Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

The SAANENS dairy goat has an amazing ability to produce milk. The problem here is after you have milk, butter, cream, ice cream, and soap; what do you do with the rest of the milk? Once I am spending more time at home I will be getting a good dairy goat. Could almost live off just cheese and milk, lol.

Nubians and togs are definitely the noisiest and the saanen cross was the sweetest of the bunch and the best milker.
Dairy goat does are very sweet, docile and almost odorless. .... Bucks, on the other hand, are the nastiest and smelliest animals I have ever encountered. Even pigs will have nothing to do with their waste, if given a choice.

Currently, I've been toying with the idea of buying a miniture cow breed but my system will be built first.

I heard someone say yesterday that democracies have a lifespan but his take on the collapse was different than mine. I believe that growing civil unrest from anger, loss of jobs, loss of shelter, growing fear and uncertainty, will eventually freeze the flow of goods and services, forcing a totalitarian response, which in turn will create worse civil unrest as more people, those who were not the problem to start with, begin to face lack of water, lack of food, and the destruction of necessary infrastructure and basically cause societal collaspe from the inside out.
Already the economic downturn has become the greatest U.S. threat. You should read this- it's very interesting.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/ar ... tu7WK7SUyg

"The US tradition of openness, developed skills and mobility probably puts it in a better position to reinvent itself," the US intelligence chief said.

Anyway, this person's version is along these lines-
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."

"The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From courage to liberty;
4. From liberty to abundance;
5. From abundance to complacency;
6. From complacency to apathy;
7. From apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage "
http://www.theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/21P ... thnsUS.htm

Comments, anyone?

I agree a home is not an investment and people should stop looking at it that way though most people leverage its value to gain more stuff they can not afford. The old way ob business must go.. I mean look at the oil companies my company works for. They have billions in liquid assets, yet they take out loans to drill wells. No loans, no drilling.. Then the gov gives them huge tax breaks and underwrites bad loans.. Thats just messed up..

The current food survival scenario goes something like this:

Only one in a hundred Americans grow the food that the other 99 eat.
Most Americans haven’t a clue about where their food comes from and what it takes for the food they require for their very survival to get from farm to the supermarket.
Much of our food comes from grain or grain fed livestock and is grown in the Midwest.
Grain is moved from America’s grain belt to the coasts on only 2 vulnerable railroads.
We consume what we produce each year, with almost nothing stored in case of future shortage.
Should drought or other disaster occur, food stocks will be quickly consumed with little backup possible.
If people in Los Angeles were willing to burn down their own neighborhoods due to a court case, imagine what people will do when there is little to eat and small prospect of having enough for some time to come.
Of course people in rural areas have a greater chance of finding or growing enough food to feed themselves and survive, but in urban areas this is virtually impossible.
When food shortages occur, there is likely to be a great outpouring of urbanites into rural areas, creating havoc with their survival efforts. It will be difficult to grow crops or raise cattle with so many transient people attempting to survive on what little food and resources they can scrounge.

Underground cave used to grow weed.........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MtYEyvD ... re=related

Anything is possible with enough money or initiative.

but in the future the one who owns the food (or the rights to food) will control the rest..

as David Korten says Money is a mechanism for control.....

but in the future the one who owns the food (or the rights to food) will control the rest..

Sweet sorghum, clean miracle crop for feed and fuel
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The hardy sweet sorghum plant could be the miracle crop that provides cheap animal feed and fuel without straining the world`s food supply or harming the environment, said scientists working on a pilot farming project in India.


"We consider sweet sorghum an ideal `smart crop` because it produces food as well as fuel," William Dar, Director General of the non-profit International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) said in a statement.

Sweet sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) is the world`s fifth largest grain crop after rice, corn, wheat and barley.

It grows in dry conditions, tolerates heat, salt and waterlogging, making it an ideal crop for semi-arid areas where many of the world`s poor live, ICRISAT agronomist Mark Winslow said in an interview with AFP.

The plant grows to a height of 2.6-4.0 meters (8-12 feet) and looks like corn. Its stalks are crushed yielding sweet juice that is fermented and distilled to obtain bioethanol, a clean burning fuel with a high octane rating.

It has high positive energy balance, producing about eight units of energy for every unit of energy invested in its cultivation and production, roughly equivalent to sugarcane and about four times greater than the energy produced by corn.

Sweet sorghum requires little or no irrigation, limiting the use of fuel-burning water pumps that emit carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas contributing to climate change, Winslow said.

"With proper management, smallholder farmers can improve their incomes by 20 percent compared to alternative crops in dry areas in India," said Dar.

In partnership with Rusni Distilleries and some 791 farmers in Andhra Pradesh, India, ICRISAT helped to build and operate the world`s first commercial bioethanol plant, which began operations in June 2007.

Sweet sorghum in India costs 1.74 dollars to produce a gallon (3.78 liters) of ethanol, compared with 2.19 dollars for sugarcane and 2.12 dollars for corn, the research institute said.

Similar public-private-farmer partnership projects are also underway in the Philippines, Mexico, Mozambique and Kenya, as countries search for alternative fuels, India-based ICRISAT added.

The United States and European Union are also very interested in making biofuel from sweet sorghum, Winslow said.

The US Department of Agriculture is sponsoring an international conference in Houston, Texas, in August to examine the plant`s potential in ethanol production.

In addition to ethanol, "I think (sorghum) is going to be one of the two big crops in the tropics" that supply biofuel such as ethanol, the demand for which "far exceeds the supply" on the world market, Winslow said.

"It`s a win-win situation" for developing nations since it allows them to save money they now spend on oil imports and invest it in sweet sorghum-ethanol production in dry areas.

He said India could meet its entire fuel needs with 100 bioethanol plants like the the one in Andhra Pradesh, which produces 40,000 liters (10,568 gallons) of ethanol every day.

Unlike corn, sweet sorghum is not in high demand in the global food market, so its use in biofuel production would have little impact on food prices and food security, ICRISAT said.

Sweet sorghum is grown on more than 42 million hectares (107 million acres) in 99 countries, with United States, Nigeria, India, China, Mexico, Sudan and Argentina its leading producers.


Copyright © 2008 AFP.

Source: AFP