Subject: Re: Soil Quality (fwd)

From: "Tom Hodges (moderated newsgroup)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Mar 1995 05:59:35 -0800 (PST)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 03 Mar 1995 10:12:20 WST
From: Warwick Rowell <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Soil Quality (fwd)

The definition of productivity for a biological system
is fine, and one that is generic - it fits business and
other systems as well.

My original post, and this one, urge people to regard the
system as more important than its productivity.

Manfred max Neef said it well: sustainable productivity
leads us to accept the goal of productivity, and argue
about what we mean by sustainability, and the level of
it that we will pursue.

Reverse the terms, and talk about "productive sustainability"
and we are taking a vastly different, and in my view, a more
realisitic approach; Many natural systems will close down
productivity dramatically if their survival is threatened.

One of the most fundamental lessons we have learned from
thousands of years of military experience is "conserve your forces".
It is time we started applying this dictum to the task of using
soil to meeting our needs for food, shelter, fuel, etc etc.

Wx
--
 __________________________________________________________
|                [email-masked]                |
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|   Management Consultant     Permaculture Designer        |
|_"Helping Managers Learn"___"Helping Land Managers Learn"_|

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From: "Tom Hodges (moderated newsgroup)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 1995 06:00:08 -0800 (PST)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 06 Mar 1995 20:16:19 WST
From: Warwick Rowell <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Soil Quality (fwd)

My paraphrase of Manfred Max Neef:

"When we talk about "sustainable productivity" we accept "productivity" and
argue about the meaning and amounts of "sustainability". If we turn the
words around: "developing sustainability" we are talking about a
totally different paradigm."

It was from a paper he wrote for the South Commission report about foure
years ago. It contained a number of very good articles on the problems
of measuring economies, about the problems of GNP as a measure, and
about alternative measures.

Even in this series, Manfred's clarity and quality of thinking shone
through.

Now, the exact reference..

It hasn't emerged. But I have just shifted my office. My apologies.
Can anyone else help?

 > Date: Fri, 10 Feb 1995 11:22:51 -0500 (EST)
 > >From: [email-masked]
 > To: "Tom Hodges (moderated newsgroup)" <[email-masked]>
 > Subject: Re: Defining soil quality (fwd)
 >
 > YES, YES, YES!!!!
 >
 > A definition of soil quality that is not tied to crop production is
 > where we should be heading.  I've thought about this problem a little,

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From: "Tom Hodges (moderated newsgroup)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Feb 1995 08:51:51 -0800 (PST)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 23 Feb 1995 08:59:21 -0600 (CST)
From: Rex Dufour <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Cc: Preston Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Soil Quality

The concept of soil quality is indeed a difficult one to pin down
as evidenced by the interesting discussion about this subject in
the last week or so.

My initial posting noted that I felt that the discussion (up to
that point) had perhaps been biased toward temperate zone soils,
which exist in quite a different context than tropical soils.  I
still feel this bias has not been addressed.

Perhaps one way of evaluating both temperate and tropical soils
using a level playing field is the amount of external energy inputs
required to produce a sustainable yield of a given crop.

The advantage to looking at soil quality from this angle is that
for temperate soils, there is a lot of energy stored in the organic
matter (in the form of chemical bonds) of the soil, but temperate
soils do not receive the same flux of solar energy that tropical
soils receive.  Tropical soils do not store their enery as soil
organic matter, but as living plant material and associated soil
organisms.

Temperate soils, with their generally higher organic matter may
or may not need fewer inputs to provide a sustainable yield of a given crop.
However, tropical soils have the advantage of a high solar flux
which can be converted into plant material (in many cases, legumes,
which are much more common in the tropics than in temperate
areas).

This is a simplistic model, but is perhaps a starting point.  Rex
Dufour

rexd2ncatfyv.uark.edu