45 ms·

So much agreed! I've worked on a few agroforestry and biodiversity is the key. I've seen acid land full of ants transformed into a very productive forest in 5 y

by alisson 10y ago

So much agreed! I've worked on a few agroforestry and biodiversity is the key. I've seen acid land full of ants transformed into a very productive forest in 5 years without any use of pesticides, GMO or NPK fertilizer. It seems more labor intensive at first but I know a farmer that literally only works 4 hours a day and can feed a family of 5 alone (a much more diverse diet which leads to more healthy too) and still sell a lot in the market. Agroforestry have much more wield per square meter than anything else because it also uses the vertical space instead of just the horizontal.

sooheon 10y ago
Hey, can you provide more detailed info about agroforestry (where I should look, etc.)? I was just having a discussion on this the other day with a friend, where our intuitions differed but lack of data stopped us from getting too far. It was prompted by a school for kids in need in India, where much of people's donations went to food, but the food was still poor (mainly just rice, bought on market). My intuition from a tiny bit of experience growing worms with home-composting was that the same amount of money spent toward tending properly biodiverse land (incl. micro organisms, mycoculture etc.) could provide much more effective and healthy food sources, only if the requisite knowledge was there. So I thought the most effective donation could be an open source repository of essentially recipes for a biodiverse plot, searchable by weather/temperature, type of soil, types of seeds/animals available at market, which provides instructions for how to set up year round harvest.
- alisson 10y ago
  Sure! When I started learning about agroforestry I looked for english books on the subject but didn't find good ones, Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway have really good info you could use. But in portuguese I've so a few good PDFs here, I guess that's because of the work of Ernst Gotsch here in Brazil, here's a good video that summarize his work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSPNRu4ZPvE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSPNRu4ZPvE An agroforestry look like this: https://sitiocurupira.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/agrofloresta2.jpg https://sitiocurupira.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/agroflores... Take very special attention to the ground on the video I linked above. So the main thing is the soil, the work will basically be always improving it by pilling up organic matter, from regular pruning and your organic waste too, the school must have good source of organic waste, also the city gardens/grass pruning are a good place to look for organic matter you could use on this project. Also, the more you plant together and at the same time the better. On the video you can see Bananas and Eucalyptus side by side, people think that Eucalyptus doesnt let anything grows near it, etc... but then I saw a lot of things fruiting just a few centimeters from Eucalyptus, because of the regular pruning. I'll send you an email so we can continue to talk about this.

by alisson 10y ago

sooheon 10y ago

Hey, can you provide more detailed info about agroforestry (where I should look, etc.)? I was just having a discussion on this the other day with a friend, where our intuitions differed but lack of data stopped us from getting too far. It was prompted by a school for kids in need in India, where much of people's donations went to food, but the food was still poor (mainly just rice, bought on market). My intuition from a tiny bit of experience growing worms with home-composting was that the same amount of money spent toward tending properly biodiverse land (incl. micro organisms, mycoculture etc.) could provide much more effective and healthy food sources, only if the requisite knowledge was there. So I thought the most effective donation could be an open source repository of essentially recipes for a biodiverse plot, searchable by weather/temperature, type of soil, types of seeds/animals available at market, which provides instructions for how to set up year round harvest.

alisson 10y ago
Sure! When I started learning about agroforestry I looked for english books on the subject but didn't find good ones, Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway have really good info you could use. But in portuguese I've so a few good PDFs here, I guess that's because of the work of Ernst Gotsch here in Brazil, here's a good video that summarize his work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSPNRu4ZPvE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSPNRu4ZPvE An agroforestry look like this: https://sitiocurupira.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/agrofloresta2.jpg https://sitiocurupira.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/agroflores... Take very special attention to the ground on the video I linked above. So the main thing is the soil, the work will basically be always improving it by pilling up organic matter, from regular pruning and your organic waste too, the school must have good source of organic waste, also the city gardens/grass pruning are a good place to look for organic matter you could use on this project. Also, the more you plant together and at the same time the better. On the video you can see Bananas and Eucalyptus side by side, people think that Eucalyptus doesnt let anything grows near it, etc... but then I saw a lot of things fruiting just a few centimeters from Eucalyptus, because of the regular pruning. I'll send you an email so we can continue to talk about this.