Anaerobic Digestion is one of the more promising biological technologies for sustainable waste management and has the potential to turn a large and worsening agro-headache into a growing opportunity for sustainable farming. It can extract useful biogas energy and high quality fertilizer from manure and other problematic agro waste products while also reducing the air and water pollution and emissions of greenhouse gases from a farming operation. Anaerobic Digestion harnesses natural living biological processes to maintain the natural carbon cycle and extract useful energy and fertilizer byproducts from what had been problematic waste streams. It is well suited for many types of farming operations and is an important sustainable farming practice.
UPDATE: Department of Agriculture announced a public/private partnership to help spread the use of anaerobic digester technology in dairy operations with the goal of reducing their greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2020.
Urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) is rapidly spreading around the world. The global adoption of urban farming is primarily being driven by the dire poverty of much of the world’s urban poor and is becoming an increasingly vital part of the world’s urban food supply. In rich developed cities around the world an urban farming movement is also taking root, partly because of environmental concerns and the adoption of a local food ethic, but also to help address the persistent hunger that still exists in urban areas in industrialized countries.
Keyline design is rooted in the natural topography of the land. It promotes the rapid growth of natural fertility and of topsoil by distributing water more evenly over the landscape and encouraging the development of good soil structure. It does this by adapting to the natural landform and by using subsoil ploughs to create a comb like network of deep subsoil cuts that disturb the soil profile as little as possible.
