More about Critters

‘Mother Nature’ does a fantastic job of keeping our earth covered in green plants. ‘She’ might be the expert to consult on growing green plants ? Her methods differ substantially from ours but maybe we could mimic them more closely than we do. I am going to follow part of Gabe Brown’s summary of her ‘practices’, as outlined in his book ‘Dirt to Soil’, and ponder if they are do-able in a farm setting:

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CRITTERS, again ...

I wrote previously in this column of how the enticement of making sauerkraut out of squash led me to turn cook books on their heads. All thanks to largely unsung heroes, bacteria.

Bacteria are residents on the surfaces of living plants and humans have made miraculous use of them for THOUSANDS of years for food preservation through ‘fermentation’. Although we call the vegetable ferments ‘pickle’ and ‘chutney’ they are really “vegetable yogurt”, since they give us the same benefits we look for in yogurt, [Do we thank them? pay them?

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Energy in Perspective

Recently, Thomas Daigle, technology reporter with the CBC suggested that the internet is using 11% of the total electrical energy used by humans and this percentage is increasing. That story motivated me to dig deeper into our global energy use. It took me a long time to get the numbers straight because we are dealing with huge numbers.

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Regenerative Agriculture

"Sustainable isn't enough. Sustainable just maintains the current state of degraded soil. What's needed is a regenerative agriculture ... to restore the soil to the level of nutrients that existed prior to industrial farming. Then, we can practice sustainable agriculture."

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Plastic

So Sobeys has discontinued its use of plastic checkout bags as of January 31, 2020. Sobeys claims that this will initially eliminate 225 million of these plastic bags. When the ban expands to their other stores it will reduce plastic bag use by 800 million bags per year.

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