منتدى استراحات زايد - تقرير انجليزي

Nature's Cycle strives to provide solutions that help your body in the toll modern
living takes on it. Whether it be purifying the water, filled with harmful substances,
we drink every day, providing your body with essential nutrients that a lacking diet
doesn't supply adequately, or purifying the air we breathe, it's all about giving your
body the opportunity not to be affected by a harmful environment
Every cell needs "ATP energy" for the heart cells to beat, the lung cells to breathe, the nerve cells to sense. Energy needed to think. Energy to be alive.

Take a step back and see the wonder of mother nature. Nature takes the outputs of cellular respiration (carbon dioxide & water) and makes them the inputs to photosynthesis. Nature takes the outputs of photosynthesis (oxygen & glucose) and makes them the inputs to cellular respiration.

This cycle of life goes 'round and 'round.

Life has come full circle. It's perfect. Mother nature is wasting nothing, while taking care of its children. The plants take care of the animals. The animals take care of the plants. The process is filled with so many detailed steps that have to be perfectly aligned, and executed in perfect sequence, or the cycle doesn't work.

Once a fossil fuel is burned, it can never return to its original state. In today's modern society, it is as if we are living comfortably on a runaway train with no brakes. On the other hand, the traditional life in the Edo Period was like living on a big disk making one revolution per year. The disk was linked to the sun, and moved on solar power, not fossil fuels.
The population of 18th century Edo Japan was between 30 and 31 million people. Japan's favorable climate allowed for lots of agricultural production, which allowed the country to produce enough food to support such a large population. Rice was the agricultural product that was most important and produced in the greatest amount.

In this traditional agriculture system, rice cultivation was 15 times more energy efficient than it is today. Moreover, the energy to cultivate rice (human power) was generated from the grains, potatoes, and other food that had been harvested in the previous year or two. In other words, people were able to grow rice using only the solar energy obtained in the preceding couple of years.

Modern agricultural technology allows a small number of people to produce a large amount of rice with incredible ease compared to the old days. However, today's advanced technology is dependent on massive amounts of fossil fuel, which basically means that modern agriculture wouldn't exist without oil. While we like to think that we eat domestically produced rice, our rice is in fact grown using petroleum imported all the way from oil producing countries. Thus, in an indirect sense, we live by drinking oil and are indeed very far from being a self-sufficient society.

Except for the harvested rice saved for its seeds and that placed in storage, the rest was used in various forms of food. Though people mostly ate it as boiled rice, they made some rice into steamed cakes, snacks, and sake. Rice was the staple of the traditional Japanese diet.

Needless to say, the rice people eat comes out of their bodies as excrement. A long time ago, when excrement was a precious fertilizer, it naturally belonged to the person who produced it. Farmers used to buy excrement for cash or trade it for a comparable amount of vegetables.

Fertilizer shortages were a chronic problem during the Edo period. As the standard of living in cities improved, surrounding villages needed an increasing amount of fertilizer. This resulted in further shortages, and thus fertilizer prices were continually rising.

Meanwhile, while inedible, harvested straw was in great demand for various uses during the period. Realizing that straw was an important natural resource, farmers chose to grow a particular type of rice that would produce a large amount of straw. In the Edo Period, farmers were able to harvest rice that yielded about the same amount of straw in terms of weight. Its greatest use was as fertilizer, with half of the amount produced used to make compost or barnyard manure.

About one third of straw produced was used as fuel. Straw burns easily and doesn't produce much heat, but large amounts were sufficient for heating bath water or for boiling rice. When people needed more heat, they often used straw as the kindling to start a stronger fire. The resulting straw ash was then used as a high-quality potassium fertilizer.

The remaining straw was used by farmers to make a wide variety of straw products. They used these products at home or sold them to supplement their cash income. It is no exaggeration to say that Japan in the Edo Period was full of straw products. About half of the men at the time wore straw sandals. When moving to a new house, people usually wrapped their household goods with straw mats, binding them with straw rope. Used straw products were burned in the cooking oven, which was found in every household, or used as fuel at public baths. Farmers and "ash traders" then purchased the ash. In this way, almost all of the nearly 10 million tons of rice and straw harvested every year returned to the soil in some way or another. Carbon dioxide generated through fermentation or combustion was absorbed by plants for photosynthesis and thus transformed back into living matter. All of the energy required for this process was supplied by the sun.

In other words, people in the Edo Period didn't have to think about recycling. All they had to do was to live normally and the rice and straw they produced (the key agricultural products) would end up back in the soil and sprout out again as rice seedlings next year.

Eisuke Ishikawa is a writer who specializes in the environmental and ecological issues in the Edo period (1603-1867). He is also a lecturer at Musashino Art University. His recent books introduce wisdom of sustainable living in the Edo period from the angles of technology, energy, resource management, and recycling systems of the period.

This article is featured by Japan for Sustainability (Japan for Sustainability (JFS)).

Environmental degradation in Tanzania is increasing at an alarming pace due to mainly human factors. Destructive human activities such as deforestation, intensive grazing, dumping of toxic wastes, regular application of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides have negative effects on bio-diversity and ecosystems. These phenomena are neither congruent with agricultural productivity nor socio-economic progress.

As many farmers still practise monoculture, new pests and diseases often attack crops and affect their crop production. This leaves the farmers at the level of subsistence farming and subjects some to live below the poverty line. What worries more is the fact that even with conventional agriculture, which is supposed to increase productivity, farm output in rural areas is still poor.

In the past, environmental education and good farming methods were not new in Tanzanian schools. Both school children and adults (through adult education) learned how to keep a healthy environment, manage a farm, use appropriate farming methods, prepare a balanced family diet, create food security and improve household income.

Primary schools, adult education centres, secondary schools and institutes of higher learning promoted environmental protection and conservation through sustainable agriculture, particularly, organic farming. Schools had farms where pupils and students practised what they studied in class. Agriculture was a highly recommended subject in the school curriculum.

Nowadays, however, things have changed considerably and priorities too. In schools and colleges, information communication technologies (ICTs) have taken over and, therefore, computer science seems to overshadow environmental education. How many pupils or students today know what is sustainable farming or environmental conservation? Is agriculture still seen as the backbone of the nation as it used to be a few years ago? Do pupils, students and adults of today know this formula: before cutting a tree, plant three? Or know that before the soil feeds you, feed it first?

Nature cycle concerns about such questions! It is about the interdependence between human and environmental health. This reciprocal relationship is very important because human activities can either contribute to environmental protection and conservation or destruction. Apparently, positive human activities lead to environmental protection and the negative ones to degradation. The consequence is disastrous to the nature cycle – biodiversity and ecosystems.

Envirocare (Environmental, Human Rights Care and Gender Organisation), is a Tanzanian non-governmental organisation that promotes organic farming methods in the country. The organisation encourages farmers to improve soil fertility through the application of compost manure as an alternative farm input for industrial fertilisers, which are too expensive to small-scale farmers and eventually exhaust the soil. Compost manure increases soil micro-organisms and improves soil fertility.

In areas where farmers are used to chemical fertilizers, the soil is exhausted by such chemicals and the farmers are exposed to ecological vagaries. In areas where farmers use compost manure and practise organic farming, they are sure of eating organic foodstuffs and living in a natural and healthy environment. So, the application of compost manure replenishes soil fertility and it is ideal for rural farmers.

It is very simple. Just think of making your own compost manure near your home or garden. You can learn how to make it or probably you know already how to make one. This can be done at anytime of the year and you are able to do it.

It is simply a way of recycling everything that comes from the land so that it can be returned to the land to be used again. You can collect manure from animals and plants: goats, cattle, pigs, sheep, chickens, grass, leaves and plants.

For livestock keepers it is easier for them to obtain animal manure. But it is possible that some of them don’t know how to make use of it. If the animals are fed at home, just collect the grass or leaves that are mixed with animal manure. This makes the process even quicker for decomposition. You can speed up the process of decomposition by pre-mixing plant or grass matter with animal manure and water.

Choose a nice site, e.g. under a tree where there is enough shade to keep the moisture. Mark a site e.g. 1-2 m by 1 m. Loosen the earth, place twigs and broken branches in a 10 cm layer over the whole square. Mix together the plant materials and animal manure and add some water. Add some ashes, lime and soil over the pile. Make another layer by placing two poles in the compost and lay other poles across.

Continue making layers until all the plant materials are used. Add some water (by sprinkling) and cover the top with leaves. Repeat the stages as you see it necessary (e.g. pouring water) to speed up the decomposition process. The compost will continue for 2-3 weeks as the microbes in the soil break down the materials into rich humus full of plant nutrients.

The compost may be ready for use in 3-4 weeks, if not, turn the heap over again until you have humus. Once the compost is ready you can now use it in your farm or garden. Some farmers grow vegetables at home and this probably is not a new thing for them.

Thus, compost manure is a simple and affordable way of making the soil regain its strength (nutrients) and keep the plants healthy. Organic farming enables you to have healthy products and a healthy soil (full of nutrients). So, do something positive to the soil and you will see wonders. This is how the nature cycle is maintained!

Telesphor R. Magobe is a Roman Catholic Missionary Priest of the Society of the Missionaries of Africa, traditionally known as White Fathers. He has completed university studies in an international settings in Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, and England. He’s working with Daily Times and is heading the features desk. He’s also currently working on his LLB from the Open University of Tanzania

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