Steven Apfelbaum, founder of AES Photo: AES

Mitchell writes, “For more than three decades, Steve, and the AES team have developed land-use solutions to help farmers, companies, landowners, and communities around the world strike a balance between cost and ecology. From transforming dismal landfills and dusty iron mines into pristine preserves and prairies, Steve continues to show how ecosystem services result in healthy wild, rural, and urban landscapes while boosting the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit.”

She included an article for Green Streets to share that Mr. Apfelbaum recently wrote concerning the Gulf of Mexico and its unhealthy status even before the oil drilling disaster caused by the Deepwater Horizon accident. What he proposes here should be seriously considered by all communities, landowners, businesses and farmers wanting to help turn overwhelming problems into solutions. And while this post is longer than usual, it is very much worth reading and sharing.

Apfelbaum’s article follows (our emphasis marks provided):

Apfebaum offers solid land-use solutions. Photo: AES

“The Gulf of Mexico is sick, but, in fact, it’s been ill for a long time, and it needs a bigger fix. Now is the time to look at the broader picture, which includes water, soil, energy and climate—more broadly, the health of our nation’s natural resources. A National Carbon Reserve would concretely address the source of the Gulf’s maladies and offer myriad side benefits, such as carbon sequestration.

“Before the spill, there was a dead zone in the Gulf that has reached the size of the state of Massachusetts. It is the consequence of eutrophication, the accumulation of the nitrogen and phosphorus common in fertilizers, which creates algal blooms, which, in turn, die, and deplete the oxygen in the water. In these so-called anoxic conditions, marine creatures simply can’t breathe.

“The Gulf Dead Zone’s main artery is the Mississippi River, which dumps its high-nutrient, but deadly, fertilizer runoff some 100 miles south of New Orleans. The problem is that the Mississippi’s vast watershed (covering 43 percent of the entire lower 48 United States) and much of America’s agricultural heartland are sick as well.

“The problems are well understood: years of poor planning for public and private land use; degraded habitat and agricultural tillage of farm fields that contributes to soil erosion and greenhouse gases; excessive dependence on industrial fertilizers on farmlands; dams clogged with sediment that never reaches the Gulf to sustain its wetlands.

“The solutions are clear as well. We need a healthy land ethic that focuses on regrowing soil and replenishing clean water in ways that are more efficient and less costly.

“Fortunately, farmers can improve their soil and increase its carbon content through such techniques as “no-till” farming, in which farm-seeding equipment inserts seeds into small cuts in the earth. Traditional tillage farming, or plowing, on the other hand, releases carbon into the atmosphere.  No-till agriculture can cut costs in as little as two years and can even increase crop yields by up to 10 percent. It leaves leftover plant matter on the land, building the soil, and that added healthy soil acts as a sponge to lessen water runoff and prevents nutrients from entering rivers and lakes (which is what creates dead zones).

“Responsible ecological conservation and restoration of non-farmland is crucial as well. Replanting native grasslands (see recent article on bamboo in America) and restoring drained wetlands, forests, and savannas can also reduce water runoff and erosion of soils, and conserve and store carbon. Land-use policies must change at the national level. Not only has poor land use resulted in habitat degradation, erosion, and the poisoning of our waters, it is a significant contributor to global warming. Yet in discussing measures to curb pollution and GHG emissions, the focus is invariably on the iconic symbols of fossil fuel technology–smoking coal plants, gas-guzzling cars, and, obviously, offshore drilling.

“Think again. From 2000 to 2005, 53 percent of existing GHG emissions were mitigated and stored in the surface soils and vegetation of our planet at no cost to us. This is one of the wonderful things that the right plants planted in the right location and way do for a living.

“The National Carbon Reserve would combine the best of American ecological and conservation thought and practice with classic public-private market values and incentives, creating a model of carbon management tied to land protection and restoration and more productive agricultural management. Here are some specific strategies:

• Use a smart ecosystem service planning process to develop a policy roll-up of private and public conservation and agricultural lands (nearly all of which are already mapped and known) to guide soil rebuilding around simple principles to allow plants to do the work they do so well. This alone could provide profound cost savings by reducing irrigation water and fertilizer needs, improving crop yields and, oh, by the way, encouraging some of the most efficient carbon sequestration benefits imaginable.

• Create an incentivized, voluntary initiative in which participants can sell the value of improvements in soil carbon on the open market. The program’s goals would be to rebuild soil carbon and organic matter in agricultural production and ranchlands and other lands, and to reduce storm water runoff and erosion and increase water infiltration, replenishing declining potable ground water supplies in many areas of the U.S.

• Decouple the politics and economics of food from energy by encouraging more locally produced, healthy food grown with sustainable practices to balance our food supplies and reduce time and mileage in its travel from farm to table.

“The Reserve’s system of land-use planning to improve soil and water and to manage carbon would start mitigating GHG emissions quickly, while our economic, financial and policy systems move toward more sustainable energy sources. Progress on many of the issues raised here is being made at the local, state and federal levels and should be encouraged, but a national program remains critical.

“This plan would, in the long term, help heal the Gulf, the Mississippi, and our other rivers, lakes, and coastal waters. Ultimately, it could mitigate climate change—healing earth, water and sky.”

We are glad to pass these words along, Mr. Apfelbaum.

“Steven Apfelbaum is founder, chairman, and senior ecologist of the firm Applied Ecological Services, Inc., based in Brodhead, Wisconsin. He is also the author of Nature’s Second Chance: Restoring the Ecology of Stone Prairie Farm and the co-author, with Alan Haney, of Restoring Ecological Health to Your Land. For more than three decades, Steve and his dynamic team have contributed scientific expertise to more than 1,500 projects around the world.” – Maxine Mitchell

Of the many species of grasses, bamboo provides many uses. Source: Master Garden Products

Who knows? Perhaps one gateway out of America’s economic doldrums will come from a boom. There are plenty of people looking at what was once just regarded as a tropical and oriental product, bamboo.

As writer Harry Sawyers noted over a year ago in Popular Mechanics, “Bamboo has come into vogue as a green, sustainable resource that’s used for everything from cutting boards to clothing to wood floors. But until now, almost all of the bamboo in products sold here has come from overseas. That could change soon, as new planting techniques may lead to millions of new acres of bamboo shoots in the American South.” Some wonder if a plant like bamboo can revitalize farmland on the Mississippi Delta.

The American Bamboo Society (ABS) was formed in 1979. Today it counts over 1,400 members living throughout the U.S. and in 37 other countries. For those who are interested, the ABS issues a bimonthly Magazine and the Journal to disseminate information about the use, care, propagation and beauty of bamboo.

Bamboo forests may soon grow in America, Source: Popular Mechanics

Of interest, bamboo is regarded by many as a wood product, due to its hardness and durability. In reality, though, it is a grass. Considered the largest of the grasses, there are over 1600 species of bamboo, 64 percent of which are native to Southeast Asia. Thirty-three percent grows in Latin America, and the rest in Africa and Oceania. In North America there are only three native species of bamboo as opposed to the 440 species native to Latin America, writes master garden products

Bamboo varies in height from dwarf, one foot (30 cm) plants to giant timber bamboos that can grow to over 100 feet (30 m). It grows in many different climates, from jungles to high on mountainsides. Bamboos are further classified by the types of roots they have. Some, called runners, spread exuberantly, and others are classified as clumpers, which slowly expand from the original planting.

Author Paul Schneider has written prolifically about his love affair with bamboo, providing a cornucopia of information about growing the grass in colder climes.

“Bamboo has proven to be an aesthetic asset to our garden here in Cambridge, New York (north of Albany on the Vermont border; confirmed Zone 4). It mixes well with many other plants both perennial and annual. Depending on the species, it can be used as a tall or medium background plant, a “statement” plant or as a low border or ground cover plant.”

For others, it is grown more as a wood product. “To grow bamboos,” writes Schneider, “New England gardeners must be willing to accept the challenge of working with a plant that normally doesn’t grow in their climactic zone. And they must also understand that the taller bamboos will not grow to the height they would reach in Zones 5 or warmer.”

According to Patrick Malcolm, Golden Bamboo was the first of the Phyllostachys bamboo cultivars to be introduced into the United States, in 1882. In Alabama, where bamboo was to be primarily used as a fast growing windbreak, it was planted by southern tobacco farmers. The poles from the golden bamboo have probably landed more fish in the southeastern U.S. than any other means of fishing, hence the name, fishing pole bamboo.

For those wanting bigger and better, there is Giant Timber bamboo. Its dark green to golden stalks that grow to 100 feet tall, featuring 6 inch poles that are 6 inches in diameter.

There are fundamental ROI issues to regard, writes Sawyers: “Getting the revenue flowing could prove to be the biggest obstacle. Unlike cotton, which promises a return on investment at the end of a single growing season, bamboo crops must mature for three or four years before they’re ready for the first harvest.”

According to the Internationasl Biochar Initiative, sustainable biochar is a “powerfully simple tool fight global warming.”

“Sustainable biochar is one of the few technologies that is relatively inexpensive, widely applicable, and quickly scalable. IBI focuses on the need for quality and sustainability standards and assurances in the emerging biochar industry,” the website reports.

South America: students with biochar stoves Source: Biochar Initiative

For those wondering what kind of new invention bichar might be,  it is not new at all. The practice has been around for almost 2,000 years, where it was practiced in South America. The product, called terra preta, or “dark earth” that converts agricultural waste into a soil enhancer, or fertilizing agent.  But beyond acting as a soil enhancer, proponents claim biochar has the capacity to hold carbon. It is being produced in the United States, South America, and Australia, to name a few producing locations.

Biochar is a charcoal produced under high temperatures, using crop waste, animal manure, and other organic waste.

According to Kelsi Bracmort, an analyst in agricultural conservation and natural resources policy, “The combined production and use of biochar is considered a carbon-negative process, meaning that it removes carbon from the atmosphere.”

Take a thorough look, we shall be reporting far more on this product.

Weeds rarely are welcome in the garden soil. Getting rid of them is normally an arduous procedure with more bad sides than good sides, including blisters, aching backs, and time passed, which might have been better spent elsewhere. The one good side from weeding is probably the dead-tired, ‘sweat on your brow’ reward of seeing your garden rid of the unwelcome invasion.

Ghanaian villagers strip bark from invasive weed tree so it can be used for erosion control. Photo: G. Meyers

But if you’re an itinerant farmer in Ghana, living near the Brong Ahafo gold mine of Newmont Ghana Gold Limited, one weed features another good side: it is being converted into a cash crop.

This weed, called Broussonetia papyrifera, or York, can consume arable land in a short time, growing 25-meter trees and a system of seeds and shoots that turns food-producing areas into wastelands.  Ghanaians may once have called it Devil’s Teak, now they see it as a raw material that can bring income to the villagers of Techeyre, who operate a micro business making biodegradable matting that is used for erosion control and slope stabilization at the nearby mining operation.

This micro business jute mat operation was conceived by Muhammad Bin Abubakar, an outspoken Newmont nursery manager who has left behind a large trail of good work, including growing a shaded forest where once there were only mining tailings. Bin, as he is known, says he learned of a way to use the tree when he worked at Newmont’s Indonesian operations.  According to Bin, one farmer, Amoafo Darkwah had to abandon his family’s two-acre cassava farm because of York infestation.

Project developer, Bin Abubakar, works with village members. Photo: G. Meyers

In the village of Techeyre, some 800 people, including Darkwah, join in stripping bark from these trees.  Bark stripped, the trees die within two weeks and will stop producing seeds. The dead timber can be used for minor construction needs or for cooking fuel, and much of the sawdust is used for growing at Bin’s nursery.

Then it’s time to treat the moneymaker, the bark. The fibrous material, taken from the bottom part of the tree, measures an average of one meter by five meters. This solid piece is first hammered flat so the fibrous structure can be pulled out, or woven into a continuous net material. The hammering process, where large hand-hewn mallets are used, resonates throughout the village with the sound of drums.

As Bin describes it, “ The mat is then woven into a mesh, just like chicken mesh, thus giving it the ability to trap eroded soil particles during storm periods.”

Beyond the environmental functionality of the jute mats, there is the micro business that has provided income for some 800 people where money or paying work are as scarce as the York is plentiful.

The difficulties posed by the York have been transformed into a solution, says Bin.

“So the jute mats are used for controlling erosion in our mining areas. Which now accounts for 800 people – ladies, men, and students in this area. And they are getting their livelihood from this work.”

We hope more micro businesses such as this one Bin has started begin popping up across Africa and other developing areas of the planet.

Sustainability is a state of balance. We see it in nature every day but we don’t notice it until something goes haywire. Take the Dust Bowl for example. In the early 1900s, cattle ranching across the Great Plains began to be replaced by cultivation. With new efficient technologies, farmers were able to plow vast areas of virgin prairie. They didn’t realize that the grass was essential to the ecosystem. The grass and twelve inches of topsoil was a skin that held in place the soil and moisture below. Removing it was preparation for a huge disaster. Erosion began to wash the soil away and all of the nutrients with it.

Beginning in 1930, drought allowed the soil to become dry dust. Over the next few years, a series of windstorms took the dust to the skies and the US experienced an ecological and economic catastrophe. Millions of tons of soil darkened the skies of the eastern US all the way to New England. In some areas of the Great Plains, day was turned to night by the “black blizzards” that reduced visibility to inches, destroying a way of life and an ecosystem only inches in depth.

This was perhaps our first hard lesson in sustainability. The US government stepped in to promote better farming methods and work on rehabilitating the land. The big word then was not sustainability but conservation.

We experienced on a very large scale how new, powerful farming technology, and the desire for profit, tipped the scales toward imbalance, with disastrous results for economy and ecology. This lesson did sink in, but not much beyond better ways to plow. Grass was still just grass.

Sustainability exists all around us in the ecology and the economy. It is a state of balance that is ordinary and invisible. We don’t appreciate it until things big things fall apart. In the fall of 2008, the economy was in a “free fall”. We were looking for the “bottom”, another way of saying sustainability. It seems to have leveled out, but we are reminded that our man-made economy follows natural laws of balance, and we seem to have a lot to learn.

Only 80 years after the Dust Bowl, we’re pressured to think and act smarter. We are smarter, but the question is this: “Who is driving?” Unfortunately, it’s too often the corporate mind-set that values short-term profit over long-term sustainable returns, which includes profit along with quality of life benefits.  The concept of just enough is spun into anti-business.

Our economic condition is our latest lesson on sustainability. Hopefully we are gaining a larger awareness of how things are connected that will help us make better decisions. This awareness is what’s behind the interest in local food, a building block of economics that has been lost. The interest in local food drives the interest in aquaponics, a technology that grows fish and vegetables in the same system. It has the capacity to deliver a lot of food quickly in a small space.

If you consider the history of agricultural technology, it’s all been about cultivating increasing acreage with greater efficiency. Aquaponics breaks the mold and provides a solution based on concentrated yields in portable or fixed containers. It’s a scalable system that can be delivered and installed most anywhere at a very low cost.

Aquaponics is sustainable technology that doesn’t seem to have a downside. It has a lot to teach. May I suggest it is worth your time to look into it.