Freaky Weather?

I'm sitting in a hotel in Louisiana, getting ready to pack and depart for the Springs. On the weather channel, they are reporting 'freaky' weather with tornadoes in Colorado and Los Angeles. California got hit with floods and tornadoes.

I guess what really caught my attention is the reporter's apparent awe at this string of events. An Inconvenient Truth and a lot of global warming literature warn that the signs of climatic shift include the frequency and severity of storms. To me, it's as simple as connecting the dots.

Compound that with the leaking levee of Louisiana and I'm glad I can swim.

Produce Corporation

I just thought of this as something to analyze later. In keeping with the Community Supported Agriculture program and the local farmer's market, I am thinking about a small corporation of neighbors. We get together on a Thursday or Friday and make a shopping list of items to get from the farmer's market (I don't know where the closest one is from Leesville/Fort Polk). Everyone purchases 'shares' of the produce, or a price table is established.

On Saturday, one of the families drives to the local market and purchases the items from the market and returns to housing. The member families come over and portion the produce. Of course, there are a lot of holes in this idea, like the simple convenience of going to the grocery store (corporate means easy) and the freedom of doing one's own shopping and buying what you want or need.

But then, the overall idea here is not simplicity, but assuming some responsibilty for small farms. Now to develop a reason why anyone would want to do such a thing.

Organic farming sequesters atmospheric carbon and nutrients in soil

My interests in soil sciences and microbiology are driven by the desire to return to Iraq and attempt to work their fertile basin between the Euphrates and Tigris. This article demonstrates an added benefit: the sequestering of greenhouse gasses by farms, a function I previously thought the sole property of forests.

Given the amount of deforestation in the world and Brazil's desire to develop the Amazon, it would seem that we must look to other areas to slow the rise of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. I am particularly interested in the white paper's desire to...

"review the current body of scientific literature to determine if there are ways to accelerate the formation of organic material in soil, and to determine if it is possible to predict the rate of carbon and nutrient sequestration."

Iraqis, like Americans, are not patient people. If we were able to arrange an agricultural project there, they would want to see an improvement in their production and soils... quickly. Perhaps a five year plan that would project improvments in productivity and in soil content?