Standard 15 Use of Krsna's Properties - repaying Mother Nature

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[Text 2282484 from COM]

 

Hare Krsna dasi wrote:

 

>Please, let's not forget the big danger of using cow patties for cooking

>fuel.

>That is: If too large a percentage of cow manure is converted into cooking

>fuel, it will rob the soil of valuable nutrients.

 

Where did you get this information from?

Is this statement coroberated by any scientific authority?

 

PLEASE GIVE THIS TO SYAMASUNDARA DAS IN MAYAPUR

AND POST THIS IN MARITIUS TEMPLE.

 

Sir Albert Howard, whom you originally quoted to us all, has stated, as you

must have heard by now, that two thirds of cow dung should be used as fuel,

the remainder can increase manurial output 5-8 times by composting.. with

correct proportions of all manner of other garbage, including human stool,

as we did in India 1996-7.

 

It is essential that a sustainable fuel source be sought. When there were

plenty more cows in India than possibly today the above statement was made.

If you have less cows today then you need less land with which to feed them,

But there are definately a lot more people. With the amount of people who

actually are going to use cow dung as fuel and that is likely outside of

India to only be devotees! I think the same equation should still apply.

Applying animal dung to land alone is extremely wasteful in lieu of the

circumstances we find ourselves in today, especially as we have so few cows

about.. Enough nitrogen for crop productrion can easily be gained by proper

agricultural management. This understood by scientific evidence. Only .08 -

1.00% total nitrogen is required for optimum crop production. Any further

amount is certain to be lost in the ground through leaching.

 

Most of the main ecological disasters we find in this world are caused by

man and his misuse of Natures abundance. The most important thing to be done

in order to preserve the source of life on this planet is to produce soil

and that is done best by creating a thriving top soil which in turn makes

more top soil through the action of active micro-organisms.

 

This is acheived by the formation fo humus.BUT IN NATURE this is a very slow

process. (1 inch in 10,000 years?) And the best of Natures ways to produce

humus is by the action of trees and good ground cover.

 

Here are some quotes by the founder of the Soil Association:

 

Lets start with an area in Southern United States:

One of the most comprehensive surveys in this connection is by Jacks and

Whyte in the RAPE OF THE EARTH. (It is common knowledge in agricultural

circles that the removal of trees is the biggest cause of the beginning of

soil erosion and desertification.)

 

'On 56.4% of the land surface of the USA...a quater or more of the soil has

been lost. The amount of soil reaching the sea annually is between 500 and a

1,000 million tons, or 21 times the amount removed by cropping.' (this is

interesting to note.) [Even organic farms can loose as much as 5cm of soil

a year through cropping][real organic farming is not just a question of

farming without chemicals...]to continue... '15 million acres have been

totally destroyed, but this is an insignificant part of the story, for it is

sheet erosion that is doing the bulk of the damage to the land. The Missouri

basin has lost an average of 7 inches of top soil in 24 years. Professor

Chamberlain has estimated the mean rate of soil formation at only 1 inch in

ten thousand years.'

'In California and elswhere the new deserts are are called 'dustbowls'. One

has advanced as much as 40 miles in one year, destroying 2,500 farms.

Efforts to stop it by tree planting alone have failed.

 

'If erosion represents the death of the soil....how much of the land is

partway towards death? The question would be pertinent if the rate of

erosion were steady. But it is not steady it is increasing very rapidly all

over the world. PROBABLY MORE SOIL HAS BEEN LOST SINCE 1914 THAN IN THE

WHOLE PREVIOS HISTORY OF THE WORLD. When we consider... the fact that traces

of high civilization were found in areas that are now desert, the

probability of his past guilt becomes greater.'

 

'In the West over grazing and fires have have removed the natural cover.

Obviously every other problem America is faced sinks into insignificance in

camparison with this one. It is already too late to do more than save

something of the wreck. Much of the same is true in many other countries.'

'Australia is probably going faster than America, but has only been under

civilized influence for one third of the period....The wheat lands of NSW

are said to be getting visibly worse each year.'

 

'In Africa, the Sahara is growing southward at a rate of over half a mile a

year, the Turkana desert eastward at 6 or 7 miles a year. But the whole

continent is suffering from erosion in every known form, the extension of

deserts and the creation of new ones. It is well known that Kenya is rapidly

becoming infertile and is beginning to suffer from locusts. This is no new

phenomenon in Africa, for it is known that the northern Sahara was once the

granary of Rome and in Roman times the Congo forest reached nearly to

Khartoum, from which it is now separated by 1,500 miles of desert...Erosion

is not new but the whole process has been accelerated in the last few

years.'

 

'China represents the best and the worst examples of agriculture.. The

Yellow River carries down 2,500 million tons of soils a year; the amount

equal to one foot thick over 2,000 suare miles. It's bed gets silted up

between embankmnets, and is not cleared as it used to be (with which they

made compost with abundant green clover to replenish the land from which the

crops were taken). These embankments must be continuously raised so its bed

is well above the surrounding land. Nothing can save that land or its people

when an embankment bursts. ALL THAT IS LARGELY BECAUSE FUEL IS NOW SCARCE IN

CHINA AND THE HILLS HAVE BEEN DENUDED TO PROVIDE IT. (and I know the same is

true of India) In this way what was once the hunting grounds of Genghis Khan

has been turned into the Gobi desert.'

 

 

 

 

 

There you have it.

One must therefore keep lots of cows, and farm properly, in order to prevent

this situation occuring. We must become responsible custodians of Krsna's

land.

 

We don't have lots of cows these days due to obvoius reasons. But as one

company has stated today: 'The world is drowing in its own poisons'

 

 

Therefore I and many other companies see the importance of scientifically

composting these wastes to reduce the poisonous effects (as far as

possible).

For even cow dung left in heaps and urine washed away in drains causes

poisonous run off into water courses and ground water and is indeed illegal

in the U.K. We should try and understand how to avoid these causes of

poisoning ourselves and our children and teach them how to leave more soil

than we take away through cropping.

 

This is sustainable agriculture. If we are depleting we are not

sustainable. By taking crops alone we are depleting Mother Nature.

Therefore we are robbing Her.

 

 

'Man sets about his desert making in various ways. He alters the texture of

the soil by using up humus and failing to replace it - by failing to feed

the soil with organic matter; livestock are the great converters of

otherwise unwanted organic matter to a form in which it can be used by

plants. Stockless farming, understocking, burning straw, etc., are all cases

of failure to observe the "law of return" which is the essence of farming.

Only by faithfully returning to the soil in due course (meaning in a fit

condition for the soil to digest it) everything that has come from it, can

fertility be made permanent and the earth be made to yield a genuine

increase.' (Lord Northbourne, Look to The Land, 1930)

 

 

I was going to end there, but then here's another one which I think backs up

Srila Prabhupada's comments on later occurances in this Yuga:

 

'If mankind cannot devise and enforce ways of dealing with the earth, which

will preserve the source of life, we must look forward to a time, remote

though it may be yet clearly discernable when our kind, having wasted its

inheritance, will fade from the earth because of the ruin it has

accomplished.' (Professor N.S. Shaler, Harvard University, 1896)

 

'But please let's not forget' we are SUPPOSED to be entering the golden age

of 10,000 years before that.