating this revolution.

Methods

You may have noticed that I have called this a new way of farming.  As I mentioned it is not new methods but the adaptation of methods which were used before the advent of chemical inputs but  with a modern twist in light of modern knowledge. These farmers still use chemical fertilizer where necessary.  This so called 'Conservation Agriculture' is not a religion but a pragmatic approach to farming.

Crop rotation
Sound familiar??  .  No surprises here except he has observed farmers who are using a better way of crop rotation.  If you only plant wheat, year after year, this is the worst case scenario.  If you rotate wheat and, a legume in alternate years, this is better.  If you adopt a three way rotation of, say wheat, corn, soy beans, better still but the best system is to rotate as many different crops as is practical and in random time patterns.  This type of rotation confounds the pests.  For instance use wheat barley, oats, soya, corn and peas.

Note  Corn is a C4 plant and hence produces a lot more organic material than C3 plants.  Corn provides much more material which can be cycled onto or on to the soil for the soil organisms than C3 crops. The secret of a C4 plant is that it has evolved a better way of utilizing Carbon dioxide and reducing the poisoning of the photosynthetic process by Oxygen.

Most pests are crop specific.  Planting the same crop in the ground year after year allows them to build up in the soil.  Even alternating crops in a two crop system will cause the pests to adapt to this simple system.  You develop a nematode or stem weevil, for instance, that can hold out for a year until the favored crop is returned to the field. A more random schedule of rotation and longer times between the same crop is very hard on crop pests. 

Even better, if adjacent farmers are at different stages in their crop rotation and one is growing wheat, one barley, one oats, one soya, one corn and one peas, the crop pests are really on a hiding to nothing.  Farmers also gain as not all are growing the same crop, flooding the market with the same product at the same time.

Cover crops
As soon as the summer cash crop is harvested, a cover crop is sown.  The stover* from the cash crop is left in the field, preferably rolled into the ground.

*  The leaves and stalks of field crops, such as corn (maize), sorghum or soybean that are  left in a field after harvesting the grain. It is similar to straw, the residue left after any cereal grain or grass has been harvested at maturity for its seed.

In locations where there are harsh winters, the cover crop will be killed by the frost.  In warmer climes, it is rolled* into the soil before it sets seeds.  The frost-killed cover crop is rolled into the ground in the spring in the same pass in which the cash crop is planted (direct drilled) into this bed of mulch. The best candidate for a cover crop is a mix of 8 or more different species including:

   * The most effective roller he has seen has projecting steel flat bar in a chevron or diamond pattern.  It chops up and pushes the cover crop into the surface of the soil.  It all can be done with one pass of the tractor as the cover crop is rolled into the ground and the next cash crop sowed right through the mulch layer created. The cash crop comes up and shades the soil and any weeds that remain. As the years go by, weeds become less and less of a problem.  The organic matter from both cash and cover crops is left in the field on the surface of the soil.
 
Plants in the cover crop mix include:

# a deep rooter to scavenge nutrients from down deep and to provide a root system that, as it decomposes, leaves passage ways for water and air to reach deeper levels.  This decomposing organic material  holds water better than  mineral soil, making it available to future crops.  If cows are grazed on the fields, there may be a problem with their large, point-urine-output.  If it goes down into the soil and into the ground water it can flow to the nearest stream.  With lots of organic matter, both shallow and deep, the liquid is soaked up giving the soil organisms time to convert this source of Nitrogen* into biomass.

* We had a major kerfuffle here in New Zealand about indoor dairy farms.  As usual the greenies went off half cocked and dismissed them out of hand.  I don't say that indoor farms are always good for animals.  Some can be really horrific.  I have worked on a truly horrendous dairy farm and a really great one.  The devil is in the detail.  One advantage of wholly or partial indoor farms is that you have greatly increased control of the waste products that can then be applied to the soil when and in what quantities are most effective and hence least polluting.  When applied this way there is little or no pollution since the pasture takes up the nutrients.  In this connection see Composting barns.  Montgomery doesn't mention them but composting barns would fit beautifully into the mix.

# a shallow rooter to provide a root network holding the surface soil together and a source of organic carbon and nutrients as it slowly decomposes.

# a nitrogen fixer to add nitrogen to the soil

# a nitrogen user (as  all plants are).  They scavenge the left over nitrogen to be released gradually next season as they decompose.  Here you have a slow release fertilizer instead of a soluble chemical that can be washed into the ground water.

# a tuber (radish for instance) which as it decomposes leaves large tunnels  for water to percolate down into the soil.  The decomposing tubers feed the soil life and adds structure to the soil.  Many tubers have very deep roots as well.

A common function of most cover crops and main crops as well,(not brassicas apparently)  is that they exude high energy materials from their roots into the soil.  These feed the saprophytes.  Some plants, apparently, put as much as 30% of the  carbon that they fix, by photosynthesis, into the soil from their roots.  Saprophytes that utilize this energy rich material not only give structure to the soil but  are able to mobilize nutrients that are not available to plant roots and convert them into a form that the plants can use (notably P but other nutrients as well). They also act as root extensions, bring nutrients from beyond the root zone of the plant. This is a major reason to adopt no till agriculture.  You don't want to disrupt this saprophite (fungus) network in your soils by plowing. Just like earth worms, fungus is your friend.

The root exudates also feed the microbiome which are in turn consumed by earth worms.  The worms themselves are a link in mineralizing* nutrients into a form that can be used by plants.  In addition, they make burrows which  increases water infiltration and allow oxygen** to reach the roots of the plants.

*  Green plants don't use organic matter.  It must be broken down into a soluble, mineralized form that dissolves in the soil water.  Plant scientists call this process mineralization.

** With a few notable exceptions, plants do not pass oxygen from their leaves down into their roots.  Most need air around their roots to survive.  Worms also provide this service.  Incidentally, if you dig in soil that has been regularly plowed for years, you will be hard pressed to find any earth worms.  After a few years of the type of farming, mentioned in Montomery's book, worms will be back in force. Worms not only improve the soils but are an indication of the health of the soil.

Different climates and soil types will need different mixes of cover crop species.  This is a rich area for research in working out the best mix of species for specific areas.

 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gcb.14644

No Till
David observes that the plow back into antiquity has  been a major cause of the destruction of soils.  This is very visible in areas where the Greeks and the Romans held sway.  Much of this land is bare rock. We look at this landscape and think it is the way it is in these areas.  Now it is bare rock but originally it wasn't.  In his earlier book, Dirt, he mentions that in some of these areas, today farmers are plowing barely weathered rock.

More recently the plow destroyed the soils of America, sequentially, from the eastern seaboard to the great plains.  We mustn't be too hard on the plow, though.  It may be part of the reason that we haven't already headed into a new glacial period due to the huge amount of carbon that the plow released from the soil into the air*.
 *See the  book by William F. Ruddiman, Plows, Plagues and Petroleum 

Now we have found another way of keeping atmospheric carbon up and can afford to adopt methods that return the carbon to the soil.  We are now in great danger of going too far the other way and putting far too much carbon into the air for our own good. Sequestering some of this into the soil would be a good thing.  And, hopefully, various governments can be convinced to give farmers a carbon credit for doing so. 

No plowing is done.  Seeds are planted by direct drilling.  At most a very shallow groove is made in the soil to plant the seeds and if chemical fertilizer is used, it is placed in small doses near the seeds, not broad-casted over the whole field.  Farmers who are adopting these methods are finding that less and sometimes, no chemical nutrients are needed. (while the excess, locked up in the soil is used)

Phosphorous, for instance, in their fields is mobilized from the locked up P in the soil by saprophytes and Nitrogen is scavenged by the cover crops and held in a slow release form (their bodies) for the next cash crop. It is also supplied by the nitrogen fixer in the cover crop and in legume-cash-crops.

 This doesn't mean that no chemical fertilizers are ever used but they are used as needed.  If, for instance, your soil was found to be deficient in, say, cobalt, zinc, magnesium or selenium, clearly you would apply a  a fertilizer  containing these elements to provide for your plants and/or animals.  This is not organic farming.  It is not so called 'conventional' farming.  It is Conservation Agriculture*.  It is not a religion but a  pragmatic science in which you do what works.

*We always seem to need a label.  In fact it is useful as a short hand once we understand the term so we don't have to go into the whole explanation each time we mention it.  This is it. Conservation Agriculture.

Clearly, if you are continually removing crops from your land, you will need, at some point, an input of the removed elements.  There is nothing wrong with using chemical fertilizers but you don't want your  nutrients to be continually locked up by the soil in a form that the plants can not get at.  It's a waste of money.

You also don't want your nutrients to seep down below the root zone and be washed into the nearby stream.   Nitrogen can be provided from the air by a nitrogen fixer.  Your input of chemical fertilizer is  reduced and is applied only as it is needed and this shows in your bottom line.

Often, in soils where super phosphate has been used over the years, the soil has a huge reserve of Phosphate but it is all locked up.

The above are the three main methods, namely A)no till, B)cover crops and C)random crop rotation.  In addition there are two more where appropriate.

Grazing
Again not a new system but an old system with a new twist. It is used by some of these farmers. Instead of rolling cover crops and stover into the gound, they can be grazed and turned into manure and urine which is very good for the soil.  If grazing is used, no roller is needed.  Some of the vegetation is trampled into the surface of the soil which acts as mulch and provides food to feed the soil organisms. The rest is deposited as droppings and urine.  The system that Montgomery has seen to be effective is to graze very hard, very infrequently.

Cows, for instance are put on a paddock at a density that finishes all the fodder  in one day and then this area is not grazed again for a year.  This system may have been inspired by a TED talk by Allan Savory on his work in Africa.  This TED talk is a revelation in itself.

No farm, however, can afford to break the farm into 365 small paddocks with fences.  Instead mobile electric fences work very well to allow grazers access to a limited area and exclude them from both the as-yet-to-be-grazed area and the already-grazed area.  One uses a front and a back electric fence.

Many farmers in New Zealand already use this method but only for planted forage crops such as kale.  There are probably cases where you would want to let the grazers in more than once per year but the same principle still holds.  Very heavy grazing very infrequently.

An added benefit of very hard grazing is that the animals eat everything available instead of grazing selectively. This further aids in weed control.Another benefit is that some farmers have found that the variety of plants in their pasture increases all by itself, making it more and more like a prairie.This process can, of course, be augmented by seeding just-grazed-areas.

Terra Preta 
In warm areas with soil above about 25 degrees C, humus which holds nutrients and gives structure to the soil, is oxidized and goes into the atmosphere. Unless nutrients are taken up rapidly by, say, an overlying jungle the nutrients are rapidly lost to the system.  When a tropical jungle is cleared, at most a couple of crops can be grown before the soil is exhausted and the farmer then resorts to chemicals which  finish the damage.

It has been observed, though, that there are exceptionally good soils in some tropical areas, often along major rivers.  These are areas where the locals have incorporated char into the soil from partially burnt bones and plant material.  Char has a three functions.  It has no nutritive value to the plants what so ever but it does provide niches  where the microbiome can live*.

* The organisms in the micro-fauna of a soil usually live in colonies attached to a substrate.  They are not free living like, for instance, phytoplankton in the oceans.  Charcoal provides ideal surfaces and hidy-holes for such organisms and lasts for centuries in the soil.

If you raise chickens you may be familiar with something similar.  If you have a lot of chickens in a yard, before long they will have eaten every bit of green that they find at all palatable.  So you set up a bunch of cages and plant their favorite green inside.  They can only get to the outside leaves so as the plant grows, the chickens crop off the outside but the plant itself is protected and continues to provide greens for the chickens.  Charcoal is very porous and in the soil serves a similar function.

Charcoal, though, has another function.  It can adsorb nutrients on its surface when they are available and release them when in low concentrations in the soil.  Char with respect to nutrients is a little like the hemoglobin in our blood with respect to Oxygen.  In both cases the substance(s) in question is/are taken up easily when available and released when not.  In cooler climes, humus serves this purpose.

Char is probably not a practical option in commercial farming in New Zealand until  and unless we start producing it in large quantities at a feasible price.  One good thing, though about char is that it lasts for a very very long time in the soil.  In a home garden, it is very practical.  All you need to produce char is a 45gal drum.

If we ever start to pyrolyze our wood wastes to make alkanes (cooking gas, petrol, diesel, air craft fuel)  One of the byproducts is charcoal.  Not only is it a valuable soil additive, even in temperate climates, but it further sequesters carbon in the soil in a long lasting form. At this point it may be economically feasible.


Note:1  I have just read an article on composting barns by Keith Woodford. This technology would fit in exceedingly well with what Prof Montgomery has reported on.  Composting barns capture all the nutrients, including nitrogen, contained in the poop and piss of the animals,  when they are in the barn. This includes whatever the cows produce at night and when sheltering from inclement weather. When spread on the land it reduces the amount of bought fertilizer needed, and is applied when, and at a rate that most benefits the pasture and hence causes the least pollution (like zero). Compost also provides reduced (in a chemical sense) carbon which provides energy for the soil organisms.  Add to the compost,  the output of effluent ponds and you give a great boost to your soils.  It is not just the entrained nutrients you are adding but reduced carbon to power the soil ecology.

Note:2  Finally,* (Oct 2017) one of our farms has installed a biogas generator to utilize the effluent the cows drop in the milking shed.   The biogas is used to run a motor connected to a generator.  More than enough power is produced to run the milking shed.  Instead of wasting the heat from the cooling of the motor, it is used to heat the water needed in the milking shed**.  A biogas generator only removes C and H from the effluent so, as with composting barns, the effluent from the biogass generator contains all the nutrients in the original poop, piss and spilled milk and can be spread on the pasture when, and at the appropriate rate that benefits the grass and causes no pollution.

*  John Fry of Rodesia sorted out biogas generation from animal waste back in the 1950's.  It is time we learned from the past instead of continually re-inventing the wheel.

 **  When you utilize the heat from a motor/generator running on biogas,, as well as producing more electricity than you use in the shed,  efficiencies of around 75% are achieved.

Note 3  If you were to incorporate sawdust into your soil, and then plant your vegies, you would find that your plants would hardly grow at all.  What is happening here.

The cellulose in wood is simply a chain of sugar molecules which are linked in such a way to make them unavailable to multi-cellular animals.  On the other hand there are many bacteria which produce cellulaze, the enzyme that can break down cellulose and hence, can access this supply of energy and carbon.

With an input of sawdust, soil organisms will flourish but the nutrients will be locked up in the biomass (bodies) of the soil organisms.  As soil organisms eat each other, they incorporate around 10% of the biomass into their own bodies and excrete the rest.  As long as there is reduced carbon in the form of cellulose around, the primary producers (in the soil, this is the micro-fauna that produces cellulaze) will utilize the waste and build it up into their bodies.

As the source of cellulose runs out, the various soil organisms continue to eat each other and release nutrients. At this point your vegies would do just fine.  Soil organisms  are giving back the nutrients they captured and there isn't enough reduced carbon in the soil now for the mineralized nutrients to be recaptured by the primary producers.  This is a perfect slow release fertilizer.

Part of the trick of using reduced carbon is to have much of it on the surface of the soil where it will be gradually utilized and passed on into the soil.  The roots of the crops you are growing will provide reduced carbon at deeper levels of the soil.  Last year, I grew a field of corn.  As the cobs were harvested, the stems were trampled into the soil.  Come next spring, there was hardly a stem left. 

Self driving cars

Are we really sure that we want self driving cars.  In fact, are we sure we want a car that is even connected to the Internet.  There are some pretty strong arguments against both self driving cars and against cars which are connected to the Internet (Tesla has done this so that software updates can automatically be fed into the car computer).

Just recently there have been some pretty serious hacks.  The NHS (National Heath service of the UK) was taken down and here in New Zealand we just had a program on our National Radio about the hacking of electrical power line companies.  You would have thought that if there were institutions with the very best computer protection, it would be these.  Perhaps they did have excellent protection but were hacked anyway.

And, have you ever seen a new computer program that didn't come with glitches that needed patches to correct them.  I can't remember one.

Update  Today (17 Oct 2017) WiFi was hacked.  I rest my case.

Imagine the chaos if we had even 10% of our cars connected to the Internet when someone managed to hack the system or that an unknown glitch occurred..  Never mind the cars acting chaotically.  Just imagine if all they did was to shut down and couldn't be moved from where they stand.

Then there is the secret services of the United States and the so called 5 Eyes.  In America it is illegal for these institutions to spy on American citizens but they do it anyway.  They  hoover up every phone call and e-mail from America and from the rest of the world.  Even having a car which is connected to the internet, never mind self driving, gives these institutions yet another window into the private life of all of us.  And don't give me the argument that if you are not doing anything wrong you have nothing to fear.  That argument is so discredited that it doesn't even justify wasting a paragraph explaining the  fallacy.

Suppose, for the sake of the argument I want a new software program for the electric car I am driving and my car is not on the internet.  No problem.  I will go to my home computer, download the upgrade on to a flash drive, take the flash drive to my car and plug it in to the flash drive socket provided.  Besides, I may want to wait a year to let the early adapters test it out before installing it.  As I said, the computer world is rife with new computer programs being full of glitches even from the software giants who you would expect to do better.

Suppose, further, that I need navigation.  I will simply take my cell phone and put it on the Velcro patch on the dash board. I don't need this built into the car.  It is redundant and expensive.

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As for self driving, let me ink out a scenario for you.

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You have a daughter - the apple of your eye.  You insisted that she learn to drive on a gear shift car since you are a little old fashion and value the old skills.  However since she got her license, she has never driven.  You gave her a self driving car for her birthday and she loves it. (no wonder) Today she is off to a show in the next town with her boyfriend.  ETA 30 minutes.  What do you think she is doing for that half hour.  

She is snogging in the back seat with her boyfriend going at highway speed  when some sort of computer glitch or hack demands that she take the wheel and manage the brakes and accelerator.  It would be chaotic enough if she was sitting in the drivers seat with her hands off the wheel  and her clothes on.  You fill in the rest.

I even feel a little nervous when I put my car on to speed control instead of controlling it's speed by my foot on the accelerator.  I know I am not in control as much as when I am totally involved in driving the car.

Add to this the ability of the secret services  to send a car into oncoming traffic, over a cliff or into a tree.  You think I am exaggerating.  Look at the drone programs exposed by Manning.  They took shots at a suspected terrorist while he was surrounded by civilians in someone elses country.  Look at the revelations by Snowdon.  Secret services are amoral and we don't need to give them more tools to do what they want.  What's that you say?  They don't operate on their home soil.  Give me a break!!!  And even if they didn't (operate on home territory) the rest of the world is foreign territory to them.

And one further point.  With self driving cars and trucks, we put yet another tranche of workers out of work.  These are folks that will never be engineers, scientists or lawyers and we need work for them as well.  Economists seem to always ignore one basic fact of the economy.  The most important factor in an economy is the speed at which wealth circulates (called velocity in economic-speak) through the economy, not the amount of dollars available.  Velocity is the sign of a vibrant economy.  Work through the implications (already demonstrated worldwide) of putting yet more people out of work.

An economy is stimulated by putting more money into the hands of the poorest who spend it immediately just to keep their heads above water, not into the hands of the already rich who squirrel it away, often overseas. 

It simply leads, ultimately, to wealth being more and more  concentrated in the hands of the very few uber rich* who own the means of production and less circulating in the economy.  We are rapidly getting to the point that less and less people will be able to buy the products produced in the factories.  One good effect of this is that it cuts into inflation.  That may help to explain our present low inflation situation (2017).

*I know I said that the quantity of money circulating in the economy is not the important factor so it shouldn't matter if the uber rich pull money out of the economy.  There is another factor.  When you reduce the money supply, you cause deflation.  A lesser amount of money is equal to the sum of goods and services.  Central banks will fight this tooth and nail and the results are not pretty.

I have a strong feeling that an electric car manufacturer who advertises that his cars are not self driving and have no connection to the Internet is simple and hence cheap to buy and maintain, would have a strong selling point.

The folly of GM crops

I'm not going to go into various esoteric subjects such as the chance of human created genes jumping to other unrelated species or the chance of wiping out whole species which we consider pests but who's function in their ecology we don't fully understand (possible with CRISPR).  This blog looks at the folly of past agricultural advances and the harm they have caused and hence the folly of increasing food production even more.

Despite the propaganda of the large companies promoting GM crops, their aim is not to relieve human suffering and provide food for the starving masses. (surprise surprise)  It turns out that we already are producing enough food to feed everyone in the world quite adequately.  Their aim is to accumulate more of the wealth of the world to themselves and is just one more manifestation of the growing wealth inequality that we see everywhere.

 As they accumulate more of the world's wealth, the very people they say they are working for become poorer and less able to afford to feed themselves. So what are the down sides of producing more food.

Malthus, the much maligned, stated that populations increases exponentially; ie 1,2,4,8,16 ......, while food production increases arithmetically; ie 1,2,3,4,5 ...... In reality, populations such as humans which lack predators are limited by starvation. A possibly more useful way of stating the principle, with apologies to Parkinson is that Population expands to use up any advance in food production*.

*  Richard Dawkins on P391 of his excellent book The Greatest Show on Earth stated it succinctly and I quote.  "If there is ever a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored."  One would hope that humans who, at least individually, show a modicum of foresight might learn to show collective foresight.

Malthus didn't count on various technical advances we would make in food production ever since we left the hunter gatherer life style but was completely correct. Each increase in food production has been used up by population increase. The recent, much vaunted green revolution which started around the 1960's was the latest of such jumps in food production and gave India and some other countries, a few decades without starvation. A recent estimate is that there are now 700m more people on earth due to this latest green revolution.
So with a few delays, Malthus has proven to be completely correct.

What he didn't know is how our knowledge of contraception would advance. It has often been observed that when populations reach a fairly high level of economic well being, birth rate falls. Everyone is mystified by this and explains that women are delaying having babies as they pursue a career; people are not having any children so that they can enjoy the fruits of their labor and so forth. 

No argument there but how do you think they are avoiding having children. Abstinence??? I don't think so!! Abstinence went out of fashion more than half a century ago. One of the reasons for not having children (not often stated) is so you can enjoy non-abstinence uninterrupted. The simple fact of the matter is that with a certain level of economic development, contraception becomes affordable. 

The proof of this is a number of countries which have made contraception affordable before they achieved a western level of development. They did it by subsidizing contraception and lo and behold their birth rate fell. Of course, with birth rate under control, per capita economic development is much more likely. There are less mouths to eat up  advances in productivity.

While we are at it, lets look at the most recent  green revolutions that began in the 60's. The Yield of a number of grain crops was greatly increased. Some reports say production was tripled. This production was achieved by careful selective breeding but the new varieties only fulfilled their potential with irrigation, fertilizer, herbicides and  insecticides. Despite being free of starvation for a number of decades. the change was not an unmitigated success. Part of the dark side has been:

   a) mining of the water table to provide water for the new, highly productive varieties, lowering it disastrously, notably in China and India,
   b) accessing deeper layers of water which are contaminated with arsenic, notably in Bangladesh and parts of India,
   c) Pesticide pollution of aquifers, which along with arsenic contamination has led to a greatly increased incidence of cancer, especially in Bangladesh and parts of India
   d) salination of soils, rendering them unfit for agriculture.
   e) more land in production pushing nature and her free provision of food, fuel, fiber, medicine waste disposal and clean water further into a corner*.

*(you would have thought that land would have been taken out of production due to higher yields.- go figure)

   f) production of greatly increased grain yield but with less vitamins and minerals per kg of grain than in traditional varieties resulting in nutrient malnutrition,
   g) huge loss of a genetic diversity as locals switched to the new varieties, abandoning their traditional varieties.
   h) the loss of small farms to large land owners as the peasants borrowed to buy fertilizer etc., got into debt and defaulted on their loans.
   i) an increase in population of about 700,000,000 mouths that are only with us because of this most recent green revolution.

We really have got to the point of diminishing returns. Every advance in agriculture production makes us poorer and poorer. It makes us poorer by:

*decreasing the availability of food, fuel, fiber, clean water and clean air that we obtain gratis from nature as more land is put into agriculture for profit.
*decreasing the ability of nature to process our wastes safely
*decreasing the variety of foods available to us as areas which once grew fruit and vegetables are given over to the more profitable growing of grain crops for cash.
*reducing the space we have to live in as we are crowded by more and more people.
* facilitating diseases of crowding that we would otherwise not have had and increasing the possibility that a pandemic will be much more severe.
* pushing us closer to a disastrous collapse in our Gia support system as we test the theory of sudden climate change with gay abandon.

There is talk now of the need for a second (actually more like the 100th) green revolution, this one based on splicing new genes into varieties of grain. This will probably work and will further increase production. As has happened since agriculture began, population will increase until the new advances in production are used up. In the mean time all those extra people will further degrade the natural environment that we depend on for our existence.

If you want to see the other likely consequences, go back and read what resulted from the 60's green revolution.

Note: It has been reported that a number of genetically changed plants caused organ failure when fed to rats.

Extra agricultural production only pushes us closer to the brink. The last thing you want when you are standing at the edge of a cliff is a great leap forward.

As was mentioned above, since the 60's it has been noted that when a country achieves a certain level of prosperity, birth rate falls. This is a modern phenomenon. It didn't happen anywhere in Europe before the last century. Britain's birth rate remained high all through the industrial revolution with well off Brits having as many children as their poorer cousins. Think back to your grandfather and great grandfather's family. How many children did each of your ancestors have as far back as you can trace. The difference, as previously mentioned,  in the 'modern era' is contraception.

Contraception has been available at least from Roman times, but it only became truly effective when it was modernized and put into the hands of women. Both the pill and the effective IUD (as opposed to previous less than adequate models) only became practical from about 1960 onward and they have had a huge effect in countries where they are affordable either because the economic level of the population makes them so or because the government has subsidized them.  In both cases, birth rate has fallen precipitously. Ignoring immigration, which is another story, most European countries have decreasing populations. What a success - and they are fighting against it tooth and nail. That is also another story.

I lived in South Africa for 15 years, much of the time in the homeland of Gazankulu.  Despite an educational level of around grade 2 amongst many of the women, they would come into the clinic for their 3month jab to keep them from getting pregnant.  There is a vast difference between not having a formal education and being stupid.  These women were clever and fully realized the advantages of having less children.  Their men were not so smart.  They would have beaten the women if they knew what was happening.

We must learn to live in our respective countries with a stable and then a reducing population. This , of course will result in a population in which the age distribution curve is heavily skewed toward older people. We have to work out ways to live and live well in such a society. For far too long we have been living in a pyramid scheme in which each generation had to be larger than the previous one. 

This was necessary so that there were enough young people to fill the more menial jobs before they rose up to higher levels.  It was also necessary in order to have enough working people to provide the pensions of the retired. This, quite frankly, is a stupid system.  The pension contributions of the working public should go into buying up the means of production.  Pensions are then paid  from the dividends from these companies and even from selling the shares to presently working people.  The elderly become a boon rather than a drain on the economy as they spend their pensions.  

Our system can't go on.  We must stop importing so-called cheap labor to fill the positions of the children we are not having. In the long term, cheap labor is very expensive.

Note that people are now worried about robots taking over our jobs.  Surly these two phenomenon fit together beautifully.  We have less jobs available and less young people to fill the positions.  The critical factor is taxing fairly the companies who are producing their goods by automation instead of by people.  Too many large corporations now get away with paying little if any tax.  This tax money then goes to the unemployed, whether young or pensioners.  The companies should also face up to reality.  If people have no money they can't buy the goods they produce by automation.  It is in their interests to have money in the pockets of the people.


Pyramid schemes collapse and the mini collapse we are going through at present (2008ff) is nothing compared to what is to come if we keep increasing agricultural production rather than concentrating on reducing population. If we continue this way, we will soon have an answer to the question of who is correct regarding sudden climate change. If the climate change sceptics are wrong, we may very soon achieve the lovelock number.


* Starvation killed an estimated 50m Chinese over the 19th century, 20m Indians in the latter half, 1m Irish between 1845 and 1852, 1/3 of the population of Ethiopia from 1888 and 1892 and 3m in Bengal in 1943. Imagine the effect of the failure of the wheat and rice crop for just one year due to sudden climate change or even from a mega volcano one spring. (link)

** If you double your population or your GDP, you pretty well double your use of water, wood and minerals, double your production of pollution and garbage and double the area of land you cover in buildings.  You continue to eat into unoccupied land, you eliminate all the benefits unoccupied land brings to the human population for free. Below is a table of how long it takes to double all of the above as a function of yearly GDP growth rate. You can calculate it for yourself with a high-school calculator if you put in (for 3% growth rate, for instance) log 2/log1.03.  The '2' is a doubling time, 1.03 is the interest (growth rate).

Annual growth and number of year to double the economy

1% 70 years
2% 35 years
3% 23 years
4% 18 years
5% 14 years

How many countries in the world do you know that can find twice the water, wood, minerals and produce twice the pollution and garbage and still have any quality of life.  The only two I  can think of off hand are Canada and New Zealand.  We don't want to live like this.

Greening the desert

If you could set up a whole bunch of desalination plants, you could pump the water on to a desert somewhere and over time it would green and you would establish a fresh water aquifer.  It wouldn't work.  No one is going to go to that expense for some future nice-to-have ecological result.  No, you need a way of doing it, that in the mean time generates revenue.  Fortunately such a way exists already.

Some time ago I wrote a blog on Sea Water Greenhouses.  You can see it here.

Sea water greenhouse can be at any scale.  Note the solar panels powering the pumps and fan.

To recap briefly, you set up a tunnel house with it's long axis parallel to the prevailing wind.  Note that sea water greenhouses will only work if the humidity is low.  You close the upwind end of the tunnel house with a screen made of some wettable material such as excelsior or some types of cardboard such that the wind can blow through this end of the greenhouse.  The downwind end of the Greenhouse has a Solar powered DC fan sucking the air out of the greenhouse and a condenser to condense the moisture out of the air stream.  You dribble your sea water down the screen at the upwind end and collect it in a trough.  You will find it is amazingly cold.  You pipe this water to the condenser at the downwind end in a lagged (insulated) pipe and it will condense out fresh water from the air passing the condenser.  You collect and use this fresh water to irrigate your plants.  You pipe the sea water back to the upwind area and dribble it down the excelsior screen again. Somewhere in this return system is a bleed off that you can adjust so that the water never gets too salty.  This brine is piped back to the sea or into an evaporation pond.

There are many ways to run the agricultural side of such a green house but here I am talking about an open system in which the plants grow in soil on to which you drip the fresh water.  You don't use a closed hydroponic system. The reason is simple.  You want the excess water to flow into the soil and over time create a fresh water, water-table. All by themselves, plants will start to grow around the farm where none grew before.  As more and more of these salt water greenhouses are set up, more and more fresh water will flow into the ground.  You can plant trees and you are on your way to transforming the desert.

The key is in having a farming enterprise that is profitable.

Of course, you may have some other source of water.  There may be, for instance, a salt water aquifer you can tap far from the sea.  No problem and perhaps an extra opportunity.  Not all such aquifers are simply condensed sea water.  They may have valuable minerals in them.  For instance some brines are rich in Lithium, some in Borax.  Whatever the composition of your sub surface salt water, you can let the overflow brine go into lined ponds to evaporate and precipitate out whatever salts are in the water. In the mean time the lighter fresh water going into the soil from your tunnel houses will float over top of the salty aquifer just as occurs in coral atoll islands. The salty aquifer will be sucked down over time as you utilize it and be replaced with fresh water.

In some locations in Australia trees have been cut down to farm the land.  The trees were keeping the salty water table down and without the trees, the area has become a salty swamp.  This would be a perfect place to use such greenhouses and over time replace the salt water with fresh water.  In the mean time, you could have solar ponds to generate electricity.

Incidentally, this will work as a remediation system in areas where salination has ruined the soil.  Often there is salty sub surface water which can be used and replaced by the fresh water your tunnel houses produce.

Communism and Capitalism

There ain't nothing wrong with either Communism or Capitalism and people that harp on about them are either ignorant or are trying to misdirect your attention from the real problems with both systems.

America uses Communism as their boogy man and communist countries do the same with Capitalism.  Strange in the case of America since her favorite ally is Israel.     Israel is the only country I know of that has had actual Communism.  Their communes are called Kibbutzim (plural of Kibbutz) and were truly communistic organizations.  They provide a good case study of real communism.

Kibbutsim were not the  type of  commune we are more familiar with, with a charismatic religious leader such as with the many communes that self destruct.  With the religious sort of commune, the charismatic leader takes a leaf out of the book of many countries and uses the fear of 'others' to hold his commune together.  Look how America does this with the fear of communism and now her new boogy man, Terrorism.  In the communes we are more familiar with, people get more and more paranoid, often collect weapons and build walls around their commune.  Besides, the charismatic leader, before long, feels that every attractive female in the group should be his 'hand maiden' and this sows discontent. Some of these communes go so far as to commit suicide to bring on the apocalypses.

No, the Israeli Kibutz is run on democratic principles.  In the Kibutz are  a number of different enterprises.  Often they have fish ponds, a dairy, cotton fields, greenhouses for cut flowers and usually a factory producing, say, socks or plastic items.  The leaders of these enterprises are chosen from the group according to their ability and typically hold that position for 3 years.  Then they rotate to another sector in the kibutz, or go to university,or spend some years in the army or are voted to be the lea-son to the general kibutz movement.  One of their members is often chosen to be the head of the Kibutz (also, typically for 3 years).  So what keeps them motivated.

They all get exactly the same allowance to buy things in the Kibutz store, all wear the same clothes, all live in the same standard of accommodation
 and so forth.  Hard to believe, coming from our western societies where money is the measure of all things but they are motivated by their position in the community.  Someone who runs the dairy farm and runs it well is looked up to by all the member of the commune and  this, plus the satisfaction of doing a good job that helps his fellow members makes him always strive to do his job well.

I must mention here that the classic Kibutz system has broken down in Israel but for reasons that have nothing to do with the above.  That might be the subject of a future blog.

Two lessons we should take from the Kibbutz.  One it is democratic and two it recognizes the rule of law.  Everyone has a say at the regular meetings where the policy of the Kibutz is hammered out and no one is above the law. Kibbutzim are fair and equitable and transparent.   They also seem to work best in societies of up to about 250 individuals.  When they get too big, the effect of everyone knowing everyone else tends to weaken.  Incidentally, Kibbutzim are socialistic or if you like communistic inside but capitalistic in their relation with each other, the rest of Israel and the outside world.

So what is wrong with what we call communism.  We associate Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin with communism.  You may not realize it but when Communism began, Americans were flocking to join communist and socialist organizations and unions in America.  Workers were being treated even worse then than today and this was their way of joining together to get a fair deal.  The bosses hated this and went to extremes to stop these movements*.  No way did they want to pay a fair wage for a fair days work.  Then in Russia, Stalin co-opted the movement.

* They used hired goons, then the national guard and in some cases the army.

When the abuses Stalin perpetuated on his own people became known, people left communist organizations almost as fast as they had joined.  His abuses had nothing to do with Communism as such.  He was a ruthless dictator who stifled any spark of Democracy and the rule of law and abused his own people.  To give him credit where a small amount of credit is due, he had to prepare his country to withstand the aggression of Germany and in a new democracy without established mechanisms, he might well,  not have succeeded.

So what is wrong with Capitalism.  Nothing at all.  The problem is not with Capitalism as such but with the destruction of democracy by the leaders who want power and the uneven application of the rule of law. Being a Capitalist or a Communist has nothing to do with democracy or the rule of law.  You can have democracy and the rule of law in both system or no democracy and disdain of the rule of law in both systems.

Look at yourself as a citizen of a so called democracy.  What are you not allowed to do.  You can't steal, obtain financial benefit by false pretenses.  You can't throw your pollution or garbage on your neighbors land or your commons.  You can't bear false witness.  You can't cause the death of other by omission or commission and so forth.  This is all as it should be..... but the law is not applied equally.

Large companies and rich individuals get away with all of these and it takes a huge effort to bring them to justice.  It happens but it is notable in its rarity when a case succeeds against a big corporation or a rich person who is abusing his position.  Corporations and the rich can afford high power lawyers who can find  loop holes in the law to get them out of trouble when an ordinary citizen would be sent to jail for the same crime.

Look at the recent election in America.  America has the finest founding document, (The Constitution), in the world.  The core of this document is that the government is by and for the people.  Chuck out all the rest and leave only this phrase and it would still be the finest founding document in the world.  Look what happened in the DNC (the Democratic National Convention - the body that chooses who their candidate will be in the presidential election).  Debbie Wasserman Shultz in cahoots with Hillary did everything they could to make Hillary the candidate and succeeded despite the fact that Bernie was clearly the peoples choice.  (remember that part about for and by the people).  Then Obama, who is a constitutional lawyer and who swore to uphold the Constitution, came out for Hillary (by and for???).  Then Warren followed suit.  These people only pay lip service to the Constitution, the top law document of the United States.  I doubt if they even understand the concept.

They remind me of some of my religious friends.  They extol the bible but only follow the parts that fit with their world view or even more cynically, the parts that give them some sort of advantage. Actually, it is lucky, to some extent, that they do pick and choose.   Imagine what trouble you would be in if you followed the bible literally and started to stone your neighbor as he cut the lawn on Sunday.  On that line, I find it amazing that the religions right is at the forefront of mining, logging fishing, drilling in parks and in short exploiting nature to the n'th degree with no regard for sustainability while the atheistic left wants to preserve our world in some sort of reasonable shape for their descendants.  Go figure.

Anyway back to the topic.  The problem is not with Communism or Capitalism or any other ism you care to site.  The problem is whether the rule of law is applied equally and fairly and whether or not you have a democracy which is truly by and for the people.  Both can exist in any ism or be absent.  In America Democracy and the rule of law are disappearing at a rapid rate if they ever even actually existed.