scorched-earth acres is the place to be...

Here's a perplexing issue, brought up by the Christian Science Monitor. People in Mozambique are trying out a new practice of letting the "leftover biomass" in their fields rot after harvest rather than burning it off. Now here once again you see aid agencies acting as saviors, and they need to be careful with that attitude, but they seem to be following the lead of the small farmer and seeing what works rather than coming in with expensive new soil amendments or relocation schemes:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0430/p13s01-sten.html

Joao Jongue is essentially Masanobu Fukuoka except in Mozambique.

In the same CS Monitor they featured people in China going organic. That is great news. Let's hope they can keep it up.


And here from the next edition of the same paper, the US congress is finally going to try to say no to ethanol...sort of:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0501/p03s03-usec.html

But they are doing a half-assed rollback of ethanol production mandates and tax credits, so the problem is still there. And switching to cellulosic ethanol is still going to turn into a land-eating policy in the end. It will either make food-growing land more scarce, or it will rob the soil of "crop residues" that keep the soil fertile. In the end it will be a petroleum-based-fertilizer-intensive project. And let's not even get into what could happen if our forest lands are turned into cellulosic ethanol plantations on a scale that's supposed to replace imported petroleum!

From the article:

"We're not downplaying the fact that there are folks having a tough time buying groceries, but to scare those folks to death [by saying it's] because we're making ethanol is an injustice," says Jon Doggett, vice president of public policy for the National Corn Growers Association in Washington."

You would think he would recognize that this should not be primarily about "the american consumer," but about the people outside the US affected by these high food prices who are not scared to death, they are starving to death. I don't think he intetionally starves people, I think he is oblivious and negligent. But hey, he doesn't make the incentive policies, he only lobbies for them, so let's not place all the blame on him and the corn growers. Remember to watch how Monsanto behaves as their cash cow is threatened, and if ex-sponsors of incentive bills in congress get defensive if their projects are threatened.

What did the guy in the article mean when he said that at 14 billion gallons of ethanol production per year (currently it's 6.5 billion) the "tradeoffs would get too severe"? Are they not severe enough yet? He should try going to find something to eat in Haiti without big wads of money in his pockets. Not severe?

Another thing. The CSM site has a good map about rice production and exports. How odd it is that Thailand produces so very much rice and exports it to where it can be bought at higher prices, when that nation has hill tribes starving due to confiscation of their "slash and burn" rice lands:

http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/rice/