Garden Life on Earth
by Barry
Carter
Created:
Modified:
Most people
have a favorite disaster scenario. Some favor global warming, others favor peak
oil. Financial collapse is the favorite of many people but geological cataclysm
is favored by others. Regardless of which disaster you may favor, the most
immediate problem that develops, as a result of any disaster, will be related
to food shortages. Already it is estimated that nearly one billion people are
starving on earth.
Most
disasters reduce food production or availability. Climate change causes
flooding, drought and unseasonable freezes which all reduce food production.
Peak oil reduces the availability of petrochemicals for fertilizer and
pesticides as well as the fuel to transport food for long distances. Financial
collapse makes it more difficult for everyone to produce and purchase food.
Geological cataclysm often disrupts or destroys the infrastructure that
provides food to many.
Even social
disasters are most likely to cause suffering through starvation. When the
structures we have built to serve us loose their way and begin to believe that
we are here to serve them, they try to monopolize our sources of supply.
Whether these are corporate structures, government structures, belief
structures or religious structures does not change
this pattern.
Nowadays,
many people are hungry all of the time. They eat but are not satisfied, so they
eat more. But they remain tired and hungry so they have to "sleep it
off". I presume that they are still hungry and tired because they are not
getting all of the nutrients they need in the food that they eat.
Plants must
be the same. They "eat" nutrients which have been solubilized
from the soil. They transpire water into the air as the nutrients are removed
for food. If there is insufficient nutrition in the plant food that the roots
bring in, more water must be transpired into the air to make room for more solubilized minerals from the soil. Unlike people, plants
don't get fat when they eat too much; they just waste water.
When we
harvest food and ship it elsewhere, we remove essential minerals from the soil
and, ultimately, flush them into the seas:
Both
conventional and organic agriculture only replace some of these essential
minerals. This is probably why we have lost over half of our topsoil in the
last eighty years and may be why we have the epidemic of obesity.
Our
economic situation, the global energy situation and climate change all are aspects
of the same problem -- we have created structures to serve us and forgotten
that this is why they were created. Often these structures outlive those who
created them. Generally when this happens, the structures initially become
objects of adoration or even worship but ultimately those who serve these
structures begin to believe that everyone else should be serving them as well.
Structures
are, by their inherent nature, rigid. We build roofs and walls to resist the
rain, wind and sun as long as possible. We build government structures using
constitutions that are difficult to change. We build streets that will not get
potholes for as long as possible. We build bibles that cannot be changed under
penalty of law or damnation. We build corporate structures that must resist
competition from new ideas.
Changeless
structures are as close to dead as one can get. Even stones erode faster than
many of the structures we have created.
All living
things are always changing. So how do we relate to the shifts that are
happening with energy, the economy and climate without serving the structures
that have created these problems?
If we wish
to restore the health of our soil, plants, animals, children and friends, we
need to focus on restoring all of the minerals that have been lost. We cannot
rely on structures to do this for us.
Suppose
there was a cheap, simple, organic and open-source way to concentrate these
missing minerals and use them to grow more/better food. Which structures might
oppose this? How might we share this information with those who will benefit
the most?
I'm working
with hundreds of plant growers and heath researchers
world wide. We are exploring the benefits of some newly discovered minerals
that appear to reduce animal food consumption by 25 to 30 percent:
http://Garden-Life.ws/cows01.htm
We've also
collected examples of a doubling of plant growth and soil growth in two years:
http://garden-life.ws/walnuts.htm
http://garden-life.ws/Tall_Corn.htm
http://Garden-Life.ws/Topsoil.htm
More
examples and three university studies are linked at:
http://Garden-Life.ws/plant-lynx.htm
These
minerals can be concentrated using simple kitchen chemistry on sea water or
rock source materials. (Anyone with access to fire and salt water can
concentrate them.) They can also be concentrated from the air or from fresh
water using simple mechanical "traps". The simplest method for
concentrating these minerals from sea water is also described on the page above
and other open-source methods are linked.
For the last
fifteen years I have been running email forums for discussion of the benefits
of these minerals. On these forums, there have been many reports of improved
health and recovery from a large number of health problems subsequent to the
direct ingestion of these minerals. I have seen significant "youthing" effects as well. Though I was born in 1949,
people tell me I have the skin and hair of a person in their thirties.
http://garden-life.ws/Youthing.htm
I've been
working on this since 1969:
http://Garden-Life.ws/Dirt_First.htm
http://garden-life.ws/Shift.htm
We have
found that using these minerals in our soil decreases the water requirements of
plants grown in that soil. For examples see:
http://Garden-Life.ws/Shamrock.htm
http://Garden-Life.ws/Drought.htm
They also
seem to help make plants more freeze tolerant:
http://Garden-Life.ws/freezetolerance.htm
I am
convinced that the best thing any individual can do is to grow more food (and
sequester more carbon) by adding reduced salt sea minerals to their soil. You
can find some very convincing evidence that this can double plant growth and
carbon sequestration in a couple years:
http://Garden-Life.ws/plant-lynx.htm
These
minerals can also be concentrated out of fresh water or rock using other
methods. A very simple method for concentrating them from fresh water is
described at:
http://Garden-Life.ws/stratifying.htm
More
complex devices to do this are described at:
http://Garden-Life.ws/magtrap.htm
I think
that it is also helpful to realize that growing soil increases carbon sequestration
and that the use of these minerals with keyline
plowing has doubled productive soil depth in one year.
The best
way to guard our life on Earth may be to garden locally. Can anyone think of
anything else, that everyone can do, which might do a better job of reducing
our carbon footprint, feeding the world and countering the problems caused by
their favorite disaster?