Australian Greens, a disaster for the worlds climate.
- Thread starter topcropper
- Start date
Actually, people drinking Roundup does occur. I will never forget a guy I looked after in hospital a few years ago. He had a fight with his wife & drank a cup of the stuff (from memory, he did it to get attention but he didn't want to kill himself). Sadly, it took 4 days to die. Luckily he was consious & was able to make some home movies for his young kids. A bit off topic, I know, but these type of Herbcide/ Organophospate overdoses (both accidental & intentional) do occur.
Steve
I've heard of sprayseed, or paraquat suicides. Bad way to go apparently.
See ya's.
See ya's.
Hi
TC that is what i wanted from you, that has shown why what you do is so bloody important, and shows you as being very diligent which didn't quite come across in your first few posts thank you!!!!
I don't know how much you looked into the whole permaculture issue last time I spoke of it but it just strikes me as a natural balance between man and nature, I do understand however that it won't feed folkes all over the world. I actually never considered the growth in food for ethanol as a buffer for food production if things go real bad.
Nitrogen fixing plants make lots of sense especially in regards to soil health which is really what agric. is all about(TC look into biochar very interesting indeed).
My turn to be controversial and "Green" as some people put it. I won't go into specifics but people tend to believe what their told, anyone know what Henry T Ford's first car was made of or what fuel it ran on?
TC that is what i wanted from you, that has shown why what you do is so bloody important, and shows you as being very diligent which didn't quite come across in your first few posts thank you!!!!
I don't know how much you looked into the whole permaculture issue last time I spoke of it but it just strikes me as a natural balance between man and nature, I do understand however that it won't feed folkes all over the world. I actually never considered the growth in food for ethanol as a buffer for food production if things go real bad.
Nitrogen fixing plants make lots of sense especially in regards to soil health which is really what agric. is all about(TC look into biochar very interesting indeed).
My turn to be controversial and "Green" as some people put it. I won't go into specifics but people tend to believe what their told, anyone know what Henry T Ford's first car was made of or what fuel it ran on?
Cos they are the only ones who will sign on the dotted line for 30 years and pay us a decent price for it.
If you want to quadruple your power bill, we'd happily sell the stuff to you.....but then, I don't think you'll want to take too much of it or commit for any period of time.
A gas reservoir, unlike an oil reservoir, is a stranded resource and not worth a cracker unless there is a long term Sales Contract in place to sell the stuff.
With oil, we just plug in, eventually get the crude into a tanker and it can be bought and sold by the suits in New York (the commission skimmers) over 30 times whilst is sails from the NWS to Singapore or wherever else in the world, depending on who wants it. Gas isn't like that.
Thank Allah for buying our gas. Without it, us West Aussies wouldn't have so much money to buy up the East coast and vote Liberal...
Just on that, ya just gotta love the Fed. Govt's final two magnificent decisions just before Howard went to Yarralumla and declared the election on, which effectively ended their power. Four days before that, they finally gave the green light to Gorgon, and two days before finally gave the green light to Pluto.
Both those projects should see our industry through well into the 2030's regardless of what Labor and the Unions muck with. Great stuff.
I did look into permaculture. I think I understand it. It seems a bit similar to organic, but with differences. Permaculture seems to be on a small scale and has a bigger emphasis on reducing fossil fuel use.
An organic farm to me is one that is still broadacre, just not using fertilizer and chemicals. So long legume fallows are needed to supply nitrogen, and cultivation is required for fallow weed control. Some manure may be used for fertility, and some forms of natural rock fertilizer. Cultivation of soil needs lots of energy as in big diesel tractors, so I can't see how organic is anything about less fossil fuel use. I think I use far less fossil fuel per tonne of grain produced than an average organic farmer as I'm not ploughing the soil.
If permaculture is more about less fossil fuel use, then it must be very small scale. Manual weed chipping. Perhaps heavy use of straw and mulch, but one must consider if this mulch and straw is bought onto the farm. Once again, a lot of conventional farmers sell their straw to organic farmers, and I don't believe in this practice. It's just a transfer of nutrients form one farm to another, rather than a gain for anyone.
I would also guess that a lot of permaculture farms would be on highly fertile volcanic soil, say up around the NSW north coast. These soils are inherently fertile and there is not much of it about. Most of Australias soil is simply just rubbish. Go to WA and those grain farmers are growing grain on pure sand. The sand is basically just holding the plant up. The nutrients are added, as very little was there to start with, and no-till holds the sand together so it doesn't blow away. Yet WA, thanks to reliable winter and spring rain, produce about half of Australias grain crops, year in, year out. It's incredible what those blokes do, and I've done a few farm tours there.
Legumes are natures wonders. However, they can't do the impossible. The most productive grain growing region of the world is the corn/soybean region of the US. Soybeans are a legume, but they are really only supplying their own N. The following corn crop needs the same amount of fertilizer as if the beans weren't there the season before. Legumes are harder to grow than grass type plants. They are very suseptable to insects, they need constant small amounts of rain and are very suseptable to disease and as a result, don't provide the bulk of the worlds food, unlike wheat and corn and rice.
I've grown soybeans. They just didn't stack up, and a normal 4 week dry period, and they yielded nothing, but the sorghum and corn right beside, just battled on, stuck their roots deep down into the soil, and had a bumper yield. Soybeans are too 'soft'.
I've also tried chick peas, pidgeon peas and faba beans. these crops are very suseptible to disease, and need pesticide for heliothis, and if you don't spray for heliothis, the heliothis grubs drill holes in the seed and the grain is worthless. So I don't grow these crops.
Last year we had a field pea trial on our place. The peas died in the dry, whereas the wheat beside it still yielded half of average. Thanks to bumper prices, I still made a lot of money from the wheat, however if I'd have had field peas, bumper prices times nothing is nothing.
I think we have come to a bit of common ground.
You have admitted that permaculture/organic can't feed the world, and I agree and I believe I've shown why that is the case. Ruby says that we need a choice. I agree too. Anyone with concerns should buy organic.
Organic farmers can continue to do what they do and supply more expensive food to those that want it. The 95% of conventional Aussie farmers can continue to grow cheap food for the masses, plus the starving overpopulated developing world. Conventional farmers can continue to provide nutrients to organic farms via manure, and hopefully the Australian greens won't get any real power in this country and come and do something really naive and stupid and reduce the productivity of conventional Australian farmers.
See ya's.
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I spent much of October at a friends house in Nepal. They had a veggie patch right next to the neighours flat roof. Every morning the neighbours peed from their roof onto the veggies - they considered they were doing us a favour.Distasteful as it is, converting sewerage to fertilizer must happen one day.
In the meantime there could be a "Pee on a tree" campaign to save water and add nitrogen to your fruit tree.
And while trekking up to everest every toilet had a sign saying put the paper in a box - they wanted to keep the paper they used for burning seperate from the stuff they spread on their veggie patch.... didn't seem to affect the taste of the food.
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Peed onto the veggies, Ha ha.
I suppose every one knows that urea [46% N] is a natural ingredient of urine? I remember as a kid, you had to pee in a different spot of the lawn every time. One pee made the lawn grow better. Multiple pees, then sent it backwards.
....[opps, maybe city kids don't pee on their lawn? Possibly not.]
Country boys pee on their lawn as a right of passage. Perhaps a sign of ownership.
.....just joking, ha ha.
I think you will find that in many primative agricultural areas, every single piece of organic waste is returned to the field, and this includes all the sewer. Certainly reduces the fertilizer requirements. Of course, we are probably only talking one acre plots here, so not much good to a western farmer going to the toilet in his paddock if he is farming a thousand hectares on his own.
See ya's.
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Hey Sunfish , just be grateful that the halos are on the lawn hey and not on the carpet Reminds me of one of Jan Somers renovating stories where she bought otherwise as new carpet with all these poodle patches ......oh dear
Peeing on the vege patch is not for me , but every farmer has the right to pee on his own patch I reckon After all , Australia is an outdoor country
Reminds me of one of Jan Somers renovating stories where she bought otherwise as new carpet with all these poodle patches ......oh dear Peeing on the vege patch is not for me , but every farmer has the right to pee on his own patch I reckon
After all , Australia is an outdoor country 
We use to pee on the Lemon Tree. Worked wonders.
Top Cropper I am seriously envious of your garde and your knowledge of green farming. I am just starting my learning curve.
Thankfully here is that volcanic soil you admired and my new home can grow almost anything. Top soil goes for centimetres into the ground. Old 140year old, cottage garden feed by Oak and Birch Leaf Litter.
Today article summed up the Greens.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environm...out-not-garrett/2007/12/02/1196530476160.html
If they were not radical in many non-green issues they would be a player in the house of reps and control the senate. A shame...
Peter 14.7
Top Cropper I am seriously envious of your garde and your knowledge of green farming. I am just starting my learning curve.
Thankfully here is that volcanic soil you admired and my new home can grow almost anything. Top soil goes for centimetres into the ground. Old 140year old, cottage garden feed by Oak and Birch Leaf Litter.
Today article summed up the Greens.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environm...out-not-garrett/2007/12/02/1196530476160.html
If they were not radical in many non-green issues they would be a player in the house of reps and control the senate. A shame...
Peter 14.7
Quote: Only three technologies can produce large amounts of baseload power: fossil fuels, hydroelectric plants and nuclear power.
Sorry if I am repeating myself it seems to be necessary to be heard amid all the claims and counter-claims. There is nothing speculative about hydro, the technology is mature, so if Rudd is serious about Kyoto, the Burdekin Dam must be compleated. A massive dam that will have little or no "green" opposition.
It's a good thread. let it live but tidy it up a little.
Yes it is, and particularly relevant to things right now.
KB, you should try to be a bit nicer. I promise I will.
See ya's.
Hi all,
Anybody find it funny that we cringe at the thought of urine as fertilliser, but love using other animals POO. A plant only absorbs chemicals!
Sunfish I think the greens are sort of on the right track in that we need a renewable resource as a base load supplier(Hydro being the only one). I think humans need to evolve past the let's rape the earth to run our A/C's. At current usage we are out of uranium(not including seawater) in 70 years. will there be enough oil to extract any minerals at all in 70 years.
I think we need to find something that can be sustainably used as an energy resource or should I just stick to thinking ahead three political years at a time
Anybody find it funny that we cringe at the thought of urine as fertilliser, but love using other animals POO. A plant only absorbs chemicals!
Sunfish I think the greens are sort of on the right track in that we need a renewable resource as a base load supplier(Hydro being the only one). I think humans need to evolve past the let's rape the earth to run our A/C's. At current usage we are out of uranium(not including seawater) in 70 years. will there be enough oil to extract any minerals at all in 70 years.
I think we need to find something that can be sustainably used as an energy resource or should I just stick to thinking ahead three political years at a time
