[Terrapreta] Terrapreta Digest, Vol 16, Issue 69

[James Thomas]

Re: Cattails. I emulated wild food guru Euell Gibbons and sampled many 
wild foods.  Young cattails  picked when still green taste like a 
combination of sweet corn and asparagus, really yummy when  boiled and 
slathered with butter salt and pepper.  I see no reason a seasonal trade 
couldn't be initiated. Which begs the question : "Who first thought of 
eating wild asparagus?" and now look at how it is a hot agricultural 
commodity  in fact the one many farmers around here depend upon to bring 
in that first cash flow in the spring when nothing else is producing. I 
eat many pounds of asparagus in the spring. My body craves it. So many 
good recipes: cheese sauce, plain salt pepper and butter, asparagus with 
guacamole. Why not the same for cattail.  Around here the Natives( Who I 
work for) still use cattails for mats and it was commonly used for roof 
thatch. Now that is sustainable building. Europeans and native Americans 
basically used the same concept of saplings tied or woven to form a 
housing frame, overlaid with thatch. Cattails as mats laid as we do 
shingles provided insulation and shed precipitation very well, but they 
also breathed, which probably keeps the air inside the dwelling from 
being too stuffy.We have a cattail sheathed home on display in our local 
museum. I am also wondering if when mats are worn out, if they would 
make acceptable charcoal.  I understand the down was used as we use 
diapers.  I have also eaten cattail shoots , which when young are 
steamed or baked, they have a slightly peppery taste and crunchy 
texture, kind of a combination of horseradish, celery and potato all in 
one, with an okra texture thrown in for good measure. Euell Gibbons said 
this dish was called "Cossack Asparagus" because Cossacks ate it in 
spring as we do asparagus. I
extracted flour from the roots as Gibbons directed in his books and 
mixed it with some regular flour for pancakes. It was delicious as I 
recall. Gene Logsdon in his book "Getting Food From Water" cites yields 
of up to thirty dry tons per acre of flour equivalent of cattail root. 
How this could be coupled with Terra Preta is a concept m mind is 
already running wild with. but a plant that cleans water and provides so 
many useful products is nothing to disdain as occurs now. Terra Preta 
uses would just be icing on the cake. /jmt.
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> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Re: Amazon cattle ranging (Nikolaus Foidl)
>    2. Re: Why farms must change to save the planet (Kevin Chisholm)
>    3. Re: Why farms must change to save the planet (lou gold)
>    4. Re: Fwd:  PHOTOS ABOUT CATTAIL (Kevin Chisholm)
>    5. Re: Fwd:  PHOTOS ABOUT CATTAIL (Richard Haard)
>    6. Re: Just wondering . . . (Kevin Chisholm)
>    7. Re: Question (Biopact)
>    8. Re: Question (lou gold)
>    9. Re: pulverizing charcoal (Larry Williams)
>   10. Prof Flannery promoted biochar in Aussie Parliament	event
>       (Biopact)
>   11. Re: Why farms must change to save the planet (Kevin Chisholm)
>   12. Re: Fwd:  PHOTOS ABOUT CATTAIL (Kevin Chisholm)
>   13. Re: pulverizing charcoal ( folke G?nther )
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 20 May 2008 13:07:23 -0400
> From: Nikolaus Foidl <nfoidl at desa.com.bo>
> Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Amazon cattle ranging
> To: <terrapreta at bioenergylists.org>
> Message-ID: <C4587D8B.43E8%nfoidl at desa.com.bo>
> Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="US-ASCII"
>
>
>
>
> Dear All!
>
> I know, everybody loves trees and it is a gut feeling for everybody that
> cutting trees is bad. Deforestation sounds like a catastrophic event.
>
> But lets have a closer look at the biomass balance in a pasture situation
> versus a forest situation.
>
> A grown established forest has neutral balance of fixation and loss, if the
> forest gets to old the danger of loosing all the stored biomass with a big
> scale fire is imminent and very often.
>
> Pasture on the other hand is continuous growing, continuous harvest. Part of
> it is turned in C fixed in the soil, (humic acids and Biomass) part is eaten
> and transferred during several month into CO2 again. But the overall balance
> of C in soil is positive( some 4 to 8 tons C per ha and year added to the
> soil).
> Agriculture is negative. We loose some 4 to 5 tons C per ha and year).
>
> So if we combine in a wider rotation program not only crop rotation like
> Soy-Maize-Sunflower-Wheat , instead include every 7 years a 2 year pasture
> in this rotation plan then we can rise organic matter from 1 % to 3,5 to 4 %
> ( which takes 4 to 7 years to degrade again to 1 %). In this case the
> comparison from the soil quality point of view would be more equilibrated.
>
> In a rainforest the quality of the soil is very poor due to the high
> precipitation, high acidity and low nutrient content of the soil( continuous
> washing out). In the same area getting pasture would lower the washing out
> and would fix more nutrients in the soil. Organic matter as well would rise.
> Renovation is continuous and not every 100 to 3000 years waiting that a
> mayor burning will happen.
>
> We in our farm in Bolivia have extended the rotation plan and are trying to
> rise every 5 to 7 years our organic matter content up to 4 % again. We left
> every 200 to 240 meter a 60 to 100 meter wide forest stripe with all stripes
> inter connected and evenly distributed some bigger areas with  between 300
> to 900 ha. As well in every field we have water retention lagoons to foment
> the diversity of live forms. So in a total area of 24.000 ha we still have
> 9500 ha left as reserve for animals and insects to get a workable
> equilibrium. 15 % of the agriculture area is changed every year into grass
> land and same amount comes back in to agricultural use every year. For us it
> works, although we continue to refine our concept.
>
> If you have a closer look at Methane Balance , O2 Balance etc. you will find
> that between pasture and Forest the difference is not as big as the press
> always assume.
>
> We have to see that this planet is the only one and until we do not have an
> alternative to agricultural food production we cannot save all the trees in
> this world.
>
> Best regards Nikolaus 
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 20 May 2008 14:22:34 -0300
> From: Kevin Chisholm <kchisholm at ca.inter.net>
> Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Why farms must change to save the planet
> To: lou gold <lou.gold at gmail.com>
> Cc: Terrapreta <Terrapreta at bioenergylists.org>
> Message-ID: <483308DA.5030300 at ca.inter.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Dear Lou
>
> lou gold wrote:
>   
>> Interesting article from Scotland but no mention of biochar.
>>
>> "Why farms must change to save the planet"
>> http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/latestnews/Why-farms-must-change-to.4094167.jp
>>     
>
> Any Study that blames cow farts on Scotland's Greenhouse Gas Emissions 
> is faulty. Cows don't eat coal or oil... they eat grass. Grass is a 
> "biofood" that comes from the biosphere. Cows are "solar fed."
>
> Kevin
>   
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Tue, 20 May 2008 14:40:07 -0300
> From: "lou gold" <lou.gold at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Why farms must change to save the planet
> To: "Kevin Chisholm" <kchisholm at ca.inter.net>
> Cc: Terrapreta <Terrapreta at bioenergylists.org>
> Message-ID:
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>
> Kevin,
>
> Cows digest organic carbon and fart methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas.
>
> lou
>
> On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 2:22 PM, Kevin Chisholm <kchisholm at ca.inter.net>
> wrote:
>
>   
>>  Dear Lou
>>
>>
>> lou gold wrote:
>>
>> Interesting article from Scotland but no mention of biochar.
>>
>> "Why farms must change to save the planet"
>>
>> http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/latestnews/Why-farms-must-change-to.4094167.jp
>>
>>
>> Any Study that blames cow farts on Scotland's Greenhouse Gas Emissions is
>> faulty. Cows don't eat coal or oil... they eat grass. Grass is a "biofood"
>> that comes from the biosphere. Cows are "solar fed."
>>
>> Kevin
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>>     
>
>
>