26/09/2019
These are the stories we need to show the world that it is important to face we have been destroying the planet, but there are sustainable alternatives that bring short and long term positive results
Project Drawdown, in its book, "Drawdown", identifies using some of the 950,000,000 to 1.1 billion acres of degraded land to repair using multistrata agroforestry systems and tropical staple trees, along with a host of other land use strategies, many of which we employ, like bamboo. It is a good book. Albert Bates book, “Burn”, is the perfect book to follow that with as it goes in great detail into HOW we can decarbonize and the cascade of climate and financial benefits that can flow from decarbonizing the world through drawing down carbon with biochar.
The photo is tree based agriculture that produces food, fodder, fuel, wood, timber, marketable and medicinal crops, in what was formerly degraded citrus and cattle land. This landscape is drawing down carbon, retaining soil and soil moisture, and providing habitat for birds, tapir, peccary, armadillo, gibnut, agouti, all the large cats, brocket deer and the multitude of reptiles that use this land.
Out side our window this morning: coconut, Pithecelobium arborea (“bastard mahogany”, dying as we girdled it and will be making furniture with it, some to sell. Small diameter branches to be converted to biochar) mayflower, cacao, breadnut, chili pepper, madre de cacao, Inga, caimito, jasmine, pride of Barbados, psalm wood, cahune, guava, bay cedar, cacao, coffee, rambutan, ginger, turmeric and cardamom. Vanilla, mulberry, cashew. A little to the left we have velvet apple and the kitchen. A little to the right we have teak and anona and bilimbi, and canistel. In 1988, this was all citrus and cattle land, very, very degraded.
A small snapshot into a small area of land we work.
