Words of the Lagoon ...on sustainability & culture

[JWFITZ]

That is my goal. I don't have 10000 years, or even 10. I'm shooting for 10 months at the maximum.

[AlohaSteven]

[Cross-posted from the "Money-saving tips" thread]


Diaper crystals in food-growing soil?

Short version: those diaper crystals may be safe to mix into soil you are growing food in, but doing so is probably not saving money long-term and there may be other drawbacks. I would suggest using crushed charcoal from local wood instead of diaper crystals if you want/need an economical and more securely safe method to increase the moisture content of food-growing soil.

Long version, with all the details and evidence:

Regarding the safe use for growing food of those super water-absorbent crystals commonly found in diapers (and available in bulk via chemistry and garden supply houses) when they are mixed in potting and bedding soil, I scanned around a bit to see what I could find.

I have used polysodium acrylate (PSA) crystals --the most common form of this type of hygroscopic material-- many times in the laboratory but not in soil mixes for growing food which people would later eat. Some materials which are rated safe and nonhazardous for nonfood uses can become problematic when ingested, and the break-down products of those compounds even more so.

Here are the MSDS for PSA in a couple of different formats:
http://www.unitednuclear.com/msdssodiumpoly.htm
and
http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:iIb...m+acrylate&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us&client=firefox-a
The MSDS statements indicate that PSA is safe unless inhaled or eaten in large quantity (whereupon it would be a problem due to swelling, not toxicity).

According to Zohuriaan-Mehr & Kabiri (2008) in "Superabsorbant Polymer Materials - A Review" (http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:Amj...c+crystals&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us&client=firefox-a) these "materials cannot return to their starting monomers, i.e., they are scientifically irreversible to toxic initiating materials. Here, like so many polymers, the starting toxic monomers are converted chemically to totally non-toxic product via polymerization reaction [2-6]. SAPs are organic materials with well-known general structure. For instance, the agricultural SAP with the name of “cross-linked acrylamide/potassium acrylate copolymer” has been recorded in the most valid data centre of chemicals, i.e. the Chemical Abstracts, with CAS No. 31212-13-2. In the material safety data sheet (MSDS) of the superabsorbent manufacturers, they are called as “Safe and Non-toxic Material” [146-149]. The conventional SAP materials are neutral and inert. They are moderately bio-degraded in the soil by
the ionic and microbial media to convert finally to water, carbon dioxide and organic matter [146-151] Therefore, SAPs do not contaminate the soil and environment. They do not exhibit systemic toxicity (oral LD50 for rate 5000 mg/kg). In addition, their safety in the soil has been approved by the Agriculture Ministry of France (APV No 8410030) [146]. Research has shown little or no consistent adverse effect on soil microbial populations [152]. The environmental fate of SAPs and their microbial degradation was investigated by many researchers [152-157]. The researchers at the University of California, Los Angles (UCLA) found that no toxic species were remained in soil after several-year SAP consuming [158]." (Page 19).

A careful reading of the whole article, however, indicates the PSA can uptake, hold, and concentrate pesticides or other toxins.

In Iwahashi (2003) "Mechanism for Degradation of Poly (Sodium Acrylate) by Bacterial Consortium No. L7-98" (http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jbb/...e/-char/en) a number of specifics are indicated regarding PSA breakdown products. Some of the chemical groups found in PSA's decomposition are fairly active, which is neither good nor bad, it just means they are available to react with whatever else may be present.

As I read the data it seems as if using these hygroscopic crystals in your soil mix to grow vegetables to be eaten raw or cooked will probably not cause anyone to become ill. Probably, but there may be some as-yet unknown aspects to all this. Personally, I think I would rather use activated charcoal mixed into the gardening soil before I would add polysodium acrylate crystals into my food-growing soil. (Using PSA in potting soil for ornamental plants may be cost-effective, but eventually that soil may end up in a compost heap and mixed back together with food-growing soil, so even there I think I would hesitate to use the polysodium acrylate crystals).

Charcoal is way less expensive, especially if you make it yourself from guava wood; please see JWFITZ's well-informed comments in the Punaweb thread "Words of the Lagoon ...on sustainability and culture" at http://www.punaweb.org/Forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6319&whichpage=2 for more detail on that process. Charcoal is also infinitely longer-lasting than PSA and I suspect charcoal not only retains water in a porous lattice structure but also ongoingly facilitates the development of that ultimate magic ingredient in soil, humus, via facilitating bacterial and fungal action on the vast surface areas and interstices of the charcoal particles.



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"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

Pres. John Adams, Scholar and Statesman


"There's a scientific reason to be concerned and there's a scientific reason to push for action. But there's no scientific reason to despair."

NASA climate analyst Gavin Schmidt

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[JWFITZ]

Thanks,

and besides, how the hell is it that organic gardeners thinks it's ok to put Plexiglas in their dirt? And that's good? I guess, if you like to pre-impregnate all your veggies with estrogen. . .

Charcoal isn't going to be a lot cheaper, actually. I would be difficult to manufacture quality material for less than .50 cents a lb. I'm certain it's vastly better--by all measures--but it will take a great deal of material to make significant effects. I'm working through a 5000 or so square foot garden at the moment and I'll keep good notes for certain.

This is going to take a LOT of charcoal. Thousands of pounds, actually. You'd need 5 tons at least to make a real play at soil enrichment on tera preta levels, but I suppose all or any is useful.
Rather than throw away cardboard, or scraps, or lumber, or any of the rest, perhaps it's best to put it in the yard.

[Greg]

Look, I admit that in the past I experimented with Diaper crystals as a moisture holder. I didn't add them to the soil though; I placed a new disposable diaper in the bottom of a grow bag. It was somewhat successfull in holding moisture that would wick up to the plant. My results weren't conclusive as I didn't run a concurrent "control" group without the diapers.

I also didn't EAT any of the plant material, although I confess it was some pretty good sh*t.

[Tahunatics]

In regards to sustainability for Hawaii, there is a very good presentation available by Matt Simmons of Simmons and Co. International, the largest energy investment banker in the world and former member of Cheney's Energy Task Force, from a speech called 'Hawaii Energy Challenge 2008' on November 20, 2008.

Download pdf here:

http://tinyurl.com/4krmac

http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/research.a...msspeeches

[AlohaSteven]

Thanks, Tahunatics, for the link to Matthew Simmons' presentation on the energy supply outlook vis a vis Hawaii. Simmons is well-informed yet an optimist, I think, especially on slide #36 (in his guessing a reduction in available supply of only 30%-40% by 2030).

Here are links to some other perspectives on the topic which I have found both instructive and to be of potentially huge beneficial application in Puna. These links can be gone through in about an hour or so; they take around seven to ten minutes each to read or watch (all but the first connect to talks shared via YouTube). The quality of these summaries is excellent and they end in constructive, pragmatic, workable grassroots-level suggestions -especially for a community as ideally situated and blessed with resources as Puna.

Robert Paterson - "There is hope -but maybe not what you think!"
http://smartpei.typepad.com/robert_pater...obama.html

Richard Heinberg - Resilient Communities, Part 1
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=d9srawwb5LY

Richard Heinberg - Resilient Communities, Part 2
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=P5srcMP31po&feature=related

Richard Heinberg - Resilient Communities, Part 3
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=zRDiJTkMQKU&feature=related

Richard Heinberg - Resilient Communities, Part 4
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=3EoyPY5iwro&feature=related

Richard Heinberg - Resilient Communities, Part 5
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=r41Z93iE0o8&feature=related

Richard Heinberg - Resilient Communities, Part 6
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=C8qWpoz2CxE&feature=related

Peak Oil & The Four Futures - Tim Hudson - Part 2 of 2.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=XtYBonDRKu4

One aspect of all this which I genuinely do find worrisome ties back to the very first post in this thread's discussion. This information linked above, taken as the hard data which it is (in every sense), makes that which Johannes wrote in the quoted passage from Words of the Lagoon of critical significance. The Big Island in general and Puna in particular can weather most any storm the future may bring to our shores ever so much better if these suggestions (linked above and from Johannes) are taken to heart and applied in time.


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Have two minutes for enjoying a pleasant slideshow?
http://www.thejoymovie.com

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[AlohaSteven]

A question: is Puna more similar to Haiti or to Vietnam?

Though more than half of Haitians work in farming, they produce less than half the country’s food needs. Haiti’s agriculture is the least productive in the world, says Joel Boutroue of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). A hectare of rice paddy in Vietnam will produce 20 tonnes of rice a year, whereas a Haitian hectare yields just one tonne.

From Rebuilding Haiti -Weighed down by disasters
http://www.economist.com/world/americas/...d=13109907&CFID=45536276&CFTOKEN=29373535
The Economist 12FEB2009 print edition

My guess is --at least as regards local food production self-sufficiency-- Puna (plus the Big Island and Hawaii as a whole) is more similar to Haiti than to Vietnam. One significant part of the similarity inheres in people being generally unfamiliar with the knowledge base associated with techniques for producing sustainable yields while another similarity stems from infrastructural capacity (or the lack thereof). How many folks are permaculturists or even small patch gardeners, versus buying nearly all their food? Rice padi terraces and the system of irrigation ditches which supply them are not built overnight, and maintaining such infrastructure requires hands-on familiarity born of long experience. While Hawaii once exported rice to the mainland, today there is not even a single living rice plant on the Big Island, nor viable seed from which to grow one. The quote in the first post of this thread is apt, indeed.

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A pleasant slideshow: http://www.thejoymovie.com

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[JWFITZ]

Like the rest of the US, Puna has more people in jail than it does cultivating the land. This would put it more in line with Haiti.

There is some secret rice cultivation going on, I'll have you know. Personally, I don't think rice is a very viable crop and pretty pointless to grow when you have taro.

Another issue that few people consider is that the majority of proven viable historic food crops that have carried Hawaii in the past are all vegetatively propagated. You can't just go out and buy taro seed. You must have the plant material established to plant. This will make the proposition of expanding production of these plants--at least in any significant percentage impossible to do on a timely basis--I mean within the context of a couple of years. Even if one were to order cloned taro a 8 month lead time is often required, which will put out a harvest 2-3 years.

[AlohaSteven]

There is some secret rice cultivation going on, I'll have you know. Personally, I don't think rice is a very viable crop and pretty pointless to grow when you have taro.

This is encouraging news!

Rice cultivation is completely legal in Hawaii; I checked with AHPHIS and the USDA and so on and viable rice seed is legal to import from the mainland US into Hawaii. As long as the package of rice seed is labeled "Plant Material - May Be Opened For Inspection" it may be mailed to Puna from California, Louisiana, or where-ever else on the mainland. If found to be insect and other disease-free, then it will be passed on through.

I agree with you, JWFITZ, that rice is not the be-all and end-all of cultivars (especially in Puna, where the soils are so porous and rocky) but it distresses me a bit germplasm for useful plants may not be present if ever needed.

Your point about the time lag needed to ramp up food production from vegetatively propagated cultivars is well taken. Sweet potatoes and suchlike make much more sense for production in much of Puna than does rice, yet there are many places farther north where rice would do magnificently. A couple big advantages of rice are the quick turnaround from seeding to harvest, multiple harvests staggered throughout the year, and being able to use the rice straw to then either grow padi straw mushrooms or thatch roofs (plus which, variety in diet is important -unless a person actually likes eating taro over and over and over...). Quick production of food and provision of shelter could be important factors if there were ever a large and relatively sudden influx of people from Oahu and elsewhere while external supply lines to the islands cease to function dependably.

It is really more the notion of everyone having a maximally diverse homegarden &/or aquaponics system and teaching their kids how to cultivate vegetable produce, fruits, nuts, herbs, and animal protein which I am advocating much more so than just growing rice where-ever rice will grow. Rice can support large populations in a pinch, calorically (or at least keep them from starving to death), but a widespread network of well-developed homegardens is what will make the difference in the long run between life as celebration instead of mere grim survival should times ever become seriously challenging.

Given the tremendous variation from one spot to another --sometimes only a mile or less away from one another-- each household learning the soil and water at their particular site, knowing how to best husband the garden and animals so as to sustain and enhance overall productivity and deter disease, would be ideal.


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A pleasant slideshow: http://www.thejoymovie.com

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[JWFITZ]

One of the biggest obstacles any would be farmer faces on the big island at this moment is that while AG zoning prevails, most of the subdivisions are basically de facto residential at this point--and carry residential-oriented land values, CCR's, regulations, taxations, and nosy neighbors. Since agriculture has always been a low margin business anyway, and since any business plan, in, for example, rice--while in my mind critical to our future still competes with imported product and is an utterly losing proposition in any financial sense, at least for the near term. The trend to pave, encourage commercial growth, and all the rest only enforces the trend away from agriculture to a new paradigm. Unfortunately, this confines the much needed research into our food future to wealthy hobbyists who have time to indulge in such things and bear the costs, or fanatics like myself who somehow figure out how to reclaim still undervalued and marginal properties. This isn't enough, and won't suffice.

While we by policy keep encouraging growth that exploits over that which creates we'll keep sliding deeper into a pit.