Overview

An academic is concerned with pushing knowledge to the limit of knowing. A technologist is concerned with pushing knowledge to the limit of doing. This book does not set out to be a substitute for a PhD degree. It is about a combination of science and technology, and of welding good land management with energy production on the farm and with business development, in order to build what a reasonably sensible, science-based observer can accept as a logical and practicable way of solving some problems and making progress towards widely desired, sustainable gaols. It is acceptable simply because most of it is also a historical record; it has been done; done safely and sustainably from an environmental point of view, and it is financially sustainably, too. This book is, then, logically about why three things are key to the survival of our children and maybe ourselves * arresting population growth, * cleaner technology and using it wherever possible to arresting the burning of fossilised fuels by replacing them with energy sources which are both renewable and sustainable, and not using high-energy-input, manufactured fertilisers but, instead, using waste to fertilise crops, * the technology and practical ability of producing food using less energy and by generating energy while, by using the green leaf, taking Carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and pumping Oxygen back in on a global scale, in order to produce enough food to feed everybody. Albert Einstein found believing in a personal god a bit too difficult and preferred what he called the cosmic religion. He argued that all the great religions of the world had one thing in common and that was the teaching of the duty and necessity of care for our fellow men. (1) More recently, the Dalai Lama has argued that there is one thing that must transcend all religious thinking and that is ethics, which again he translates as compassion and care for our fellow men. (2) In that that same text the author, Franz Alt in discussions with the Dalai Lama, observed that Every day, we drive 150 species of plants and animals to extinction, expand the deserts by 50,000 ha and spew 150 million tonnes of greenhouse gases into the air. Well, yes we can control population, yes we can reclaim the deserts, yes we can get the Oxygen we breathe back out of the Carbon dioxide and yes we can produce energy sustainably. This book is certainly about farming, but it is also about land and the responsibility of its guardians (its owners and managers) to recognise what Einstein and the Dali Lama were trying to get us to accept; the responsibility to use it, maybe at a profit, but always for the sustainable benefit of mankind. It certainly is about energy used and produced on the farm but it is also about the ethic of the sustainable management of soils, the production of crops and use of the land in producing food and energy. As a conclusion of this brief introduction, I will leave you with two observations; * Land; they have stopped making it. * Land, in nearly all countries in the world, maybe all, is cheaper than carpet. We must use it wisely. We must Stop - Think - Do It Now

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