In the last blog I was speaking about Peak Oil risks, and our ability to prepare for it by finding resilience in growing your own food (and becoming a rebelfarmer!). Today I was pointed to a blogger that calculated the peak oil not as usually by the point of maximum production, but by the point of maximum affordability. His question was: how much barrels of oil can you buy with S&P500, an index of the 500 important industrial stocks? This graph shows that since the 50’s we have experienced two peaks of affordability: before the oil crisis of the 70’s and one, the highest, in 1999. Since 1999 we can buy less and less oil for the same amount of stocks. The blogger argues that it is highly improbable that we will ever reach a higher affordability than in 1999. This would mean that 1999 was our “true” peak oil, as the oil price, corrected for inflation with this methodology, will only continue to go up from this moment on.

Another blogger on (post) peak oil, who is getting famous status at this moment in the USA, Dmitry Orlov, mentioned that peak oil will not be one moment, but a process of acceptance by different population segments with different timings. See here a lecture of him.  
His view is that because a societal collapse is psychologically so hard to accept, people who are able to postpone the consequences of the new reality, will regard people that are already feeling the consequences and are acting according to it, just as “poor people”or “the less fortunate”. Combined with the idea that Peak Oil already happened this is an eye-opener to me. Recently I moved from the Netherlands to France and the economic situation here was quite a shock to me. The welfare state in the Netherlands is quite good developed, not in the least thanks to our gas trade. Here in France, one can simply not survive individually without a job. Consequence: stay with someone else in a house or live on the streets. In fact there are two parameters that have augmented the last decade in a quite scary way in France: the age of youngsters the moment they move out of their parents’ place and the amount of people living on the streets. These people are already living in the post peak reality. No car, or a mini-vehicle that goes max 40 km/h. Shopping at give-away centres, eating over date food from the supermarkets, or gathering food from the markets at closure time. The creative among them are squatting and living from the land in the Massif Central, where a lot of land is barren or are living in mobile homes, and move where the jobs are or where the climate is moderate. They are now still considered as the marginal or as radicals by the “establishment”. But it could very well be the new normal.

The basis of the theory of Dmitry Orlov is a societal comparison of the USA with the collapse of the former Soviet Union. After the collapse of the USSR, the citizens were faced with severe unemployment and resource shortages. The reason why nobody directly died of malnutrition was that they have never completely trusted to depend on state social security. The only social security that is holy in Russia is the right on daily bread. And the state managed at least to get its distribution going. Together with the fact that practically all families have some kind of access to a private plot of land for additional food, the country dragged itself through mainly on the shoulders of the working women and pensioners (according to Orlov, a significant part of the men were busy with hassling, fighting, drinking and being depressed about their lost jobs). This kind of resilience we do not have in Europe and the USA. The general lack of resilience makes us very vulnerable for societal collapse. RebelFarmer was established in order to offer training how to live on local resources and get back in contact with nature. And the most serious training we offer is indeed in Eastern Europe!

There is a growing group of energy experts who believe that we are very near to a maximum global production of crude oil, the so-called Peak Oil. Until now, oil production grew steadily because of growing oil demand and cheap supply. Peak Oil defines the moment that, supply is no longer capable to meet growing demand. If there are no alternatives for oil, and if demand for energy still continues to grow, prices for oil will explode.  Some experts believe that we already passed this point (at a peak production of 88 Mb, all liquids, per day), and that only the current global economic crisis causes oil demand to stagnate, allowing the oil peak instead to transform into a plateau for a few years more. The estimations for production decline after the peak or plateau are between 2 to 6 % per year. There is a consensus among the expert community that within the coming 10 years, alternative energy sources can in no way provide the gap of energy demand that is left by such decline. So if the decline would start within ten years, there will be an enormous scarcity of oil and energy.

There are roughly two groups of opinions on the moment of peak oil. “Independent” energy experts, the so-called Peak Oil community, who are saying we already have peaked or that it will happen within the coming 6 years, and experts who are connected to official institutes, like the International Energy Agency (IEA), and oil companies, like BP, who are estimating Peak Oil to happen between 2020 and 2030 on a level of around 100 Mb per day.

If the Peak Oil community would be right, we have no time left to prepare ourselves sufficiently in order to develop alternative energy sources and prevent oil prices to go crazy. The “official” opinion leaves us another 15 years, which is still quite short to start an energy revolution. Surprisingly, the subject of peak oil is hardly debated.  

What will happen if oil prices will stay at high levels for a long time?  As we have seen last year, oil prices of 150 dollar per barrel, will hit especially the poorest countries, and the poorest segments of the population. It started food riots in many countries. There were violent strikes of farmers, fishermen and truck drivers, all oil intensive sectors, who couldn’t afford their petrol anymore. On the long term however it would even be difficult to sustain a “normal” life for the average citizen. The most oil intensive expenditures for citizens are transport, housing and food. When the oil price rises from the current level to 150 dollar per barrel (let’s say 300%), transport costs (for going to your work and do shopping) could rise 50%. Household and food costs could rise over 20% (see here and here two interesting reports on oil price vulnerability). As the 3 expenditures together are for most of us, more than half of our budget, a triple rise of oil can certainly result in a rise of the costs of living of more than 10%. Now, for households with an average income this would mean economising on luxury stuff, leisure and leisure time. Or investing in economising energy or in renewable energy production. But people with low incomes, with no reserves, risk to enter a danger zone. They could loose their jobs because they can’t afford to travel to it. They could loose their energy connections in their homes. Or they will endanger their health by poor diet.

It is for this, let’s say, 20% of the population that improved access to local natural resources might constitute a new safety net. In other words: grow your own food. This is actually already a very popular subject of discussion within the peak-oil community.

How would that turn out in practice? In the Isere Valley, where the RebelFarmer office is located there are numerous, historical, natural resources, that are currently underutilised such as communal forests and mountain meadows. Oil made labour-intensive agricultural practices less competitive. Since the WWII, practically all agricultural land above 500 meters altitude has been abandoned. Forestry has long seized to be profitable. Only a fraction of the pastoral system has survived under the flag of produit du terroir or organic agriculture. Others resources are artificially kept scarce by speculation practices such as construction land, and agricultural land (that might be transformed into construction land).

The French State did adopt already policies to counteract these tendencies. Municipalities are rewarded if they make available affordable construction land for people with low income. House designs are made available to make a “100.000 Euro for 100 m2 house”.  What would help also is if construction rules could be applied less strict, like allowing a longer maximum building time, and allowing more types of economic (and ecological) designs.  The Region “Rhone-Alpes” stimulates communal gardens for the lowest income categories and also local short product-consumer chains by annual project support. Other things that can be done in this field are transforming green spaces of communities into rentable gardens, and to plant fruit and nut trees in public spaces.
 
But the room for manoeuvre for citizens on local level to be more active in agriculture, is very limited because of European and global (trade) regulations. Many regulations suppress local, traditional, modes of production. As I have earlier blogged on this website, the WTO prevents most countries to protect their farmers because it will be regarded as unequal competition and distortion of the world market price. Although the EU supports different agricultural sectors, the subsidies are designed in such way that by far mostly large scale, industrial, farmers profit from it. Other market regulations defend the owner rights of genetic material for agriculture. But small-scale local producers depend on existing biodiversity for their own varieties. They use and develop hundreds of varieties for which it is financially impossible to ask official ownership. Finally, hygiene rules in cheese and meat production, developed to protect consumers against production flaws in industrial food chains, backfire on low-tech local producers, where sterile conditions or veterinary demands are either counter-productive, not desired, necessary and economically unfeasible.

Under these conditions, local small farmers give up. In France, there are 50 farmers more that quit than start each day. Unless we find our local way to go around some of these (inter)national regulations, and become a RebelFarmer, it would be cruel to ask people to engage themselves in local based small-scale agriculture. Maybe Peak Oil will force us to loosen the regulations. But until that time the currently under-utilised local natural resources of the Isere Valley will remain difficult to exploit.

A revolutionary method of carbon sequestration, relatively cheap and with huge environmental and agricultural benefits, has been discovered already more then 20 years ago. Wood chips from tree branches as soil amendment and as permanent soil cover.  It can sequester almost 10 tons of CO2 per ha per year (1). And it is applicable to millions of hectares of cropland mostly in the subtropical and moderate climate regions. But nobody seems to bother. Why?

Maybe the name was wrongly chosen.. Ramial Chipped Wood (RCW). In French, Bois Raméal Fragmenté (BRF). Originally it was a Canadian invention, by Gilles Lémieux, a forest scientist, who is at this very moment very sick and might not recover. He spent more than 20 years of research on the formation of humus, and the important role of woody material in this. His credo: the soil is a biosphere, and the best thing for agriculture is to imitate the natural forest conditions. Hopefully he will still see in his life the popularisation of his work (2).

In France, a network of more then 300 enthousiasts, informing eachother regularly on the Yahoo BRF forum (3), mainly use the chips in their gardens, with kind donations of professional gardeners who donot know what to do with their shredded garden waste. There are a few experimental farms (4), who are by no exception very happy with the method. Mostly because of the reduced need of irrigation and the abolishment of ploughing work. But in general it is a BIG psychological step for farmers to give up ploughing and to have the soil permamently covered. There is a very large and growing group of farmers that practice the socalled “Conservation Agriculture” (CA), or No-till agriculture, or in French Semis Direct (Direct seeding, without ploughing). Basically this type of agriculture will leave all the crop residues on the land after harvesting, and will in the next season seed directly into shallow furrows. This method has also prooved to efficiently raise the carbon content of the soil, and can sequester 1 to 2 tons of CO2e per ha per year. In the USA the largest voluntary carbon offset agency “Chicago Climate Exchange” acknowledged this and since then a few million of ha’s of cropland has been certified as carbon sink. It is not big money, but because average landownership is pretty big in the USA, the few hundred bugs per year was sufficient for many farmers to convert themselves to CA! (5)  With Ramial Chipped Wood, this could be a few thousand bugs per year, but until now, no single large cropfarmer in the USA knows about it. The reason for the spectacular humus growth with RCW is the high content of carbon in the form of semi-polymerised lignine in the shredded tree branches of which 30-40% turns into stable humus, contrary to the carbon in crop residues or compost of which only 3-5% is left after a few years (6).

Science and international agricultural institutions like the FAO  (7) acknowledged already firmly the role of soils in climate change. In fact soils are globally the most important stock of CO2. Deep ploughing of cropland, desertification and erosion are the most important factors for declining this stock. But the problem according to them is the accurate measurement of soil carbon. Soil carbon contents can fluctuate quite considerably in time and space, and makes therefor any claim on changes of soil organic matter (SOL) questionable. Moreover measurement techniques differ per country and are quite expensive, making international research and policies difficult (8).  Soil carbon sequestration will therefor for example not be part of implementation of the Kyoto protocol.

Probably this is the reason why RCW is still under the radar of environmentalists, policymakers and farmers. The large scale introduction of RCW depends on carbon offset payments. To install the system, approximately 1000 euro per ha is needed to plant hedgerows and to apply the first amendment of chips to the soil, according to a “carbon farming network” in Bulgaria who wants to start a campaign for farmers to help them in adapting to the climate change (9). Compared to sequestering CO2 in old mines this is still more than two times cheaper (20 euro per ton CO2e, instead of more then 50 euro per ton), not included all environmental benefits. But just because we can not precisely measure it contrary to the amount of CO2 that runs through a pipeline into geological layers, we delay the implementation of this very promising technology.

Unfortunately too often scientific research only concludes with saying that more scientific reearch is needed. In this case, especially given the urgent question of how agriculture could contribute to climate change mitigation AND how it should adapt to climate change, we need more than that. Why not setting up a number of model RCW farms in each climate region and on each soil type, and use their data as reference for a robust offset scheme with a comfortable fault margin? Even if we only declare 50% of the actual amount of CO2 sequestered by the RCW method it would still be sufficient for the farmer to pay for the initial investments needed!

1. www.ctastree.be
2. www.hydrogeochem.qc.ca
3. fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/brf4
4. http://fermedupouzat.free.fr/pages/brf/formation.htm
5. http://www.agragate.com
6. www.sbf.ulaval.ca/brf/regenerating_soils_98.html
7. www.fao.org/AG/AGL/agll/carbonsequestration
8.http://ec.europa.eu/environment/soil/pdf/climsoil_report_dec_2008.pdf
9. www.greenbeltburgas.weebly.com

What if I say that there is a scientific approach to agriculture that can solve the food crisis and have been overlooked for 30 years already? And what if I say that the basics are so easy to understand and to apply that you and me can do it? You wouldn’t believe it, right. Well, here is some food for thought. 

We shouldn’t feed plants, but we should feed the soil. It is as simple as that. Mainstream agriculture considers the soil as a substrate for plant roots. You add the necessary minerals to the substrate, so that the plants can suck up the “food” from the water present in the substrate. Also organic agriculture thinks according to these lines. They consider the compost heap as the digester to produce fertiliser, and the compost as food for plants. Wrong, a slowly growing network of adepts to the new paradigm in Canada and France says so. In fact, the compost heap is a very energy and humus inefficient way of producing nutrients for the soil. The soil itself is far better in doing it. Why? Well because that is what a soil is supposed to do normally in forest ecosystems. It digests ”food”, like branches and leafs, into bio-active and nutrient rich humus, and the plants feed on the humus. 

Professor Lemieux from the Laval University in Canada is a forest scientist, and is mainly responsible for the new paradigm change. He wondered why podzol soils, the soils originally under coniferous forests were rich but very fragile after transforming them into agricultural soils, and why the soils under broad leaf forests were among the best agricultural soils in the world, also after long term use. 

His theory is that the “leftovers” after the soil has “eaten” the organic materials contain more stable humus molecules, in the form of aromatic carbon rings, if the food was from broad leafed hard wood, then when it was material from conifers. These ring-shaped humus molecules can hold large quantities of water, more than clay molecules, and are home for bacteria that bind nitrogen from the atmosphere and even for enzymes that transform inactive phosphorus into bio-active one. The lack of phosphorus availability has always been thought as the Achilles’ heel of organic agriculture, as it is present in compost only in very low quantities. Forest soils though are very rich in phosphorus but also in nitrogen, and it seems that no scientist until now really bothered to question why this was so. 

Several teams of Lemieux tested his hypothesis in different climate regions and soils during more than 20 years of research. He found that, if you want to use soils for agricultural purposes, the best food for the soil was simply shredded branches spread on the soil in a layer of 3 cm thick, once in the 3 to 5 years. He called this the Ramial Chipped Wood Technology (RCW). Branches, just after they have lost their leafs contain the most interesting organic substances of the tree, like sugars, enzymes, proteins, and not entirely polymerised lignine (wood). It is the best food for the soil, and yet presently mostly burned as residue of forestry and landscape management.   

After the RCW treatment, the case studies showed that no additional fertiliser was needed, production rose significantly, and irrigation was no longer needed due to the enormously improved water retention and decreased evaporation. 

Depending on the decomposition rate, for the first treatment an application consists of about 200 to 300 m3 wood chips per hectare. Then after 4 to 5 years a smaller quantity is used to keep the layer thickness 2 to 3 cm. In case forests are not close, one should consider to (re)plant tree hedges. To produce sufficient wood chips for fertilisation of one hectare of crop land, one need about 400 meter of hedges, preferably hard wood like oak. 

To imitate forest conditions in agricultural soils is a true revolution. At the moment, farmers just getting used to another way to conserve the soil: Conservation Agriculture (CA). In this type of agriculture crop residues are left on the soil and deep ploughing is considered bad for the soil structure and not necessary. Lemieux gives in fact the theoretical basis for Conservation Agriculture, adding one important element: wood!
 
To know more about RCW in practice you can visit Jacky Deputy, a French farmer, who regularly gives workshops on the subject. See his presentation on our website:
http://www.rebelfarmer.org/ferme-du-pouzat.html

See an interview with him on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coSnb27ZtqA


Other links:

“The hidden world that feeds us: the living soil": article with theoretical basis of RCW technology
http://www.crdi.ca/uploads/user-S/10753309691The_hidden.doc

“Regenerating soils with Ramial Chipped Wood”: article describing the application of RCW
http://www.sbf.ulaval.ca/brf/regenerating_soils_98.html

Video: RCW explained by a representative of the RWC “movement” in France (In French)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTAIF2RYWcU&feature=related

Yesterday I went to see the movie “There is a problem with cow nr. 80” (1). A French movie, by Dirk Barrez, about the insanity of the liberalization of agricultural markets causing millions of small farmers around the world to stop their livelihood because they cannot face the foreign competition. In short: big farmers are taking over, Monsanto and Round Up are coming in, destroying soil and human health, and finally people move to cities hoping on a better chance there. The film was shown as part of the AlimenTERRA festival in order to debate this issue with a larger public. Conclusion of the debate: each country should have the right to protect their farmers. Unfortunately I was too tired of listening to the movie that I couldn’t speak properly French anymore. So I put something on this blog instead.

RebelFarmer is concerned with keeping rural communities on the countryside. Communities that can earn a living not only with agriculture, but moreover with the management of natural resources in general: safeguarding biodiversity, producing renewable energy, gathering and processing forest by-products, soil and water conservation, landscape maintenance etc. etc. If they would be properly paid for doing that, a whole lot of people would not have to find their luck in cities. But they aren’t.

Ofcourse we need more campaigns to promote family scaled ecofarmers to produce for local consumers. Ecofarmers are one of the few rural businesses that get a little bit money, as part of the premium price, to take care of the environment. But with all the campaigns in the world, you would not be able to convince all consumers to pay this premium price. There will remain many people that oppose to organic farming. And many will say they can’t afford to pay the premium price.  However, if you ask people if they would allow the government to take measures in order to have a sustainable countryside and agriculture, without Monsanto and RoundUp, I am optimistic about reaching a majority saying yes.

Current EU hectare payments (“direct payments”) are unequally sponsoring intensive-large scale farms. Although the EU needs to “decouple” its agricultural support from the distorting effects on the world market, they still cause overproduction in Europe and dumping practices in developing countries that try to build up their own agricultural sector. About 30% of the total EU budget, more than 30 billion Euro, goes to European hectare payments each year until 2013 (In 2009: 42,8 billion). What else can we do with this money? Just to mention a few possibilities:

Improve soil
Agricultural soils in Europe have dangerously low humus contents and are eroding (4). Although some scientists still believe that agricultural production on sterile substrate with mineral fertilization is the future, many recent studies show that a good soil is a far more easy, less risky and cheaper solution to fertilize plants. Massive mulching and composting to improve humus content of agricultural soils is therefor necessary. But farmers are not willing to apply this obvious method, because it makes the production process more expensive, and the negative results of the present tillage practices will only show up later. Why not give farmers the ability to buy more compost and apply non-tillage techniques?

Terracing and maintaining dry walls
Terraces are in decay everywhere in Europe, they are overgrown with bushes and walls are falling down. It causes loss of biodiversity and a well-appreciated cultural heritage in general, fire risks in Mediterranean countries and increased risk on floods in the Alps region. Farmers don’t have interest in terraces at this moment. But saving terraces with new techniques, and making them more accessible, would create an enormous future availability of new high quality farm land. 

Ponds and wetlands on agricultural lands
They are badly needed for amphibians and birds. But ofcourse take space or cause water damage to crops. Why not compensate farmers to maintain such nature areas?

Natural plot borders
They are needed for young birds to flee too when the grass is mowed, for wild flora to grow, for insects (who eat bugs who eat crops!), and finally for filtering run off water. Why not compensate for each meter “nature”?

Hedgerows
These old suppliers of biomass and handicraft material are standing in the way for modern farmers, and take space. But they are needed for many bird species and mammals (many of them eating mice!).

Old breeds and varieties
Besides they are nice or taste nice, we need their genes for later crossing. Even GMO projects need them. Gene banks turned out not to be able to guarantee the saving of all the stocked genes.

Consumer groups
Why not paying some people to organise local marketing, for a better balance between of local offer and demand?

Farm experiments and research
Farmers themselves have a seriously underestimated intuition and ideas on what could be good for their land, crops and animals. They should get much more the ability to initiate and participate in agricultural research.

The EU does move already in that direction; things like “second pillar” subsidies and “agri-environment” measures”, and “cross compliance”, on which I will not elaborate here. But they do not currently result in something significant, let alone stopping polluting agriculture and rural exodus. EU citizens find a lively and sustainable countryside extremely important (4). So let’s give the EU another push by demanding that the direct hectare payments should be transformed within the ten year coming into measure payments to help farmers maintain soil fertility and biodiversity, two of the most precious resources of our planet guaranteeing the productivity of the future!

Links:
1. “Vache numero 80 a un problem”

2. Explanation about the EU Agricultural Budget

3. European Soil Bureau

4. Research on European citizens support for agriculture and rural development

Today I called Stoyan, the chef cook of the Kovatsj Farm Restaurant, situated in the Strandzha Nature Park, Bulgaria, to ask about some "Scheisse". He has about 200 buffaloes on his farm. The first thing he did when I visited him earlier this year to ask if he could roast a lamb for the tourists of our Shepherd Tour, he let us taste his fresh buffalo milk cheese to proof his culinary qualities.  Now I asked his cooperation in a composting project and inquired about the availability of the buffalo dung.

What is so interesting about composting?

Well, suppose compost was all around and plenty available, it can give you a marvelous highly productive substrate for making an organic vegetable garden anywhere you want, even on the worst soils and in the smallest places. See for example the lively discussions about so-called raised bed agriculture on one of the more than  600.000 google links: www.raisedbedgardeningtips.com.

Another interesting thing about compost is that is gives back humus content to the arable lands that is alarmingly decreasing everywhere in the world. The carbon molecule strings of humus are little wonders in maintaining water for the soil and offering a favorable living place for micro-organisms that help the plants in getting their food. Unfortunately, by tilling the land, and exposing it to water and wind, the humus content is mineralised, which makes the land even more sensitive to erosion. Besides erosion, this humus depletion contributes significantly to the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere!

But the most intriguing about compost is the following. While it is expected that the costs of the fabrication of nitrogen in artificial fertilizer will rise enormously because of the high amount of energy that is needed, and given the fact that with the current use rate of phosphates its sources are depleted this century, we have to seriously ask ourselves if we have to return to compost as main nutrition for agricultural plants.

Now the secret: where to get those enormous amounts of compost?

Ofcourse we are pooing ourselves a lot. But unfortunately we do not really have influence on what people drop in the sewers. So in fact, besides the occasional emptying of car batteries, the sludge is polluted with medicines and hormones, impossible to remove, we really don’ t want to have in the food cycle. All the sludge in the world would even not be enough to maintain soil fertility.

The problem is that we need digesters that are able to eat things, that we cannot eat ourselves. Traditionally: cattle. Here we have a bit more control: we can use the compost of organic cattle, like Stoyan’s buffaloes. But unfortunately this is still not enough! And we don’ t want to have more cattle in the world. Burping cows are one of the largest contributors to the greenhouse effect.

Now I found something else. A lot of trees standing in the way and wood digesting bacteria!

The Strandhza Nature Park in Bulgaria has a lot of forest but also about 8000 ha of pastures. These meadows were once used by more than 100.000 sheep in a transhumance culture that flourished until the WWII. And before that by natural grazing animals. Since thousands of years the ecosystem adapted to this grazing regime, and as a result a type of flora developed, unique for Bulgaria, and Europe. But like elsewhere in Europe, intensive agriculture took over and the pastures are gradually overgrown by pioneer shrubs and forest.

In Eastern Europe, it is estimated that about 30% of the traditional agricultural land lay fallow. Nobody is interested to plant something, or to use the grass because the farming in isolated areas, on mountainous land turned to be not profitable for the small farmers and for the old collectives that are left on their own after the collapse of the communist system.

Our Shepherd Tour, walking with the shepherd in Bulgaria, an attempt to pay the shepherd by means of tourism, had a lot of difficulties to make progress because so many trees and sharp bushes stood in the way. Our shepherd casually notified me after one week walking that 4 of the 110 sheep, that we started off with, were missing. I suspect that some of them unfortunately could not escape from the raspberry bushes …

Taking biomass from abandoned lands in Europe is not worth the trouble for cattle breeding alone. But it seems that it is useful for other things: tourism, rare flora, sheep and dog genes, vultures and….compost!  

The pioneer in using woody biomass for making compost was Jean Pain, a forester in the south of France in the 60’s and 70’s. He had similar problems with abandoned land. In his case the dry bushes caught easily fire and destroyed 100’s of hectares of forest each year.
He discovered a method to digest wood chips by cutting them in little slices and put them in a huge pile. An old documentary describing the process has been put on you tube, a must see for compost freaks!
Jean Pain Method documentary part 1

Essentially it is not composting, but digesting. Composting transforms biomass mostly into CO2. Compost is the residue. Digesting can ideally transform 30% of the carbon content into biogas. And you end up with the same amount of compost. With a pile of 40 ton wood chips he produced sufficient methane gas for his household and to drive his 2CV for 18 months.

I say ideally, because with the legendary, open air  “Jean Pain Method”, considerable amounts of methane might escape into the atmosphere, something that we also nowadays try to avoid. So now there is a smart company who has built a concrete tank around the pile, connected some water tubes and computers, patented it and sells the technology as “BEKON Dry Fermentation”.

I will take the fancy brochure of this company to Stoyan and the mayors of the municipalities in Strandzha Nature Park, to impress them with the high tech opportunities for these deprived areas. But probably we will end up by building an old fashion compost pile with RebelFarmer volunteers next year. And hopefully we can borrow the tractor of the collective to get those nasty bushes out!

Nature Farming links
-EU Soil Thematic Strategy (2003): Nature and extent of soil erosion in Europe
-European Environment Agency (2004): High Value Nature Farmland, characteristics, trends and policy challenges
-Seminar presentations (2004): Abandoned lands in the new members states and candidate countries of the EU and the EU Common Agricultural Policy

Composting links
- The Cornell Institute Composting Homepage
- The Science and Engineering of Composting
- The Practical Handbook of Compost Engineering
- The Digestion Archives

Biogas links
- www.builditsolar.com
- www.sare.org

Tourism has a large role to play when it comes to nature protection. Besides the very important role of education and information supply, the tourism sector can stimulate local farmers to produce in a nature friendly way or implement nature management on their own land.

Nature is inside and all around us. But more and more plants and animal populations are getting isolated in Protected Areas only. They became very vulnerable because of in- breeding and climate change. The bird research institute SOVON expects that the warmer climate will move European bird populations about 500 km north until the end of this century (SOVON 2008). 33% of the Dutch bird species risk to be extinct because new territory in the north is not available. Niches that are left are taken by southern species, but 25 to 65% of the bird populations in Europe will diminish with 50% if no management measures are taken to create natural “stepping stones”.  

In Europe, a group of Nature Protection organisations and the Council of Europe developed a network of land and water that should function as “Eco-Corridors”: strips of land managed in a nature friendly way between important nature hot spots. In some EU countries, like in the Netherlands it became official policy. The Dutch government has the aim to finish this network in 2018.
 
In Eastern Europe, ecocorridors can have a major impact on the protection of large carnivores, such as Brown Bear, Wolf and Lynx. North Belarus is such potential bridge between the large Russian populations at one site and the small European populations at the other side. A new tourism route area that is currently been developed in North Belarus (see www.greenways.by) accommodate the largest national populations of the Lynx. Although hunting of large carnivores is controlled by the central government and the Belarusian government signed the Bern Convention, hunting permissions for the Lynx are still issued as result of lobbying by hunters.
    
Hunting doesn’t bring revenues for the local population and from the ecosystem point of view it is not necessary because large carnivores are still available in Belarus. It is time that hunters admit that hunting in Protected Areas is done only for pleasure, and sometimes food, and not as a form of management. The most effective “management” is done by the Lynx, the Wolf and the Bear.  

The large carnivores represent a major potential tourism value. All around the world these animals are the major tourist attractions in Protected Areas.  For European foreigners and visitors from Minsk the protected areas of Belarus can potentially build up a good reputation. The local population has in general a positive attitude towards the Lynx, although they fear Wolves and Bears. It is a tough discussion whether or not Wolves and Bears have a place to live on our earth because of this safety issue. But it is in fact also an awareness raising issue, because wolves and bears are far less dangerous than is normally perceived because our folk stories and myths give them characteristics they do not have in reality. No single human has been killed in Belarus in the last century because of attacks. In the United States, with huge bear populations, 50 deaths have been recorded in the whole history because of bear attacks, against 8 times higher this amount by spiders, 13 times higher by snakes and 34 times higher by domestic dogs (Schneider, p.9). Studies show that the more people know about large predators and their behavior, the better is the acceptance of them.

Through the GREENWAYS you can visit certified farmsteads, either by bicycling, hiking, horse riding or canoing through nature areas. How GREENWAYS will manage visitor impact is a question still to be answered.

More reading:

www.greenways.by
www.sovon.nl/pdf/Klimaatboekpresentatie20080115.pdf
www.minlnv.nl
www.ecnc.nl/IndicativeMapAndTech/Index_605.html
https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?id=2321
www.birdlife.org/worldwide/national/belarus/index.html
www.wsl.ch/land/products/predator/paper1.htm
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/conservation/species
Bear Aware, The Quick Reference Bear Country Survival Guide. Bill Schneider 2001

The biggest producer of Camembert, The Lactalis group, is forced by the French consumers, to return to the original quality definition of the Normandian Camembert, the last camembert that just until March this year, was supposed to be made of raw milk. Lactalis is the number two milk processing company in the world, with over 30.000 employees (1).

Earlier this year they successfully lobbied within the Normandian AOC quality committee to accept their new technology consisting of moderate heating and "laboratory made” types of bacteria. Lactalis came up with this high tech solution because they found it too risky to sell raw milk cheese in supermarkets because of possible Listeria poisoning. Now the brand new factory has to close its doors because French consumers are not eating it (2).

Reducing substantially the varieties of bacteria and fungi’s in our food will ruin our immune system, especially the ones of our children. (for example one GMO type instead of 100's of local types in one cheese). This is the view of the famous Pasteur Institute (3) expressed in a movie made especially about raw cheeses in France “Ces fromages qu'on assassine! ” (These are the cheeses we kill!) and a radio programme on a conference about the beneficial effects of bacteria in food on the immune system.  How many people died of Listeria in raw milk cheese? I have heard about one case that triggered the whole anti-raw milk movement in France. Probably there are a few more, but how many people in the future will have allergies (or die) because of a not properly functioning immune system? ? At the moment 25% of the French population suffer from some kind of allergy. Recent studies show, like was found in the Pasteur Institute, that raw milk (products) for children in cities are the one of the most efficient and practical means to build a good immune system! (4)

Luckily the French consumers got back their senses, and decided en masse not to buy the new product. Probably more because a typical  produit regional was in danger than because of health reasons, but àla! The workers of the closed factory are said to be able to continue working in one of the other many factories of Lactalis. This news will certainly reinforce the Slow Food network in France who has been fighting hard for Lait Cru, and managed to gather 20.000 signatures for the European Union in order to raise awareness on this issue (5).

1) http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camembert_de_Normandie
2) www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/2008/09/27/lactalis
3) Documentary of Joël Santoni and Jean Charles Deniau with Périco Légasse and Erik Svensson. See:  http://programmes.france3.fr/documentaires
4) Doctor Dominique Angèle Vuitton, Emeritus Professor in Immunology of the Université de Franche-Comté and Xavier Bertrand, Microbiologist in the “Service d’hygiène hospitalière et d’épidémiologie moléculaire" of the CHU in Besançon cited on the French radio: www.canalacademie.com/Fromages-au-lait-cru-amis-ou.html
5) www.slowfood.fr

What is so serious is not only that the bees themselves are dying off without a smoking gun present, but that most people have no idea of the role they play in the food supply at large."If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man." - Albert Einstein.
Various explanations for the bee die off include pesticides, GM Crops, shift of the earth magnetic field or bee diseases but the bottom line is no one knows. Those with influence, step up and vigorously demand a prominent forum, and with loud voice, get people to put energy and resources into this issue!!
Short video: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/silence-of-the-bees/full-episode/251/

Multinational agricultural “engineering” companies, like Monsanto, want to safeguard their investment in the development of new varieties of animals and crops, by patenting their “invention”.
This economic reality has been backed up by governments around the world in accepting patents on life forms. But now these companies are asking patents on crops that you might grow in your own back garden! The European Patent Office has recently granted a patent to a brocoli and tomato variety obtained by conventional crossing techniques.
A global action platform has been formed:
www.no-patents-on-seeds.org
Network in France: www.semencespaysannes.org