DEFINING SUSTAINABLITY
Sustainability: I must have looked at 20 different definitions for this word. I am a bit obsessed lately with finding a reasonable definition that I can relay to my clients, members of OASIS, and especially to myself.
Maybe I should look at the opposite.
It is NOT sustainable to ignore reality. We have learned this. We had an administration that did not want to address global warming for the past 8 years and it seems pretty clear to the majority of the world that the bodies, the cars, and other machines they drive (and our gassy animals) are a big problem. The other part of this is all of the other pollution that we generate. Agriculture is an enormous contributor. I found in a publication by our GAO (U.S. Gen’l Accounting Office – (http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d031148.pdf) that we used over 100 million tons of nitrogen derived from natural gas on crops in 2003. So you need to remember that 1) commercial fertilizer comes from petrochemicals (natural gas) and, 2) that is 200 Billion pounds when you multiply it out.
Geez. That is a lot of chemical fertilizer.
Why do I bring this up? Because organic plant production does not allow the use of petrochemical derived fertilizers. You can make fertilizer out of waste, in fact very high quality nitrogen nutrients balanced with other necessary nutrients for plants – we know it as composting. What a concept. SO – if we can push more people to do more with organic production methods, we can:
1- Reduce nitrates in our water (the effect of commercial nitrogen fertilizer is nitrate accumulation in ground water)
2- Improve crop outcomes (compost fed tomatoes have higher fruit solids than commercially grown nitrogen tomatoes – imagine that – more nutrition!)
3- Reduce our dependence on imported petrochemical gas (we had to import almost 50% of our fertilizer in 2003 due to the price of natural gas – I wonder what it was last year!)
4- And we can use up compostable waste to make . . . fertilizer!
So – part of sustainability means that you can continuously do something because it is not destructive of its source. We grow food, we create waste, we convert that waste to nutrients to grow more food (or cosmetic ingredients in my world). Gotta’ say it again: what a concept!
I’ll work on the rest of "sustainability" in the future. As for this part,one definition may be "to create a production cycle that is self supporting". Still not sure. More work!
Copyright 01/29/09 Gay Timmons
Sustainability: I must have looked at 20 different definitions for this word. I am a bit obsessed lately with finding a reasonable definition that I can relay to my clients, members of OASIS, and especially to myself.
Maybe I should look at the opposite.
It is NOT sustainable to ignore reality. We have learned this. We had an administration that did not want to address global warming for the past 8 years and it seems pretty clear to the majority of the world that the bodies, the cars, and other machines they drive (and our gassy animals) are a big problem. The other part of this is all of the other pollution that we generate. Agriculture is an enormous contributor. I found in a publication by our GAO (U.S. Gen’l Accounting Office – (http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d031148.pdf) that we used over 100 million tons of nitrogen derived from natural gas on crops in 2003. So you need to remember that 1) commercial fertilizer comes from petrochemicals (natural gas) and, 2) that is 200 Billion pounds when you multiply it out.
Geez. That is a lot of chemical fertilizer.
Why do I bring this up? Because organic plant production does not allow the use of petrochemical derived fertilizers. You can make fertilizer out of waste, in fact very high quality nitrogen nutrients balanced with other necessary nutrients for plants – we know it as composting. What a concept. SO – if we can push more people to do more with organic production methods, we can:
1- Reduce nitrates in our water (the effect of commercial nitrogen fertilizer is nitrate accumulation in ground water)
2- Improve crop outcomes (compost fed tomatoes have higher fruit solids than commercially grown nitrogen tomatoes – imagine that – more nutrition!)
3- Reduce our dependence on imported petrochemical gas (we had to import almost 50% of our fertilizer in 2003 due to the price of natural gas – I wonder what it was last year!)
4- And we can use up compostable waste to make . . . fertilizer!
So – part of sustainability means that you can continuously do something because it is not destructive of its source. We grow food, we create waste, we convert that waste to nutrients to grow more food (or cosmetic ingredients in my world). Gotta’ say it again: what a concept!
I’ll work on the rest of "sustainability" in the future. As for this part,one definition may be "to create a production cycle that is self supporting". Still not sure. More work!
Copyright 01/29/09 Gay Timmons
posted by Oh, Oh Organic, Inc. at
6:51 AM
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