Top Soil

This week we watched a movie that explained why soil is so important to us, why we are losing it, and why that's bad news bears.
To be completely honest, I had never given the soil much thought. I grew up and lived in the Midwest for most of my life so soil was always around me; it was a part of normal life.

I have done some reading about this since the movie and It's amazing how great of an issue this is and there is nothing even being said about it in society! I had no idea that the topsoil loss was as bad as it is. I found a chart from the University of Michigan that sums it up.

I'm amazed that in North America, 66% of the soil is being lost to agriculture. I thought we would have learned our less from the dust bowl and soils importance, especially in our more advanced technology age.

I also thought that this is reflected on a map that shows where the worst areas of soil loss are happening.

You can see the serious concern and some concern areas are in the center of the continent, where a lot of the agriculture takes place. Interestingly enough, Florida is the odd spot of green in the southern U.S. I think looking at the map from a global perspective, it is clear how much of a global problem this is comparing the amount of stable terrain to concerning terrain, especially in Europe. I hope that more work is done in the future to bring light to this growing problem before it becomes a larger crisis but I'm afraid it won't gather much attention until it is almost too late.

The article that the images were gathered from, as well as being indepth on the topic, is:

http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/land_deg/land_deg.html

Urban Gardens

We learned about urban gardening in class today. Generally, our group has had some interest in gardening but unfortunately, due to space in our dorms or apartments and/or pet concerns we have been unable to begin doing that. After we are done with this phase in our lives however, we thought that having a garden would be valuable to have as a hobby or to lower our food costs and become more sustainable. Here are some links to an article some tips for urban gardening, making it easier to accomplish and hopefully keep the plants alive.

http://www.urbangardeninghelp.com/

This video explains the benefits of gardening, and some simple systems to help keep them watered.

As we talked about in class, one benefit to having a garden that seems to be forgotten is to teach those around us and potential children where our food comes from and how much work and patience is needed to grow it. We realize that in this age, we do have a serious disconnect from our food. In many parts of the country, citizens never see their food sown, grown or in some cases raised and slaughtered. They do not see all of the work and resources that go into making that food and as a result, we do not value food as much. We waste literally tons of food every day and if it had been intelligently proportioned or saved for food later in the week, could have been saved from the garbage. I think that if more people saw how our food was raised, such as mutant chickens whose legs snap under their own weight or cows with more hormones than an adolescent human, that more of the public would demand a higher quality of food and more humane practices for raising that food. 

Echo Farms

One of the first things we saw was a stove that has been created to be easily built and fairly energy efficient. This traps more heat so less wood has to be cleared and burned.

This machine is used to press waste material into burning bricks. This way they can use what they have for fuel and clear fewer trees.

This is the brick the machine creates. Since they have so much condensed material in them, they are quite heavy.

Clean water is always needed in developing countries. This method uses water containers and reflective plates to use the UV rays to disinfect the water.

This is an easy to make smokehouse that people can use to dry fruit and meat so they can preserve it and have food after the harvest.

Bamboo is a quick growing, strong plant that is great as a building material. There is a chemical in the wood that binds with the water to make this plant incredibly strong. Clothes are even being made out of this plant now.

These are compost boxes. They were draining the juices out of this to experiment with anti-fungal, fertilizing and insect repellent properties.

These were in a section dedicated to urban gardening. These plants did not need a lot of soil but were still effective for food and materials. A tire with steady supply of water and sun can grow an incredible amount of plants.

This area demonstrated a wick method of watering. A barrel or container of water is placed upside down so water can drip onto a fabric base under the plants. As the plants soak up water, the fabric draws water from the water container and this minimizes water waste while not over watering the plants.

This compost heap is for organic material, which is later used as fertilizer and soil enrichers to get rid of waste material and return the nutrients to the soil

Echo Farms grew yams in this area. These dirty looking blobs are actually a bright, deep shade of purple if you cut one open. They looked nothing like what we have at Thanksgiving and are much more nutritious.

With this contraption, our tour guide demonstrated how villages can make water pumps in wells out of ordinary, easy to acquire material. The pump is so effective that it can draw water from 15 feet underground without a lot of effort. Children are able to use this pump, which can store water in barrels for later use.

To go inline with our latest topics in class about problem solving, here is a local video from WGCU's series on Water Woes.


http://wgcu.org/programs/earthedition/archive/2008/06/08/Elusive-Solutions.aspx

One way to help lighten our wasting of water is to water our plants intelligently. One method is the drip system, where water is dripped near the roots, maximizing the impact of a small amount of water.
 

There is a company that is capitalizing on the public desire for clean drinking water. They build water holes in contaminated parking lots that provide clean water from a local source.
http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/urban-watering-holes-watermill-express