Beyond Urban Carbon Farming Is "Urban Bio-Forestry"
Mission
Right around the time a barrel of oil was around $150 USD I stumbled upon an article from an "expert" saying that the solution to resolve hunger was to give more money to poor countries in order to buy more tractors and more agrochemicals! So wrong! Then a thought popped into mind: " Do something! No matter what! Anything is better than nothing! ". Mission: increasing awareness of hydroponics and aquaponics as key tools in fighting hunger around the world.
Roger Pilon, Editor
Hello everyone! How I got into hydroponics is a long story...let's just say that it involves a lot of tedious farm work as a child, unsuccessful 'dirt' gardens of my own and a near electrocution from a semi-submersible hydroponic pump. I've learned that hydroponic gardening is the only way to garden for me and I've been working at it for several years now. I've built ebb/flow, nft, Mittleider, wick and passive systems and I'm always on the lookout for the easiest and most efficient means of hydroponic gardening...If you have questions, I would be more than happy to answer them...
Eighty percent of Americans and Canadians live in urban counties and districts
As a child I grew up in Rhode Island with the last and final death of all American Chestnut trees east of the Mississippi River. By the time I entered College the American Elm was following the Chestnut's lead.
Today I read and observe the slow demise of some varieties of oaks, hemlocks and pines in North America.
Eighty percent of Americans and Canadians live in urban counties and districts. Bio-Forestry, operating from a future view, rather than past best practice, seems to be a critical method to move a season at a time towards the "sustainable human settlement", think metropolis.
The Palace of Versailles near Paris has one of the world's most marvelous gardens. It is today a leader in the practice of Bio-Forestry [Reference 1.]. Season by season the horticulture of the Palace landscape is being transformed to a mix which is sturdy within the rapidly changing climate [think warmer and wetter].
Urban Bio-Forestry may begin with a rule of "never a straight row of more than ten identical street trees", [elm, gingko, oak, palm, pear, maple, +]. A similar rule may apply to grass, shrub & vine. [Reference2.
The goal of urban Bio-Forestry, as with Urban Carbon Farming, is logically to optimize the ecological return to our investment and care of the urban landscape, [rooftop to hilltop and wetland to desert].
Next year's measures of a 'Productive Urban Landscape' [Reference 3.] will go beyond dollar, calorie, cool and aesthetic to include 1,000 year sustainability, carbon and nitrogen sequestration, minimization of fertilizer, insecticide and irrigation and so forth.
And achieving these objectives of Bio-Forestry will greatly benefit from the dollar returns of its integration within Urban Agriculture.
References:
1. "Gardens at Versailles", C.T. Downey, 2004; & MSNBC reports,++
2. Los Angeles has a program underway to replace one million palm trees. UC Berkeley Livermore Laboratories report.
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