Orion Magazine has a short article about shizen nouhou, or “natural agriculture,” as practiced by a Japanese spiritual group called Shumei. This was founded by a certain Mokichi Okada, who after living through two world wars decided that agriculture could be one of the ways we can learn how to respect life, and thus heal the world. But a special kind of agriculture, involving no inputs at all, lest the land think we no longer trust it. It sounds crazy, I know, but the story of sophisticated Tokyo urbanites reconnecting with the land is rather affecting.
Garden Mosaics
Garden Mosaics is “a science education and outreach program based at Cornell University that has been thriving in more than two dozen cities” in the US and has recently spread to South Africa. Marianne Krasny, a professor at Cornell, kept a blog of her 2006 trip to southern Africa. I wonder what they think about urban fruit gleaning…
Nitrogen has negative effect on species diversity
N from agriculture depleting grassland diversity.
Reconnecting the food chain
“Alternative food networks” are good for you.Â
Diverse cropping systems not weedier
I blogged way back in December about a study by David Tilman at the University of Minnesota which showed that “mixtures of native perennial grasses and other flowering plants provide more usable energy per acre than corn grain ethanol or soybean biodiesel and are far better for the environment” (quoted by Mongbay.com). This was actually the latest in a series of long-term experiments by Tilman looking at the connection between diversity and ecosystem function in grasslands (see also a recent paper by Hector et al. in Functional Ecology). This connection has been less investigated in agricultural systems, however. Which is the reason behind a recent paper in the Journal of Applied Ecology from researchers at Michigan State University ((R.G. Smith, K.L. Gross. 2007. Assembly of weed communities along a crop diversity gradient. Journal of Applied Ecology 44 (5), 1046–1056.)).