[Terrapreta] indigenous practices

[lou gold]

Bom Dia May,

Your emergence onto this list is a blessing for all of all. Please do not
become "quiet(er)". I am very happy to see you here bring the most important
social dimension into our view. I think that you will find lots of resonance
with the approach at http://biocharfund.com//index.php Perhaps Brazil is
ready for some analogous initiative? What do you think?

Here is a link to maps of the the known terra preta sites.
http://www.gerhardbechtold.com/TP/gbtp.php?vers=2

Touch the earth and blessed be.

lou



On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 9:47 AM, May Waddington <may.waddington at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Being new at the list and a bit shy on the public polemic ground, let me
> say I am impressed at the quality and vigor of the discussions on this list.
> The engineering aspect of Terra-Preta-dos-Índios and biochar are too new to
> me, but obviously seem to be what arouses the lists impetus since it ***is
> * totally related to the most important current issue of our time, climate
> change... So, even with Lou's gentle recommendation's that we focus on
> cooperation, I can see that perspectives get* hot* before they get
> incorporated! Still, I'd like to say a few things about knowledge,
> innovation and practices on the "down to earth" every day practices. Then I
> promise to be quiet(er)!
>
> So excuse me for being long on this one...
>
> During my time with the Yawanawa tribe, I observed that knowledge
> management in general, could fit into a quote by late Jorge Terena, that
> "knowledge, practices and innovation by indigenous peoples are not the
> result of one man's work in a specific time, but of a collective effort over
> many generations". So, proprietary issues aside, we can also identify the
> basically empiric approach to experimentation. But experimentation is
> carried out within a system - call it holistic, consider its non-exclusion
> of other spheres of existence such as magic, spiritual, etc. - which is not
> analytical as is ours. We have the fantastic example of Dr Maurice Iwu,
> African born phyto-pharmacognocist, who after many years of research in the
> US returned to his village and realized that the active molecules he was
> investigating maybe did not have the same effect without the rituals he had
> left behind as he left village life... So, the shaman lou mentioned may
> detect alkaloids in a plant because of its bitterness, associate it to the
> heart because of its shape, but will still be acting in accordance to
> insights and intuitions acquired by an ayhuasca or similarly provoked
> trance, and will be following procedures and cumulative knowledge and
> efforts which were relayed to him in very strict training, generation
> after generation, in a very disciplinary approach. All at once.
>
> The end result may be as simple as the replies anthropologists get when
> looking for deep meaning by asking why such ornamentation and receiving the
> answer "to look pretty"... Or one of my very respected professors adventure
> with the Maku, after the third or fourth year of registering the tribe's
> eating habits was shocked that they abandoned the fruit that had been neatly
> noted down in previous years, and eagerly devoured a different fruit that
> season. After anxiously asking for an explanation, he received a reply to
> the effect that they "were into this other fruit now"....
>
> The bottom line is, very unfortunately I was ignorant of the terra-preta
> issues when I lived with them, and still very interested in their farming
> methods. I took pictures and accompanied some of the slash and burn
> practices, read about and took notes on how they managed three or four
> gardens at once, etc. the cycles by which they returned to already used
> capoeiras, etc. Still, without the engineering skills demonstrated by most
> of the experts in the list, I still don't understand what the big question
> is, in regards to the origin of TP: whether it was waste or soil management.
> The originally much bigger and more sedentary groups of varzea indians may
> have developed more sedentary agricultural practices - where was most of the
> TP located? I would like to read more about these anthropological questions,
> so please recommend me literature, and let me know if there are articles you
> can send me. My very ignorant guess, at this point, is that the burning of
> VERY BIG Humid FOREST may result in a lot of charcoal material; many
> different practices such as smouldering fish and ceramics, and even keeping
> warm by burning big logs slowly under the hammock - use charcoal, all in
> small scale but repeatedly, in cycles...  don't know, really, but would like
> to read up.
>
> Now, I *am not in the Amazo*n. I am working in the Northeast region of
> Brazil, between Piauí and Maranhão, almost at what is known as the
> transition to the amazon region. As everywhere else, we are facing climate
> change in rather severe ways. This is a drought ridden region, subjected to
> intense slash and burn.
>
> Last year we went through 9 months with no rain, and someone criminously
> set fire to the native pastures in my land, provoking a 5 day forest fire
> that burned a big part of the *caatinga* area of the farm and the *cerrado
> *forest, and of the 10 thousand trees we had planted. They did that "to
> renew the pasture" -  a traditional practice, another example, along with
> slash and burn -  of traditional knowledge and practices which used to fit
> wisely into this world, which just seems to be getting smaller.
>
> The practice makes a lot of sense for the  guy who lets his goats loose in
> my land, thinking he has all the right in the world to do so, and expects
> the new growth to be chummy, soft and fresh as soon as the rains come. My
> "practice" led me to call the police, fence that part of the farm, cry over
> the figures that had been so neatly taken down on how many trees I had
> planted at each parcel of land! Information forever lost - *scientific
> control forever lost * unless I spend money having someone count how many
> trees re-sprouted (a very large number, happily!).
>
> So, It becomes a very crucial point to the immense population of small
> farmers in Brazil, to have alternatives to slash and burn. This is of utmost
> importance. To begin with, this population seems invisible to the modern
> world, which seems to consider *peasants* as an extinct living form. But
> it as a social category which not only accounts for the livelihood of an
> enormous percentage of the Brazilian people, but also generates a sort of
> overseen economic asset that regulates prices (downward) by producing cheap
> food and providing food and natural resources for this vast contingent who
> are "out-of-the-market". More importantly, these until recently "invisible"
> Brazilians have been struggling for their very deserving *role* at nature
> management, landscape management... after all, nobody is closer to the Earth
> as farmers.... which many times have no alternative as to employ
> slash-and-burn farming procedures.
>
> At the Buriti Doce farm, following Ronaldo's specifications on the
> alternative burning we were making, the locals were shocked. They thought we
> were doing it in a very stupid way, because we spent more money than they
> would have done, because we invested so much in separating the wood,
> preparing the caeiras, et., before the fire w2as set to the land. And I
> still had no idea of the benefit from biochar.   thought I would simply sell
> the charcoal and make up for the extra expenses...
>
> So, with all the extremely modern or post-modern scientifically generated
> information coming in from the US, Germany, Holland, Australia we see in the
> list and in this amazingly fast growing network... if there are keys that
> may help,  this is awesome.  I participated in a project with a very
> organized political group - Assema, babassu breaking women - in substituting
> burning practices which was extremely interesting, and would like to see
> this proposal grow in this country.
>
> This being probably my main focus of interest, I would very much want to
> learn about the engineering side of things... slash and char, and other
> considerations such as the CH4 product of the traditional charcoal *caieras
> *(kilns?), and whatever more I can learn from the list.
>
> Since local EMBRAPA was pretty open to the proposal and their soil expert
> is coming to the site on Monday, we will be working on  a project. Dr.
> Lehmann has already contributed with a pretty objective design for
> expermental lots, and Dr Christoph has menioned he is intereste in finding
> out about CH4 emissions in the traditional kilnns (caeiras). The more input
> qwe have over the next few weeks the better!
>
>
>
> 2008/5/14 lou gold <lou.gold at gmail.com>:
>
> Hi Everyone,
>>
>> With respect for everyone here and also with highest regard for the wisdom
>> of ancient and present indigenous peoples, I would like to suggest that we
>> should be celebrating rather than arguing when one variable seems to be
>> confusingly intertwined with another.
>>
>> Social science has long observed that there may be a difference between
>> purpose and function and that humans may or may not be aware of all the
>> functions that their acts of intention perform. Yes we can be inspired by
>> the wisdom of ancient practices AND we can reach for wise future forms. The
>> key is wisdom and the guideline toward wisdom can be different from what we
>> might arrive at by focusing exclusively on the questions of knowledge which,
>> in modern times, have had a heavy bias toward reductionism and the logic of
>> either/or.
>>
>> The anthropologist Jeremy Narby reports asking an Amazonian shaman how he
>> discovered various plants cures, how he was led to the knowledge of specific
>> remedies for specific problems. The shaman answered by saying that he looked
>> for "correspondences", even visual similarities such as the possibility that
>> a plant with a heart-shaped leaf might offer a cure for heart problems
>> (physical or emotional). But the shaman being a solid scientist never
>> assumed that correspondence equaled cure. He took the next step of making a
>> trial and judging the empirical results. We moderns do something similar in
>> statistical analysis. We look for correlations (even counter-intuitive ones)
>> and we are mindful that correlation does not necessarily mean cause.
>>
>> It keeps ocurring to me that the whole biochar project contains the kernel
>> of great wisdom that is applicable not merely for healing the soil but also
>> for healing the mind. The leap of thought is to move from the illusion of
>> separation toward the wisdom of connection, to somehow get free of thinking
>> that it must be either this way or that way into the realization that it can
>> indeed be both this way and that way. This is the guidance of
>> "correspondence." And this is what we should be looking for. So, when I hear
>> that biochar can increase soil fertility, retain moisture and nutrient,
>> filter water, manage waste, feed people, slow deforestation, create economic
>> opportunity, etc, etc, I don't want to argue about which variable is the
>> most important.  I want instead to celebrate that a great wisdom of
>> recipocity and connection seems to be emerging (or re-emerging) and get on
>> with the empirical experiments that will most likely show that there is no
>> one-way-fits-all but a variety of ways that include diverse best practices
>> for specific places.
>>
>> Sometimes, when I contemplate terra preta (and I'm not embarrassed to say
>> this), it seems so beautiful and so healing that it brings tears to my eyes.
>> I never imagined dirt (not in my eyes) could do this.
>>
>> hugs and blessings to all,
>>
>> lou
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 2:45 AM, Richard Haard <richrd at nas.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Robert - i have been puzzled by this statement outlined below in red.
>>> Reading Christoph Steiners dissertation, Slash and Char as Alternative to
>>> Slash and Burn, –   soil charcoal amendments maintain soil fertility and
>>> establish a carbon sink
>>>
>>> I have indication that indigenous practices are intentional knowledge
>>> based soil fertility management. Whether you or Nikolaus I am curious what
>>> is basis of this assumption, as my Inuit friends still to this day rescue
>>> stranded 'expeditions' using their traditional knowledge in the far north
>>> and perhaps we need to give credit where it is due for the soil management
>>> skills of these indigenous people of the Amazon.
>>> From Chapter 1, page 35, 'Indigenous Knowledge of Terra Preta formation
>>>
>>> clip from abstract
>>>
>>> quote
>>>
>>>  In order to gather
>>> more information about the creation of Terra
>>> Preta (TP) we describe indigenous soil fertility
>>> management; analyzed managed and unmanaged
>>> soil and compare soil chemical and micro-
>>> biological parameters with those of prehistoric TP
>>> (TPp); and, discuss the formation of TP under
>>> indigenous soil fertility management. Fire and
>>> organic matter (OM) are the main components of
>>> indigenous soil fertility management. Small fires
>>> are used to create burned soil (Terra Queimada),
>>> and burned organic materials (ash and charred
>>> residues) are used to increase the fertility in
>>> patches for special plants like medicinal plants
>>> and vegetables. After a burn (Terra Queimada)
>>> the soil had a strong scent of pyroligneous acid
>>> (Terra Cheirosa) which is stimulating soil micro-
>>> organisms
>>>
>>> unquote
>>>
>>> Yet this is present day - how can you presume to know the motive of
>>> people who are long gone other that what their heirs are doing today?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Dear Nikolaus,
>>>
>>> Once again, you give them all, and this is the only response!!!
>>>
>>> Boys and Girls, when someone of higher leaning speaks, "listen" and
>>> "learn" and don't just comment because you want to add without substance!
>>>
>>> Nikolaus in your own words during our correspondents, "Terra Preta was
>>> formed as a waste management practice, not a soil management practice" So
>>> any who claim different, then find fund and send students to South America
>>> and prove this otherwise!
>>>
>>> Biochar is a start, biochar enhancement is a next step but agri
>>> engineering is the real solution!!!
>>>
>>> Rob.
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
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>>
>
>
>
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