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Our family has recently changed to a flexitarian menu, cutting beef almost entirely, with many meals being vegetarian, and others substituting some of the meat
by jacknews 7y ago
Our family has recently changed to a flexitarian menu, cutting beef almost entirely, with many meals being vegetarian, and others substituting some of the meat with potatoes, tofu, green jackfruit, mushrooms, etc.
Far from a hardship, we've been delighted by the much more varied new menu.
We've also bought some land that had been tropical forest, but was recently cleared for plantation purposes, and we've bio-chared it with waste charcoal scraps from the prevalent nearby charcoal kilns (about 3 tons of carbon sequestered, for the 0.3ha), and replanted it with a sort-of permaculture mix of various flowering fruit trees (we'll add some beehives in a couple of years), and longer-term restorative hardwoods.
We also bought another 5ha, waiting the same treatment, and we've encouraged others to do the same. 2 takers so far, for another 3ha. Biochar is recommended as 1-5kg/m2 so 1ha means sequestering 10tons of carbon
Assuming the science works (and it seems from online sources that it does - we'll see), I think this kind of biochar carbon sequestration could be quite a big help, and it's a very low-tech solution, which also improves yields, so doubly effective for forest.
Of course this is perhaps less-good than if the forest had just been left intact, but what to do?
- peteradio 7y agoWhy beehives? What does that have to do with fixing the environment?
- perfmode 7y agobees are a central part of ecosystem.
- peteradio 7y agoHoneybees are the only bees that live in hives. Unless this guy is European (based on his tropical forest rehab, I doubt it) then they are certainly not a central part of the ecosystem.
- jacknews 7y agoFor the honey of course! The idea is to show that this can be a source of income or simple deliciousness for local people, dependent on the health and diversity of the local flora. We'll see if that makes sense when it comes to it in a couple of years.
- peteradio 7y agoThat's awesome!
- jamiegreen 7y agoVery cool. If you are comfortable sharing, I would be interested to know where approximately you bought the land, and roughly how much you paid per acre/hectare?
- toomuchtodo 7y agoDo you have a blog or mailing list I could follow? Our family would be interested in following along and doing some similar activities.
- etrautmann 7y agoI'd also read this - it sounds very interesting and inspirational
- jacknews 7y agoThanks, but unfortunately not, I'm a little allergic to social media and especially self-promotion etc, but I posted here as I'm excited myself by the journey we've started. I'll consider it, if it encourages others, though I'm no expert.
- etrautmann 7y agoMy partner and I have similarly cut beef almost entirely, which has been an almost effortless way to cut our footprint. It's not as large as minimizing flying/etc and may be harder for others, but is almost trivially simple for us so we feel good about starting there.