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Posted on September 22, 2024 | 76 Comments
The news cycle just keeps spinning in the murky, corporate-fuelled spaces of the alt-meat and political influencing industries, so although I signalled my intention in my last post to move on from my critique of ecomodernism, I think a quick news bulletin is in order before I pause and take stock in the latter part of this post.
First, reports are in that one of the major players in the US microbial food industry, Motif Foodworks, has lost an ‘incredibly bitter’ dispute with Impossible Foods over patents for a genetically-engineered (and so-called ‘precision fermented’) protein called heme. After the court case, the companies issued a joint statement saying, “This resolution affirms Impossible Foods’ category leadership and the strength of its product portfolio related to heme.” There’s always a case for brevity in writing (I know, I know, a lesson I could better take to heart myself), so let me suggest a single word to replace ‘category leadership’ and ‘strength of product portfolio’: monopoly.
Shortly after the resolution was issued, Motif announced its closure.
Impossible Foods reportedly holds more than half of all the plant-based meat related patents in both the US and the EU.
I’ve warned in my previous writing on this topic – and it’s a fairly obvious point – that it’s easier to create corporate monopolies around manufactured plant-based or microbe-based proteins than it is around agricultural products.
Even some of the environmentalists who’ve latched onto microbial food because of its supposed, though really quite threadbare, eco-credentials are alive to the danger of corporate monopoly. One of them, for example, has spoken of the need for strong anti-trust laws and weak intellectual property rights. Quite so, although the track record of global governance on that isn’t great. Diverting the juggernaut of corporate intellectual property monopoly from its course is a difficult political task. It becomes slightly easier when people kick up a fuss about events like the Impossible/Motif case. I hope some of the environmentalists who’ve backed microbial food will do so, but it’s looking a bit quiet on that front at the moment.
Meanwhile, it’s been reported that a hedge fund based in the tax haven of the Cayman Islands donated £4 million to the Labour Party here in the UK in the one-week window after the recent general election was called where contemporaneous reporting of political donations was not required. This same fund, Quadrature Capital – with investments among other things in fossil fuels and the arms trade – has also reportedly provided most of the finance via its Quadrature Climate Foundation for the campaigning organisation WePlanet (formerly RePlanet), with its high profile push for manufactured food and ‘precision fermentation’ backed by several prominent environmentalists.
All perfectly legal, above board and transparent-ish, of course. But there’s a lot to be said for ‘following the money’ and querying the motives behind the largesse of funds like Quadrature. In the words of Fran Boait from Positive Money “Labour should be looking at how to weaken the power of big finance in our democracy and economy. Right now it seems they are doing the opposite.”
Who knows how all this will play out in our politics, and in the food system specifically? But imagine if Quadrature had bankrolled, say, La Via Campesina instead of WePlanet. Somehow, it’s hard to imagine that happening – partly because I doubt LVC would accept it, but also because there’s no corporate advantage to bankrolling small fry agrarians. Whereas in the case of microbial food…
Anyway, enough. In relation to the debate about microbial food as a meat alternative, I think I’ve now shown beyond doubt that its enormous, and previously underreported, energetic cost rules it out as a mass food technology. The mixture of silence (mostly) and bluster (sometimes) from my critics on this front tells its own story.
But for sure we’ve got to do something different to avert the present suicidal and ecocidal course of our food system. I’ve made the case in my two recent books for agrarian localism as the best something different option. That case rests on four main claims:
My discussions of these four points are far from comprehensive. There’s always more to say and debate, and I daresay I’ll come back to them. But each one contains potentially endless rabbit holes, and I’ve completed the discussion at least to my own satisfaction for now. In relation to the urbanism point, Steve compiled this useful compendium of studies under my last post – my thanks to him for some characteristically effective digging. But of course each of those studies in turn raises all sorts of questions and talking points, so – note to self – It. Is. Time. To. Move. On.
Likewise in relation to agrarian localism feeding the world, and the overheated pushback that this is a formula for mass death. Generally, I don’t think people realise the extent of the ecocidal overproduction of arable grain crops worldwide (and thence the overproduction of livestock, mostly as a result of fossil fuelled arable overproduction), nor the amazing and diverse productivity of local agrarian systems, nor the real causes of famine (which aren’t about small-scale local agrarianism). But – with a hat tip to Glenn Davis Stone’s wonderful book on these topics – It. Is. Time. To. Move. On.
But let me start building the thing I’m moving on to out of the one I’m leaving behind.
I showed in Saying NO… that as a mass industrial food product, microbial protein doesn’t stack up energetically against soy. If we’re going to eat alt-meats, it makes far more sense for them to be based on farmed legumes like soy than on bacteria. But I agree with the ecomodernists that livestock is not generally a sustainable mass source of protein, and that the mass global livestock industry is an abomination. The main case for raising livestock is local and contextual, based in the role of livestock in wider renewable agroecosystems and the material livelihoods they can provide, not as a source of protein. So I haven’t computed how existing global livestock production compares energetically to microbial manufactured food as sources of protein, because it’s not relevant. Neither of the above, please.
What is relevant is creating those wider renewable agroecosystems, and that’s what I’ll be focusing on in future work. One aspect of this that I guess does relate back to my previous critiques of ecomodernism is the so-called ‘land sparing/sharing’ debate, and I’ll be writing about that soon, before moving on to a wider analysis of peopled local agroecosystems.
One of the pushbacks I got online as a result of writing Saying NO… was kind of a funny ad hominem one about how I was a sociologist, so what did I know about sustainable food and earth systems? It led me to muse a bit about how we define ourselves and others. I spent about five years studying social sciences in my youth, and I’ve spent about twenty-five years since then practicing, thinking, reading and discussing sustainable food and earth systems. Yet perhaps there’s a certain truth that we’re stamped with the impress of what we learn in our earlier and most impressionable years. Happily, effecting a turn toward renewable agroecosystems from the ecocidal present is largely a matter of politics and society, where my expertise allegedly lies. Cometh the hour, cometh the man!
But the hour may have to wait. Currently, I’m engaged in a major writing project behind the scenes … not to mention my ongoing farming and woodland project, and this gives me little time for writing this blog just now. I’ll say more about that project soon, but for now new material here may be a bit sporadic. In the meantime, I’m lining up a few guest posts and will generally be around and responsive on this little corner of cyberspace, so hopefully it’s more a case of auf wiedersehen than adios. And if you’re keen to hear my dulcet tones trying my best to answer off the cuff questions from podcasters, you could tune in to me talking about energy futures with Jason Snyder, or to me talking with Tom Widdicombe on his … er … talking with the hippies podcast.
Current reading: Sophie Yeo Nature’s Ghosts; Arthur Penty Distributism: A Manifesto.
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Thank you so much for continuing yo be a voice of reason . I was feeing dismayed by people like Bill Gates and Hannah Ritchie, so I came here to be re-inspired.
It’s unlikely that we can achieve an adequate near-term energy transition out of fossil fuels and into renewables or other low-carbon forms of energy that’s able to keep funding the existing global political economy without jeopardising Earth and natural systems, so we will need to develop lower-energy kinds of society ”
Our society is infinity complex and fragile , I think of the old add age that a butterfly flapping its wings in central America creates a typhoon in China . England and the USA are seeing their grids getting closer and closer to failure , A grid loss in east TX that closes the refineries down for a week or so will have devastating knock on , ( your Lng for a start ) water and sewage treatment etc .
Google is trying to restart the three mile island nukes to power there servers though what good that will do in a grid failure is anyone’s guess , but they are thinking ahead unlike governments ignoring the problem .
Goop factories powered by private owned nuke reactors and maybe a private supply of diesel for the farms to grow / transport soy ?
Fragility and complexity are our Achilles heel its just sitting out there waiting to bite …
Ah, crapitalism. I can’t help thinking that if precision fermentation can only be profitable in a monopoly situation then it’s not very profitable at all.
I can kindof see a strategy that goes something like this:
1) monopolise studge production and scale up until economies of scale make it cheaper
2) convince governments to discourage meat production, which forces people to buy your product instead
3) ??
4) profit!
The problem is that 1) is wrong because scaling up precision fermentation won’t make it cheaper if one of the main input costs is electricity (especially while we’re desperately trying to get going on electrifying everything else), and 2) only works if there’s somewhere else for the cereal overproduction to go, but precision fermented stuff is almost always going to be more expensive than staple grains and pulses (which together can meet human protein needs for most people), so if you convince governments to discourage livestock farming you don’t actually have a guaranteed (enclosed?) market, and 3) is kindof a “show your work” situation, so 4) is not really based on anything.
Where I could see PF actually being useful in an ecomodernist situation is if (and only if) it can mop up “excess” electricity during periods of low grid demand and high wind/solar output. So if you own a solar plant somewhere in the northern hemisphere, and you have just enough panels to make a profit on the energy in December, in June you’re going to have more than you can deal with. You don’t want to put it all back into the grid because then the energy price falls and you stop making a profit so instead you only supply half of it to the grid, and the rest you put into the PF plant, and then you sell the protein from that; it’s not like pumped hydro where you only have so much capacity and that capacity is tied to a physical place, and it’s (presumably) shelf-stable so you can ship it around the world and you only need to sell as much of it at once as you want. I don’t know whether PF works well with intermittent energy inputs like that, but it isn’t that different to raising pigs during the summer to eat during the winter, and in the good years maybe you have an extra. Or maybe you do it the other way around: install enough solar to run your PF plant all year, and sell excess electricity to the grid when you have more sun. I guess that would be like growing enough feed for your pig and then selling any extra? In either configuration, though, having a monopoly on the precision fermentation process would be an advantage; and just because I’m conceptualising this as one corporation selling both the PF and the electricity doesn’t mean it would actually have to be packaged that way.
Assuming the level of technical capacity that this would require will even exist (which is a big assumption), or that excess electricity is something we’ll actually have to deal with at all (again, a big assumption), it seems like a silly way to deal with excess electricity compared to smart meters that can do surge pricing and lull pricing, especially when paired with home batteries and rooftop solar. I understand meters of this sort are already being rolled out.
https://slaynews.com/news/top-bank-launches-payment-tracking-system-crack-down-meat-purchases/
And in other dystopian news NatWest is going to watch your grocery shopping and ” scold ” you for buying meat and dairy , I suppose the next step is to refuse payment if they don’t like your purchases and meat / dairy will disappear from the shelves when there is no payment . Easy to control with CBDT digital currency and no cash .
What’s the betting that seeds will soon be on the list of climate destroyers .
From a swineheard, There is much nuance in the meat debate. Pigs have been a very big part of small farms for a very long time.
May I sing their praises
Lard can be used as a way to keep cured and salted meat fresh for winter stores that aren’t rancid. In stories from when my relatives crossed the plains pigs were fattened in preparation , killed around Christmas, salted , cured then portioned and packed into wooden barrels with a think layer of lard . These barrels were heavy and went into the bottom of the wagons built for the push West.
Pigs can eat things like acorns and lots of other food down there in human preference and yield wonderful charcuterie .
The fast growth of pigs allows that they can be fattened during summer gardening surpluses and then slaughtered before they compete with humans for winter dry stored goods.
One or two pigs can fit along with some chickens in a small home garden space.
They are kind animals , humans could learn from them
The total system of traditional agriculture was relatively renewable for thousands of years. Relative to current agricultural systems. Pigs could utilize forest habitats that humans need to maintain for heating. Ruminates tend to prefer grass and forest clearing.
One man with some gardening and foraging skills can feed a pig and a couple chickens with nothing more a good grub hoe that could be made from chert. That is with some dedication a person can feed their family year round without refrigeration, power equipment , or any steel . Totally zero fossil fuels.
The alternative of modern life with some as yet undeveloped methods to reach zero carbon through high technology is a fantasy. We will never get there . The harsh hand of starvation molded our techniques because the ill prepared didn’t survive the winter. The machines are leading us to starvation when the oil runs out.
I might be critiqued for polarizing our choices but I can demonstrate what one extreme looks like to achieve zero , nobody promoting eco-modernism , techno utopia , or BAU can get even close.
Dio, I looked up the NatWest site and your link misrepresents what the app. does.
“
What will I see in the Carbon Tracker?
The carbon footprint you see is a best estimate as we can only see your whole transaction amount, and not your basket level data.
“For example, if you spend £50 on grocery shopping, we will not know the individual items you have purchased. “
https://www.natwest.com/banking-with-natwest/natwest-app/features/carbon-footprint-calculator.html
So maybe you are misrepresenting a good idea of providing a service that can help people tract their carbon.
Well I talked to a farmer friend in the UK he tells me NW are no longer interested in farming / farmers , just cold shoulder them , many have moved their accounts to more amiable companies who do not demand a environmental audit to get a meeting with a manager .
In other bank
://brusselssignal.eu/2024/09/dutch-bank-ing-to-dump-climate
The way to kill capitalism is to remove finance and when the only place you can raise finance is the government you have communism .
I always liked Eric Cantona’s simple solution to reigning in banks/finance.
Diogenese10, as well as the political systems of the past that you mention, there’s also ‘Technocracy’. Apparently it is a resource-based economic system that uses energy as its accounting system, and is supposedly the only economic system in the world designed from scratch (back in the 1930s). How to implement that?
Some quotes from a talk about it:
“Marxists hate Technocracy with a passion, and for good reason: technocrats would push man out of the picture altogether, resulting in a hierarchy of scientific dictatorship run by scientists and engineers. Technocracy wanted to do away with all political systems, including Communism and Socialism.”
“Marxists have become the useful idiots of the technocrats, over time.”
“Technocracy is not ideological, so it hides behind any political system – left-wing, right-wing… Today, it is bonding with the populist movements in Europe and America.”
I think that carbon-counting apps from places like Natwest could feasibly fit within the increasingly technocratic future, and it’s not a stretch of the imagination to envisage banks dumping customers who don’t fall in line, much like ING’s actions against ‘climate laggards’ in the article linked.
Perhaps some form of energy-based accounting system could have some merit? But controlled by AI? Via Smart meters? Using tonnes of energy? What kinds of freedoms and privations do we want or are willing to put up with? At who/what’s behest? Do we have much choice? Do we want it all? It raises many questions.
Looking forward to hearing about the new project, Chris. Does it have a name:) ?
I look forward to reading the new writing project. I think all forms of industrial engineering are inherently flawed, based as they are in the deep trauma of wounded men! The arrogance of the project is its fragility. The weakest links, well documented by yourself and Tom Murphy are physical and thermodynamic. The hubris is cultural, the narcissism of the western patriarchal aristocratic world view. Tyson Junkaporta discussed this in his first book, that nearly all the ‘aboriginal’ stories and lore attend to narcissistic tendencies, to their curtailing. The history of his people is littered with projects that were abandoned because they were destructive and narcissistic. One of the strategies against narcissism is humour, which relates to the Carnival, I think.
Thanks for the comments and supportive remarks. Much to agree with! Nose to the grindstone at the moment, but I’ll be back here soon 🙂
People care about their health, their family and living in dignity with care and love. You are making the case, which we support, that this (A Small Farm Future) is the best way.
It is so important right now, as fascism stakes a claim to this space – and the ‘left’ acquiese to the military industrial paradigm (with Green peace, friends of the earth and the world wildlife fund all falling in line) – that this case is made in the strongest terms from a social distributist/ anarcho syndacalist position.
The British are fantastic at satire , I just wish the Americans were !
https://contrariancapitalist.substack.com/p/doomberg-you-cant-have-heavy-industry?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=email
Worth listening to
brusselssignal.eu/2024/09/chemistry-giant-basf-considers-closures-at-main-plant-in-germany/
Converted to a goop factory ? Or is energy so expensive goop will have to be imported from China .
One thing is fairly certain that with the closure of Port Talbot steel works the UK will not be building goop factories ,ya can’t make stainless steel from scrap .
And in other news with the Tata steel works closing in Wales ,,Tata are expanding their steel plant in India from 3 to 7 million tons capacity over the next 2/3 years .
@Chris
I admire your perseverance debating studge with ecomodernists.
I think you’ve proved the point even if you can’t change some minds.
Taking Stock and as you say, perhaps It. Is. Time. To. Move. On.
I look forward to hearing about the new writing project.
Just as a thought how much studge would be needed per day for the UK , 1000 calories per day for 60 something million people has got to add up to one hell of a factory somewhere ….
Returning to my thoughts on the end of modernity as a kind of grief, from the last post………
The 5 stages of grief
1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
I see a lot of denial out there, which flips into anger if a debate is initiated.
I think this is where the ecomodernists are coming from
Desperate for a tech solution because the alternative is too scary to contemplate.
And where do I put myself, 1 to 5?????
I used to think that I was at 5 Acceptance but I think this is a bit naïve.
As modernity is still intact, I’m not actually experiencing the realities of de-growth, just thinking about them.
So, I’m probably more like 3. Bargaining. Making rocket stoves, biochar retorts, compost, kombucha , saurkraut, kefir etc. Trying to get some control of the future by prepping. A sence of agency.
But once all the benefits of modernity start to drop away, I will have to deal with 4. Depression.
Drove 12 miles over to a friend’s on the weekend for dinner and conversation. But without modernity, even relationships over relatively short distance will become extremely difficult to maintain. Not to mention in different counties or countries!!!!!
My life will feel “less” for these “losses”.
All those many ways that modernity makes things easy for us whilst the “fossil fuel slaves” (500 per person, I believe?) are doing all the “heavy lifting “.
The reality of losing them, will be a difficult adjustment. Collectively, society might find the whole process very traumatic.
I see parallels with getting old!!! LoL.!!!!!
I’m well into my “3rd Trimester” now. (58).
Things that I’ve taken for granted are slowly slipping away. Not as strong, fit, healthy as I have been. Need glasses.
I’m even shrinking :). I’ve noticed recently that I am 1cm shorter than I have been for all my adult life!!!!!! LoL!!!!!
There is an inevitability about old age as there is with the end of modernity.
Getting to 5. Acceptance, is my next task.
On a slight tangent………..
Any of you folks out there keen composters?
I’ve made a pallet compost bin, as per Joseph Jenkins’ design.
I’ve got it insulated with straw.
I’m filling it with food scraps and biochar soaked in urine. (I haven’t gone for the whole “humanure” thing just yet!!!!)
Seeing if biochar alone is a suitable carbon source. It’s a great cover material for the compost toilet bucket. A thin layer cuts out all the smell of the urine.
So……..the question is……..
I’m getting about 34°C in the centre of the heap, which is lasting for about 7 days or so, then the temp starts to drop to around 18°C-21°C range for a few more days
Is this kinda normal?
I’m putting new material in every week or so, and the temperature of the pile, then goes back up.
Any tips on keeping the temperature up?
The best I’ve got so far is 52°C. That was with biochar and cardboard.
Maybe the biochar alone isn’t enough to hit those pathogen killing temperatures????
How deep is it so far? It sounds to me like you probably just need to add more material. My pallet-sized compost heaps don’t get up to much at all unless they’re at least half full, so I tend to stockpile my carbon materials (leaves and woodchips) until I can get a big delivery of coffee grounds (my main nitrogen ingredient, though there is some in the woodchips if I can use them fresh enough, as we often get ramial ones, and I do also have grass clippings to add during mowing season), and then build them one bay at a time in layers, at which point they get very hot in two or three days.
The other issue I’ve encountered with my outdoor heaps is that they tend to dry out a bit, especially when they’re running hot. To get around this, I have a few plastic trash bins (maybe 150L size?) which I fill with woodchips, then fill with water, and I use those as some of the layers when I build the heap. What’s the texture like? I should think the food scraps will help a lot with that, as will having an insulating layer of straw on top. Both of those will tend to attract rodents (hopefully the urine will deter them some.)
@Kathryn.
Yeah. I wonder if I haven’t got a critical mass yet???
The “bin” has a biological sponge at the bottom that was about 18″ deep at the start. (It must have compacted a lot by now though).
The sides and top are insulated with straw.
So the actual “composting material” isn’t that big, I guess.
When adding new, I’m removing the cover material and digging into the pile, so the new material is right in the middle, then covering back over with the cover material.
Because the new material is being buried in the centre, I’m hoping it will deter the “little fellas”. Cuts down any smell and I want to keep the temperature up to keep them away. 40°C is not a place I would want to hang around.
Maybe my “brew” needs a bit of tweeking?
It’s just kitchen waste and biochar/urine at the moment.
Maybe I need to think more about the nitrogen? I was hoping the urine would be enough but maybe I need to add more green material?
It’s 32°C today. So that’s 7 days in the 30’s. Well above ambient temperature, so there is some thermophilic action going on in there somewhere!!!
Biochar is basically pure carbon. Humans pee something like 11g of nitrogen per day. I think you want to be aiming for 30:1 carbon to nitrogen on a weight basis… so yes, you might need more nitrogen, but kitchen waste will have a fair amount of it.
My experience is that rats always eventually find food waste in outdoor compost bins — and they don’t mind nesting at the periphery where it’s a bit cooler and then ducking in to get at the food — but I’m in London, there are rats everywhere, and I don’t really use a lot of urine (it’s hard to pee directly on the heap at the allotment due to lack of privacy, and it’s hard to get household support for peeing in containers at home and then cycling to and from the allotment with them).
John, my experience is almost ‘the bigger the better’ for compost heaps, but obviously the composition (brown to green ratio) has to be about right, and the way it is mixed/layered, frequency of turning too. But the main thing I found I was getting wrong, to begin with, was the moisture level: when I started sprinkling just the right amount of water (any kind, clean or filthy, pond- or rainwater) onto the material, as I was building up the (generally uninsulated) heap in layers, I hit pay dirt, so much so that I ordered a compost thermometer out of curiosity.
A compost heap can reach 60C-plus or thereabouts. The confirmation for this surprising build-up of heat came when I once placed a dead cat in the middle of the heap (it appeared to have simply died at the bottom of our garden) and a week or so later when I turned the heap, the cat had been thoroughly cooked and the meat was falling from the disintegrating skeleton like pulled pork. I don’t recall any or much odour during this time.
Another thing I tried, bearing in mind the moisture requirement and the fact the heap will eventually dry out, was placing a section of plastic pipe into the heap, and using that as a urinal (easier if you are male) to get the 37C urine straight into the pile. I also imagined the pipe helped a little with heap aeration too, as that can speed decomposition up a bit. I have never used a compost auger to mix a heap but they certainly look useful and effective, and come in a hand-tool variety.
Composting used to be my fave activity in the garden, and I often daydreamed about doing it almost as a full-time job, taking in waste from all over the village (and benefiting from my labour). But when I looked into it, as a commercial operation it’s usually done with diggers working huge windrows of material. I would go in the direction of a polytunnel and several chickens in order to process bigger heaps.
With the ducks (their bedding) and the donkey I have more material than ever now, but I put aside the compost fork when I read this article on hot and cold composting, from a pretty interesting site.
https://worldagriculturesolutions.com/2016/12/15/hot-versus-cold-composting/
Among other things the author ponders “Is compost made at 165 degrees Fahrenheit “better” than the same materials decomposed at air temperature? Should wastes be piled up or spread out? Is there a difference in the biological or nutrient quality of the finished compost? Your guess is as good as mine. ”
Kathryn, I remember reading one of cycle tourist extraordinaire Josie Dew’s bike touring accounts where she revealed that she used a cycling cape/poncho to squat by the side of even very busy roads when she felt the call of nature. Just a thought, but a neat solution I always thought.
Simon,
My cycling cape/poncho is longer in front and shorter at the back and sides, which means if your audience is only from one direction (the road) you’re probably fine, but it isn’t going to hide much at an allotment site which is much more open from all directions. A longer cape would run the risk of getting caught in, er, splashback.
The actual solution is to tidy the shed properly. That will be happening this winter, with the addition of another shed (the existing one is falling down and probably beyond saving at this point). But even that isn’t going to capture a majority of my household’s urine, because it’s two and a half miles from home and we don’t generally want to go that far just to pee.
I’ve tried to get the allotment committee interested in composting toilets but so far no joy.
Oh — and the biggest reason I am going for hot composting is that starting my outdoor cucurbits on hot beds in spring gives me some decent season extension on a site prone to late frost. The heat *and height* of the heaps helps a lot.
And then when my squashes (and this year, melons!) are done, I use the compost to fill any of my raised beds that need topping up, and mulch the others. I do usually turn my heaps but only once or sometimes twice, and it’s mostly to make sure they haven’t dried out in the middle.
On a more chaotic site with more space I would not bother with using the pallets as edges, or with building raised beds. I’d just make a big mound to grow squashes in, then grow something else there the next year and make a new heap for the squashes. But that’s not the system I can use where I am, so the wheelbarrow and the fork are probably going to be part of my life for a while.
Also on hot composting:
My compost heaps are one pallet bay big, which is pretty large, but not as large as, say, a dead elephant, which would definitely have a lot of heat buildup. Scavengers would probably take a lot of the meat, of course, but “pile of stuff that gets pretty hot” really isn’t inconceivable as a natural process.
We don’t have so many elephants these days, or mammoths at all or various other megafauna, and we tend to eat or otherwise process the larger farm animals rather than leaving them to rot somewhere. But just because some guy on the internet can’t imagine that much organic matter in one place occurring naturally doesn’t mean it never happened. If nothing else, semi-nomadic prehistoric humans tended to have middens anywhere they stayed for more than a few days, rather than just spreading faeces around everywhere.
@Kathryn
Elephants?????
@Kathryn
@Simon H
Thanks for the compost chat.
My primary interest in composting is sanitation rather than soil improvement.
What to do if/when the sewage system no longer works?!?!?!
So…high temperatures to kill of eggs and pathogens, is my goal.
I like the Joseph Jenkins method. It allows for the “toilet” bit of the process to be in the house rather than an “outhouse” in the garden.
Cold or hot composting????????
Well………JJ goes to great lengths to explain what composting is, and more importantly, what it isn’t.
Not all organic decomposition is compost and composting is a human creation. It doesn’t happen in “nature”.
(Bit like saurkraut, kombucha, kefir etc, that are human created processes.)
So, there is no such process as “cold composting”
@Kathryn.
Yes, biochar is pure carbon, but……my understanding is that it’s a good soil enhancement because it doesn’t decompose????
(Charcoal from camp fires, over 1,000,000 years old, have been found.)
Biochar straps nutrients and moister in it’s labyrinthium structure. That’s why it’s good for soil fertility etc. It remains intact as a structure?????
Any further insights/advice on this, greatly appreciated.
So, I’m not sure that biochar is the right kind carbon for the composting process? Hence my experiments.
I guess I need to bite the bullet and actually start composting my “human waist” to find out the answer and see if I can get the temperature up into the 50°C area for at least a couple of hours!!!!!!
I want to use biochar because it’s easy to create and process and is a great “cover material ” for the “toilet” bit of JJ’s method. (JJ uses sawdust)
My biochar retort is working great. I’ve solved the excessive smoke issues!!!!
P. S. No signs of rats yet, fingers crossed!!!!!
Just to add………
My latest biochar retort burn/trial resulted in the retort melting a 22mm brass compression elbow inside the barrel!!!
Brass melts at 900°C, so it’s generation a lot of heat for the pyrolysis!!!!!!
Re outdoor compost toilets. The ones I first encountered in Hungary were ‘long-drop’ holes with the privvy above. You simply filled the hole over time, dug another hole, moved the cubicle to its new location and filled the older hole – simple as can be but you also don’t really gain much in terms of a fertility-giving soil amendment.
With a compost toilet the best results I got were when I had enough sawdust to cover the deposits. After several months the chamber was still odour-free and it wasn’t unsavoury work to shovel out the crumbly dark friable soil-like contents, which I would then transfer to the middle of a compost heap I was turning or building up (usually 1.5metre square minimum size). Without enough sawdust (wood ash created a bad smell) I didn’t have the same kind of success, and I don’t have enough sawdust to hand nowadays, plus there are now four of us using one compost toilet (and occasionally – oh god no – visiting guests… my efforts at a self-built compost toilet fit the Permaculture idea of ’embarrassingly simple solutions’ that David Holmgren talks about, though I sometimes feel ours is more embarrassing than it is simple). For this reason it is good to have two toilets, one sitting idle, decomposing last year’s contents, the other in use. You can then fill one up and empty the other, and swap between in this way. Whitewashing with slaked lime at that point seems a good idea (there’ll probably be loads of funnel-web spiders in residence). Our current one is beneath a triffid-like hazelnut tree and, over a year in, we don’t seem to be able to fill it! Good nut harvest this year, so it probably fits the concept of ‘tree bog’ better. Typical sensible advice like site the compost toilet at least 10 metres from your well (preferably downslope) seems entirely reasonable to me. I think next time I will try to make a really attractive one like this:
https://www.dezeen.com/2023/05/17/finnish-pavilion-venice-architecture-biennale-toilet/
PS Syphoning off the pee helps keep odour down, but I know it’s not Jenkins’ way.
PPS Kathryn, I thought you might find this page of interest:
https://worldagriculturesolutions.com/2019/10/10/biblical-agronomy/
@Simon H
I can see sawdust, or the lack of, as being an issue with any composting toilet set up I adopt.
That’s why I’m interested to see if biochar works as a substitute. I’ve made a retort that works really well, so I can create lots of biochar with little effort.
Plenty of pallet wood around that I can access for free.
(I fill the retort with long lengths of pallet wood. Trying to reduce the amount of sawing/labour involved in loading up the retort.)
I have also made “The Grizzly”. A metal grill to hit/force the biochar through, to grade it down to small pieces and powder.
All works really well, other than I am going to have to replace the melted brass elbow, with a stainless steel one!!!!
It’s, just whether the biochar does the business in the composting process????
Still slowly catching up after being away for a while- maybe you’ll see this, maybe you won’t.
I’m doing the three year “slow compost” method. Whether it’s slow or cold, or compost or not, it is easier if you have the room, which we fortunately do. Also, I had to acknowledge a bit of laziness and forgetfulness on my part.
I think we maybe get freaked out too much about pathogens and such, when it’s really maybe just the ick factor?
I mean- it’s your own poop! I think three years for bugs suited for the gut biome to die off in the wild is a pretty safe bet.
Some observations- if you can make biochar easily- yes use it, as you are also precharging the biochar in the bargain. The bugs still need green and brown, as they can’t eat the biochar.
Urine needs to be applied to the compost/soil right away, or the nitrogen volatilizes. Urine is where the majority of the nitrogen and phosphorus is in human waste, so don’t discount it!
I use the lovable loo, as there are many Amish sawmills in the area, with tons of sawdust for the taking. Quick and cheap, also.
5 stages- I like to think I’m at stage 5, but the reality is that one can hop from one to the next as you’ve suggested, given circumstances. Every once in a while, watching greed and stupidity unfold, I do get angry.
Thanks Steve – do keep commenting!
@Steve C
Wow. You’ve got some catching up to do!!!!
Thanks for all of that.
How long before urine looses it’s vitality? I’m peeing into a bucket of biochar and emptying it once a week into the compost heap along with kitchen scraps etc. Should I be doing it sooner?
Bit of a nerdy question but…… How tall are the buckets that come with the Lovableloo?
John asked “How long before urine loses it’s vitality?”
A study from Finland used human urine “stored for about 6 months”.
They found that “urine fertilized plants can produce 4.2 times more tomato fruits [mass] compared to nonfertilized plants, and it could be even higher if N evaporation could be minimized. There are other ways to interpret this result; urine from a single human individual (500 L/year) could fertilize some 6300 tomato plants, which could produce 2.41 tons of tomato fruits.”
They also compared mineral fertilizer (NPK 9-6-17) to urine-only and urine+ash (not urine+ash mixed together, but separate applications 3 days apart). “Our study showed that the tomato fruit yield in mineral and urine fertilized plants did not significantly differ [the yield with mineral fertilizer was highest]. However, tomato fruit yield in mineral fertilized plants was significantly higher compared to the urine + ash fertilizer treatment (Table 4), and this might be due to loss of N with increasing soil pH because of ash”.
Stored Human Urine Supplemented with Wood Ash as Fertilizer in Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) Cultivation and Its Impacts on Fruit Yield and Quality
Surendra K. Pradhan, Jarmo K. Holopainen, and Helvi Heinonen-Tanski
Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 2009 57 (16), 7612-7617
DOI: 10.1021/jf9018917
PDF download:
https://files.shroomery.org/attachments/322525-Stored%20Human%20Urine%20Supplemented%20with%20WoodAsh%20as%20Fertilizer.pdf
On that topic, another study used “urine formed in a kindergarten, in a cafe and in private houses for a period of several months prior to the collection time” to grow cucumbers.
“Several months.”
“Pure human urine is a good fertiliser for cucumbers”
Helvi Heinonen-Tanski, Annalena Sjöblom, Helena Fabritius, Päivi Karinen
Bioresource Technology 98 (2007) 214–217
PDF download:
https://www.academia.edu/download/45838480/group13_cucumber2.pdf
John;
Here are some links.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/agronomy/articles/10.3389/fagro.2024.1425461/full
the research is a bit ambiguous as of yet, and not a black and white situation. Here is one of the more pertinent quotes from the study:
Nitrogen volatilization as NH3 has been shown to be high from urine application as evidenced by Martin et al. (2023), who found that stored urine applied at a rate of 145 kg-N ha -1 to the surface of a loamy haplic Luvisol resulted in 34% N volatilization of the total urine-N applied under field conditions. Rumeau et al. (2023) modeled NH3 volatilization from stored urine applied at 170 kg-N ha−1 to a calcareous loamy clay soil and found that between 57% and 67% urine-N applied would be lost to NH3 volatilization. The lack of substantial NO3- accumulation from urine-only treatments (Supplementary Figure S2) implies potentially high volatilization of NH3 from Fresh Urine and Stored Urine in our study. Effort should be made when applying urine alone as a fertilizer to prevent volatilization.
another:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10705-023-10304-x
I did not find the info on how long, but the general takeaway I get is that sooner is better, but also, burying or mixing into soil reduces volatilization. Unless you use a urine separator seat ( it’s a thing. https://separett.com/en/en/privy-insulating-seat-blue ) the urine is in contact with the poop and the sawdust or other material, so how much volatilization happens in the bucket is not something any researchers are looking at that I know of. Something to think about, as I think the research showed 57% to 67% reduction of N bioavailability from stored urine volatilization. Fresh urine was still 34% loss, but that is surface application. One could anguish, but any circle closing is better than wasting potable water and sending nutrients to the ocean. Quite the rabbit hole, eh?
lovable loo- it’s just a 5 gallon plastic bucket. The simplest and most spartan is with a snap on seat that can be purchased separately. A wooden box enclosure that a regular toil seat can be attached to is more comfortable, and a bit taller. Squatting directly on a bucket is awkward, and needs a bit of agility to complete the process.
My setup has the seat 20″ ( 500mm) from the floor.
and a couple fun links for you.
http://viridviews.blogspot.com/2021/01/return-of-pissoir.html
http://viridviews.blogspot.com/2015/02/a-new-low.html
@Steve L.
Thanks for all the info and links.
That will keep me busy for a while!!!
steve c quoted this from a study: “…implies potentially high volatilization of NH3 from Fresh Urine and Stored Urine in our study. Effort should be made when applying urine alone as a fertilizer to prevent volatilization.”
This refers to when the urine is applied as a fertilizer, to prevent volatilization then, no? It doesn’t seem to refer to volatilization losses during the time the urine is stored.
In fact, Table 2 of that same study shows that stored urine has a higher N content than fresh urine! (3.10 mg/g for stored urine, and 2.76 for fresh urine.) It says that variation of Fresh and Stored urine N content is attributable to “experimental error” (no mention of volatilization during storage).
My takeaway is that the volatilization loss of N during storage is not a problem if the container is closed.
And thanks to Steve C as well.
@Steve L
The plot thickens!!!
Does the nitrogen “evaporate” if stored in an open container?
Does biochar soaked in urine hold onto the nitrogen better than if just urine on its own.
I’m peeing into an open bucket with biochar in the bottom. I’m then emptying into compost heap once a week.
Who knows if this is sub optimal or not? Bit beyond my ability to assess.
@John Adams
The nitrogen just goes back into the atmosphere. It has been a while but best practices for surface application of dairy manure (applied daily) in relation to nitrogen loss and leaching has been studied and recommend immediate incorporation. Also you could see if there is research on N losses from CAFO manure lagoons.
Home garden soil test kits measure N. You could do some research. I got mine from these guys –
https://lamotte.com/products/environmental-science-education/soil-testing/soil-test-kits/
John asked “Does the nitrogen [in urine] “evaporate” if stored in an open container?”
This study found 90% losses of nitrogen when open storage was used (in a tropical location).
Closed storage containers, on the other hand, retained 93% of the total nitrogen.
“Open storage led to nitrogen losses of 90% [in the tropics], whereas closed storage containers retained 93% of total nitrogen.”
Urine – A Valuable Fertilizer with Low Risk after Storage in the Tropics
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.2175/106143010X12609736967125
Looks like I need to put a lid on my bucket then!!!
I wonder if the biochar traps some of the nitrogen and prevents it from “escaping”?
Re: the transfer of nitrogen from urine to biochar.
In this study, they made urine-enriched biochar (UEBC) by using 200 grams of biochar for every liter of urine (a ration they found ” favorable for urine-N adsorption”), in sealed containers with 48-hour soak time after brief agitation.
Measurements of the resulting aqueous phase N found that 85%–98% of the initial N in urine was removed from solution.
Regarding biochar size, particles smaller than 0.5 mm retained significantly more N than particles larger than 0.5 mm.
A 5-week growth experiment with tomato seedlings suggested that plain urine was effective as a fertilizer, but urine-enriched biochar wasn’t effective for these young plants. Results indicated an “immediate plant availability of urine-N” for urine by itself, but the results also indicated that “urine-N adsorbed to biochar is not bio-available in the early stages of plant growth.”
Urine-enriched biochar: Coupling sustainability in sanitation and agriculture
Bischak et al., 2024
Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene (2024) 12 (1): 00118.
https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.2022.00118
Some snippets from the study report:
“Container-based sanitation (CBS) is an emerging technology in which human excreta is source-separated in containers and transported to a local facility for waste treatment, processing, and reuse (Russel et al., 2019). This study explores urine-N recovery scenarios relevant to CBS systems. We use biochar, a low-cost carbon-rich adsorbent, to recover urine-N from human urine stored in conditions realistic to CBS and other urine-diverting systems. To the best of our knowledge, this research is the first to examine multiple types of urine-enriched biochar (UEBC) made with various kinds of urine and biochar in a single greenhouse growth trial…”
“We show that urine storage conditions have consequences for N retention in urine and subsequent adsorption to biochar, that biochar particle size is significant for urine-N sorption, and that urine-N bound to biochar likely releases more slowly than urine-N applied alone. … We chose a UEBC mixing ratio of 200 g:1 L based on prior experimentation that found this ratio favorable for urine-N adsorption. However, we recognize that this may be an unrealistic quantity of biochar to supply at the toilet or neighborhood scale…”
“This research shows that application of Fresh, Stored, or CBS urine alone was positively linearly correlated with plant-N uptake, implying the immediate plant availability of urine-N…
Plant-N was not positively linearly correlated with urine-N application for Sewage Sludge and Wood Waste UEBCs… This implies that urine-N adsorbed to biochar is not bio-available in the early stages of plant growth…”
“Across biochars, the less-than-500-µm biochar size fraction retained significantly more N than the greater-than-500-µm fraction…”
“Across biochar types, Qaq indicates that 85%–98% of the initial N in urine regardless of type was removed from solution (Figure 2)…”
“Biochar could potentially be used to recover urine-N at the individual toilet scale (i.e., an attached filter) or the neighborhood scale (i.e., communal soak pit) (Ryals et al., 2021)…”
“Previous studies have shown that larger biochar particle size fractions retain significantly less NH4+…”
@Steve L
Thanks again.
Where do you find all that stuff????!!!!
Lots of related studies can be found by searching for:
urine-enriched biochar
at Google Scholar
I suppose my next question is………
Does a sprinkling of biochar over my bucket urine act as a “lid”.
It definitely stops the smell.
Does that mean it also stops the nitrogen (from venting off)??????
Some interesting insights into what the unraveling of modernity might/will look like.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2024/09/12/the-long-and-the-short-of-it-four-power-down/
Also John, from what I understand there’s a fluidity to those stages of grief, so it’s possible to start anywhere, transition to any of the other stages, in no particular order. All of which, if true, might make the idea of closure a moot point.
Also tangentially, here’s a neat summary of future scenarios in the control/economy sector, from a clear-headed, articulate thinker on the subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9wozA-CTmM
PS Pee-splashed ponchos aside, you can’t beat a bucket and an old toilet seat, somewhere private.
Absolutely: grief is fluid and also cyclical, most people don’t get to go through all five stages like some kind of workbook and then say they’re done. There is no cure for grief.
Rather, we learn to feel our grief without being destroyed by it; we learn to honour our grief, to compensate for it, bargain with it, and ultimately to live with it. It becomes part of who we are and that can be a beautiful thing.
I am not saying here that we should wallow in our climate grief to the exclusion of other parts of our lives or using our agency where we can (though “having a good wallow” now and then is probably healthy) or that grief is never a disabling thing or something we might need help with. Rather, all of us need help sometimes and all of us can be overwhelmed from time to time.
But… our wounds are ultimately part of who we are and we don’t always get to choose which ones will heal completely and which will leave scars. In my own faith tradition, when the risen Christ comes to the disciples He bears, and is recognised by, the marks of the crucifixion.
There is a book called “Hospicing Modernity” which is probably worth a read; I haven’t read it yet, but it is on my list.
@Simon H
Yes. Grief is a deeply personal and individual experience.
That’s why the “grief” at the loss of modernity will be interesting, as we will all be experiencing it at the same time!!!!
@Kathryn
This is an interesting piece on solar PV systems, if you haven’t read it already?
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2023/12/how-to-build-a-small-solar-power-system/
Yes, I’ve seen it!
@Kathryn
And this?
https://youtu.be/IYjNv63CMS0?si=Byc5Xng1eeXbAEe0
I’m aware that it’s possible to power a refrigerator from solar panels, yes; I’m unlikely to watch an entire video on the nuts and bolts of same.
For future reference perhaps? 😉
I’m enjoying the ongoing discussions here. I’m currently in the Scottish Highlands for a week, living in a caravan with an improvised compost toilet, and hiking with my wildlife-guide son among a world of wounds, both internal and visible in the landscape.
I’d love to add to the compost toilet debate, but – as is appropriate to the topic – you seem to have it well covered. It would nevertheless be remiss of me not to mention the online compost toilet course courtesy of my dear wife: https://www.lowimpact.org/posts/our-new-compost-toilets-online-course-is-live-and-we-think-youll-love-it
We’ve got several compost toilets on our site that she’s desinged and built. If you folks are interested in a guest post from her, I could ask?
A thought-provoking strand on grief too – thanks. Perhaps the anger/denial thing is behind some of the pushback I get? There certainly seem to be a lot of people who are a bit over-invested in renewables and microbial food as ‘the answer’. Or maybe I’m just too snarky…
Anyway, apologies for my only sporadic appearances here. Probably likely to be ongoing for a while.
@Chris.
Does Cordelia run physical compost toilet courses at Vallis Veg?
Quite fancy a day out rather than an online course.
And I could always bring my biochar retort along too!!!
Yes, I think grief — and quite possibly trauma — are behind some of the pushback that you get.
But I think some of it is simply lack of imagination combined with lack of experience. I grow and forage more of my own food than most people I know and I would still really struggle without the ability to buy some of it. Anyone who has tried gardening on a small scale, and then tries to imagine doing that for all of their food, will be overwhelmed by how much work it is, and not necessarily able to see how they could ever find the time to do that and also earn enough to.pay their rent. I know I can’t: my rent is paid largely by my spouse, at least for the time being.
And while I am running up against some hard limits in how much work I can do, I’m sufficiently embedded in community to be able to e.g. take my unwanted oilseed pumpkin flesh elsewhere for consumption. I’m also experienced enough to know that it isn’t much more work to grow some extra drying beans or more winter squashes or double my soup pea production, but growing twice as many tomatoes would be foolish to attempt. People without such experience might find it hard to imagine a world where they have to do direct physical work in order to eat food.
I’m also going to guess that most of the people reading you have never lived in any context other than extractive, growth-oriented capitalism. So when they try to imagine, say, degrowth, or distributism, or a network of self-governed cooperatives, or household-based self-provisioning localism, or whatever else, they are trying to build an entire world from scratch. I’ve never even lived outside of neoliberalism, except at the very margins: foraging in parks, sharing seeds, “kerbcycling” for acquiring many of my possessions (a uniquely urban advantage, I think, and also helpful for passing on items no longer of use), and hopefully also in the tiny, flawed refugia I create on purpose.
If people cannot imagine living via some kind of local self-provisioning, and they cannot imagine living in a context other than extractive capitalism, then telling them that self-provisioning will be important and extraction will stop can feel like telling them they will stop living, rather than calling them to a different way of living. The reasons they cannot imagine those things are more than just lack of experience, of course; it suits the beneficiaries of the current system very well indeed to maintain a narrative of all other alternatives being unsustainable drudgery.
For my part, I have accepted that if I am going to process this much food on a regular basis and I am going to continue to have working shoulder joints, I need some assistance, and I have accepted a second hand electric food processor from my next door neighbour, who bought it “years ago” and has never used it. The instruction leaflet has an 0181 telephone number and no URL so we think it’s from the early 1990s. It works like a dream. In some ways this a compromise, and in others it is a nod to the reality that if I were trying to provide all the calories for my household, there would be more shelf-stable-at-harvest staples and fewer perishable cucumbers, as well as two more people to help with the processing a bit more than they currently can. It’s a good thing I’m not a purist. Maybe my neighbour would like some more cucumbers.
The complete lack of understanding from the younger generations and the push back baffles me , getting their head around the idea that they will not be able to get in a car and go to WM and get everything they need does not compute , the idea of not having hot and cold running water and they go into shock , hell the idea of living without their I phone is beyond comprehension. Most neither know or care where their food comes from ,what its sprayed with or the near slave labour to produce it , I doubt that many have the mental ability to adapt to a energy free future
Some of the young people I know are very much wide awake to the precarity of the current system; some are actively working to learn different skills. They’re also still being told by their parents and other elders to take out ridiculous loans in order to go to university and get a “good job” (which won’t be enough to pay their rent, or be secure enough to get them a mortgage). I’ll be 44 soon, so not really so young any more, and my father thought I should go into scientific academia because “that’s where the money is” — I’m very, very glad I didn’t, looking at the way the wheels are coming off that particular racket.
The person I know who I would say is most smartphone-addicted is 58 years old. His computer-free upbringing really didn’t teach him how to manage always having something to read, or having many of his social relationships mediated by the internet.
Best not to tar all of any generation with the same brush, I think. No matter what happens we’re going to need all kinds of people with all kinds of skills, and people can learn to put up with surprising amounts of hardship very quickly if they have to.
Hi
I am not so sure I spent Saturday on a TX state campus talking with many others to the students , yes they know all about warming , they know bugger all about controlling it accept that we have to use less , “some one some where will have to use less ” . Nothing is said about the problem we might just run out of energy . Not one knew that wind blades are made from oil derivative’s , that we would have to mine / refine more copper in the next decade than the last century to electrify the country .
There was stunned silence when I showed the G***le was trying to restart the three mile island nuclear stations to power their AI servers .
They have all the bullet points about warming and absolutely nothing on how to deal with it or how it will affect them in their daily lives .
@Diogenese10
I guess we are all “children of modernity”. I know plenty of folks my age, who are pretty clueless as well.
We’ve all got a collective shock coming out way!!!!
John – no she doesn’t do courses on our site, but she does do one annually in Brighton with the permaculture trust there, if you fancy a trip to the seaside.
Kathryn – thanks for that. Sometimes I’ve thought that if I was nicer the debate with the ecomodernists might involve less aggro, but that’s probably untrue. It does feel like two radically different visions, framings, languages – ships passing in the night along the lines you suggest. So finding the right way to engage seems hard.
Meant also to thank Bruce from way back with his thoughts on pigs. I was just writing about that today…
Luckily we have gardeners and seed savers that have at least maintained the crop variety to easily resurrect small scale ag. We could use some people who now how to run grain mills, maybe something like communal drying sheds, Animal husbandry and organized breeding programs for horse stock or livestock. By putting all the parts together so they work together you probably will have systems that look similar to prior small ag models( civilizations ). Put it together with bakers and butchers and small populations could work for something like the collective good.
Farming for me has been more like struggling against something being lost and almost a last stand. Is isn’t a community , and almost all my time working outdoors for the last twenty five years has been alone. So I spend my time thinking how to feed the chickens by crops I have grown, or garden crops year round, or keeping multiple dry crops in the shed , and seed for spring. Without fossil fuel equipment on the farm ten years. Just the truck for deliveries.
But putting together work and sustenance is a personal choice and financially kinda like treading water, a long time.
Respect and hats off to you Bruce.
There are plenty of easier options to make a living in modernity. Fair play that you have stuck at it.
People will be coming to you for advice once things start to unravel.
I second that Bruce, your work and insight is highly valued – and valuable – just not in this system! It is a damning insight to our current culture, that you have toiled so long alone, that there is not a community of like minded folk locally, to join you. You have achieved the a life beyond fossil fuels, I hope the journey has been joyful and satisfying at times – as I know it will have been hard and lonely!
I don’t know if Katheryn’s model of an allotment garden tied to a soup kitchen is widely adapted in England and although similar setups may exist here I am not familiar with them. A church down the road used to give away vegetables once a week but they have switched to free coffee.
I believe a small dedicated group has far more resilience than a lone gardener. If I were to get sick things like feeding stock still needs to be done. I don’t have milking stock but getting the milking done alone for extended periods is even harder . Shane Simonsen lost his goatherd due to ill health. My great grandfather died of pneumonia because he worked his dairy while sick, and got sicker. His wife had a very hard time after that.
As the world begins to power down and switch to renewables the countries with meager petroleum reserves will lead the way to new working models .for food production and distribution . Mutual support group models need to be developed and the methods shared. Transitions offer opportunity for innovation. Food safety regulations, insurance, and liability issues all might be easier to deal with if mutual benefit groups were the goal rather than the profit motive.
A small point of correction:
My personal allotments (1.5 plots on one site and 0.5 plots on another) are not tied to the soup kitchen. I do bring in excess produce from time to time but nothing that I grow there has been sown primarily for soup kitchen work..
I also grow vegetables in the Soup Garden, which is a variable assortment of raised beds and containers and in-ground beds in the churchyard at my church. This produce is entirely earmarked for the soup kitchen. Occasionally I will save some seed there for my allotment or vice versa.
I *also* manage eight square meters of raised beds in a community garden in a small ex-carpark near my home; for this I am paid for 8h/month of labour (some of which also goes towards maintaining non-raised bed parts of the lot and helping with the coffee grounds composting operation). The food from this goes to a local Community Fridge.
It’s certainly enough to keep me pretty busy; between all of that and foraging (usually when cycling home from church or other places, though I try to get out for walks at least twice weekly), I produce quite a bit of food, and am working outside whenever the weather is good and sometimes also when it isn’t.
I’m quite addicted to reading Chris’s blog, but even more so the comments. I feel that this is my virtual tribe and I’m sitting on the fringes of the group enjoying and inspired by the chat, whilst not a great chatter myself. Can’t see me engaging in online debate, but just wanted to say how much I enjoy it.
Come on Marion.
Don’t be shy! 🙂
All opinions add to the accumulative knowledge.
Sharing is Caring!
Thanks for the plaudits for this site and its commenters, Marion. Do feel free to chatter here if you wish.
I’m interested in the sub-theme in some of the comments here on how best to prepare for local resilience. There’s building resources (seed diversity etc), learning skills and plugging gaps in the local food system (eg. millers), and there’s more general community-building without a specfic practical focus, but which I think is probably just as important. Also land access and intergenerational transfer. All of these things are important, and so are different people’s energies for different things. But some problems are more structural and intractable than others. I hope to see this discussion continue…
Margaret Killjoy categorises prepping into three categories: gear, skills and relationships.
Her podcast “Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff” is an excellent romp through history with a focus on anarchist and other left resistance to oppression.
Re. Land access. Southern Calif. is blending ground of Mexican and Euro cultures, all others welcome too but numbers wise and historically we are Southwestern. This is reflected in food, gardening, and yes some weird blending of social structures. I don’t know how peon/ patron is viewed in Europe but it is still how many small towns operate in Mexico and because the border is fluid and the customs long lived we have peon lite here in SCal.
So I have land and water but I don’t really have money to pay labor or do withholding and paperwork nausea . So in a system not designed for profit and only a wink to reciprocity l allow people to use my land for keeping a small garden or to keep a chicken shed . I get nothing but a dozen eggs on occasion but if I am in a pinch and need someone to feed the pigs I know who will help, even if it is an imposition on them to drive over a couple times a day.
They expect out of me some consistency, that I not sell out, or toss them off there little projects. It is all the farm and space they have to themselves because they can only afford an apartment in town. So although I don’t have money I am expected to be fair, deal with the authorities, and act as the Patron… I am sure I don’t understand the full complexity of the system but the expectations of either party ,Peon or Patron , are kinda nebulous yet way better than the damn litigious nature of rent/labor based relations.
Peon Patron kinda implies you like and trust each other.