I thought AP was a brilliant idea from the first time I saw it. Here was a great way to produce foods in my own home and recently I found out it may help the environment in other ways.
I recently finished reading the two books from Peter Andrews: Back from the Brink and Beyond the Brink. These books opened my eyes and encouraged me to seek out a forum on his ideas I found the Natural Sequence Farming (NSF) site and been reading through it.
The main focus of Peters books seems to be on the role and movement of water in Australia. One of the things that intrigued me was his description of how Australia used to be, and still should be, a series of stepped flood plains, it was described as - a stepped diffusion broad ache hydroponics system. This struck me as this like flood and drain GB's.
On the NSF I found an interesting discussion on the work of Dr. Jan Pokorny. It talks about two water cycles the familiar large cycle of rains from the sea but more importantly the small water cycle of terrestrial based rain. Our current water management and agricultural system have been leading to net outflow from land based water storage to the sea. This imbalance is disturbing the rainfall patterns over most continents Australia included. The main damage is done by loss of plant cover and draining of water.
What I realized is that our AP setups allow us to use and retain water on the surface and to produce plants that can then be not only used for food but can also provide mulch as ground cover for developing better and more dirt gardens. I know it is small stuff but millions of small stuff can amount to significant effects.
Lets say that we live on an area that has encroaching desertification as we setup AP setups we can produce an edge zone where we hold water and increase plant growth, this growth can be used to support other plant life in the area by improving mulch cover and providing nutrients over time this edge zone could move gradually pushing back the dryer unproductive area. In the same way AP could be used to increase surface water retention and plant cover over large areas of cities, all of which helps support small water cycle.
Post about Dr. Jan Pokorny and his work.
http://www.naturalsequencefarming.com/f ... .php?t=309
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