Have Schumacher College taken on Transition enough to get key recommendations for such work publicised, and such work developed and researched further?

BYW, re the discussion on fertiliser – what do people think of the seemingly magical properties of charcoal (google Terra Preta), apropos soil improvement AND carbon sequestration?

This is a brilliant blog and many thanks for coming.

I just have one small correction to make.

This event was organised by the Organic Studies Centre, and the Rural Business School, at Duchy College as well as Transition Penwith and Organic South West from the Soil Associaltion. It was not organised by the NFU but we are very grateful to Antony Gibson for givng us his time to come and speak. His presence was invaluble and attracted many people from the agricultural community who might not otherwise have turned up and so not been able to hear your talk.

Many thanks.

With best wishes

Jane Michell
Organic Studies Centre and Transition Penwith Food and Farming coordinator.

Now if only we can get some of them to run for parliament the world over!

Personally, I’m with you though – I’m enjoying watching the Phacelia grow on our winter green-manured veg. garden and promote clover based swards as one of the best ways to build long term fertility here in Ireland

Where do we get the power for electrolysis to make Hydrogen and what about producing all that pressue and heat. That’s a lot of solar panels and wind turbines – or a nuclear power station

Interestingly the Haber process took off in Germany during World War I just like the Fischer-Tropsch process for making liquid fuel from coal in World War II. In both cases they didn’t have an alternative to nitrates from Chile for explosive and oil for fuel – which makes economics a secondary consideration.

So in broad terms the point stands, you can’t PRACTICALLY make Nitrogen fertiliser without Fossil fuels.

Where did I put those Clover, Phacelia, Hungarian Grazing Rye and Winter Vetch seeds…

One thing about nitrogen fertiliser manufacture: N based fertilisers do not require gas and oil to make them. They do need quite a bit of energy – but it doesn’t have to come from gas / oil. This article is a good place to start. I think it’s important not to perpetuate the myth that N based fertilisers require fossil fuels and be accurate with the science (especially when talking to farmers).

I recently visited a fantastic farmer here in West Cork who is doing wonderful things for wildlife and local food. He is currently using 25% of the nitrogen fertiliser he used in the 1980′s. However he thinks it’s about as low as he can go without having to give up farming all together on the poor soils that he as. In some situations, I believe that the careful application of minimal amounts of nitrogen fertilisers can be very helpful – at least during the transition to a fully organic future. The use of the energy to make the fertiliser can be quite a good use of energy if it turns into food production. (Of course, in my view, the most important thing is to reduce population, get most people to be near vegetarian and then go fully organic – but that’s a few steps down the line!)

Meanwhile – let’s hope the NFU becomes more like the Soil Association in it’s views towards organic farming and local food!

While it’s not time to kick back just yet, it seems that the wave is building, and wisdom is standing up to and surpassing the rhetoric.

I have a feeling ’08 is going to see a lot of change, and ’09 . . . hold onto your hats.

I presume you will have read (if you had time – it’s about 9,000 words!) an article by Dr. Stuart Staniford on biofuels, called “Fermenting the Food Supply”. It’s at: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2431

I’d recommend any supporter of large-scale biofuels to read it. Basically the conclusion is that unrestrained biofuel production on a global basis has the potential to starve not millions, but billions of the world’s poor and that if the industry is left open to pure free-market forces, this is exactly what will happen within a period of just a few years. Americans and Europeans can afford to pay more for food to be turned into motor fuel, than the world’s poorest can afford to pay for same food to actually eat.

You have I think shown some slides in your talks which show that all the arable land in Britain could only produce about a quarter of the motor fuel we use at present. Staniford looks at this on a global basis and finds that if all the food produced by the world were digested, fermented and turned into oil substitutes, it would produce about 15% as much oil as we use at the moment.

Sharon Astyk, an environmental campaigner and smallholder has written an article on “Ethics of Biofuels”: http://www.energybulletin.net/24169.html This suggests 12 ethical principles for biofuel production which seem to me essential considerations for any biofuel policy.