[Terrapreta] Fw: if yer not forest...

[David Yarrow]

slow down, brother, and stop projecting your assumptions into my words.  i never said or suggested "enough oak trees to supply enough acorns to feed 6 billion people."  it's hard to have a fruitful communication when the other person puts words in my mouth, then uses them to criticize my idea.

i merely suggested a marketing & consumer education strategy to develop acorn meal as a new natural food so forest landowners have a marketable crop to harvest and sell to support their mainenance of that land as forest -- something besides harvesting timber to pay taxes, fees and land upkeep expenses.  and maybe consumers will get a nutritional boost from this unusual and powerful food.

in truth, the tone of your response is damned condescending.  except you are arguing with your own projected assumptions, not my expressed ideas.  or are you just exercising some sort of boomerang sense of humor?

there are a variety of other tree and forest crops that could be developed as marketable items to produce an income from forested lands.  fiddlehead ferns and mushrooms are two that are already being used by some agroforestry explorers.

ever hear of permaculture?  bill mollison?  permanent agricultural landscape design?  bill would go further than the simple idea i expressed, and suggest the smart way to harvest acorns is to lie in your hammock and watch where the squirrels stash their acorns.  then go collect your rent from their hidden food stores.  why do stoop labor picking up acorns when squirrels and chipmunks are much better suited to such tasks?  and he would also approve of harvesting two or three squirrels each year to supplement and diversify a chicken-based diet.

then again, i guess we could just make charcoal and biodiesel out of those oak nuts and trees, shoot the squirrels, then plow the ground with a tractor and plant more corn.  my great-grandfather used to make us boys shoot squirrels because they were stealing his corn.

i have a special fondness for acorns because 30 years ago, it was a squirrel in an oak forest that first taught me that wild animals are highly intelligent, and have rights to nature's abundance, too.  this came after a squirrel 40 feet up in a white oak tree nailed me in the head with an acorn as i was scooping up his food supply into my pillowcase.  and he was chattering loudly at me the whole time.  to make sure i got his message, he took a bite out of that acorn first, then aimed in at my noggin.  definitely got my attention and taught mea profound, lifelong lesson.

this was my first lesson in what it means to share our planet with all other living creatures -- with "all my relations."

i've since had intelligent communications with everything from bumblebees to bears and buffalo.

mitakuye oyasin.

David Yarrow
"If yer not forest, yer against us."
Turtle EyeLand Sanctuary
44 Gilligan Road, East Greenbush, NY 12061
dyarrow at nycap.rr.com
www.championtrees.org
www.OnondagaLakePeaceFestival.org
www.citizenre.com/dyarrow/
www.farmandfood.org
www.SeaAgri.com
 
"Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, 
if one only remembers to turn on the light."  
-Albus Dumbledore
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Sean K. Barry 
  To: terrapreta 
  Sent: Monday, September 24, 2007 9:38 AM
  Subject: [Terrapreta] Fw: if yer not forest...



  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Sean K. Barry 
  To: David Yarrow ; terrapreta at bioenergylists.org 
  Sent: Monday, September 24, 2007 8:06 AM
  Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] if yer not forest...


  Hi David,

  Your quest to support the re-growth of the natural world is laudable and Nature should love you for it.  But, there is not enough land to grow enough oak trees to supply enough acorns to feed 6 billion people.  Is there?  We cannot get enough sustenance from forests alone.  I think even the indigenous people would admit this.  This is why agriculture for food crops even exists.  Starting maybe twenty five centuries ago and continuing until only 500 years ago, the Amazonian people did not turn an area the size of France into Terra Preta soils to support the growth of the tropical rainforest.  They did it to feed many 100s of thousands of people.
  When the tropical rainforest returned, those people had vanished.  Do you support that fate for humans now?

  When fossil fuel supplies are exhausted (and God help us, the mining interests are really going to completely exhaust them before they stop digging them up), then this world may have even more than 6 billion people (maybe, maybe not?).  That kind of hunger for food and energy is incredibly demanding on global resources.  Can managed forests supply both all the food we will need and all of the energy?  The energy interests will be the ones who push for fast growing loblolly pine plantations (and maybe Yule Gibbons ancestors).
  But humans will not survive on acorns alone.

  Survival of forests and of the human population together is an almost intractable problem.   It will not be flowery words or illegal "stump" speeches, that hearken to the days when the world was covered in ancient forest that will solve this, I don't believe.

  In 1750 the world population is estimated at having been 791 million (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population).  In 1620 it was probably closer to only 500 million.  Do you honestly believe that we could re-growth enough "full-featured" forests and still be able to feed and provide for the energy needs of 12-18 times more people (6-9 billion)?

  Humans have a way that we think we can rest control of nature, to serve our purposes only.  Unfortunate in this belief is the more likely scenario that Nature, with all of its other diverse life forms, will probably win out in the end.  Nature probably has something completely different in store for us.  Your wish for forests over people may well come true.  But I doubt that it will be at the hands of men.

  I once again, find this kind of discussion terribly disheartening...


  Regards,

  SKB


  Below was David's post with world maps of historical forestation levels  ... I respond to this


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