Grow your own food, Make your own lil home veggie garden

Well, You can pitch in to deal with the food shortage by growing your own veggies...in your own lil garden.To all your lucky folks who actually have homes with earth around that you could grow plants on ..Please please,, plant atleast a few herbs and some tomatoes, okra , aubergines and such.
I remember the small veggie garden i planted when i was a kid growing up and my parents had a large garden area around the house....They grew all sorts of fruits too..there was lot of land around.I planted some chilli seeds..they grew..the seeds...we had a large chilli plant and it bore chillies too..I planted potato eyes too..but then,, well by the time they got a lil big..some rodent from the garden ate them all up..LOL
The local food is more about growing your own food and helping food shortage .It is not as much about paying more to someone else who will then grow food on the same piece of land over and over again... well..anyways..for all us not so lucky folks who now live in high rise apartments(yours truly included).. we can try growing herbs in the kitchen window sill and if there is a balcony , can try growing some plants in a pot too..Only thing is..make sure there is enought enrichment of the potted soil with kitchen waste..hmmmmm
Yeah , btw, eating only what is necessary and steering clear of things we can avoid eating aka other animals, is a good way to combat food shortage too.Gluttony is very unnecessary.Eating meat is too.

Have you heard of the WATER FOOTPRINT?How vegetarianism can help in dealing with foodshortage

A lot of people have started using the word CARBON FOOTPRINT more and more in their conversations, just like , using the word , 'Going Green', or the word, ORGANIC, has become another fad.
The part of this whole repeated misuse or overuse of the word without actually ever really understanding the concept of it or without actually truly doing something about it, is what irritates me very much and each time some ill informed person just goes yada yada yada about green or organic or most recently carbon footprint, All i want to do is make them sit down and then proceed to ask them to explain the concept to me.
Anyways, let us come back to CARBON FOOTPRINT.This is a broad indicater of how much of the non renewable resources have each one of us as single entity used up .The larger the footprint , the larger the wastage that has been done by us.
Now, A waterfootprint is much the same, the amount of water that one wastes and the amount that one doesnt need to waste or the water that they could have prevented from getting wasted had they been careful .
For eg. you know we spend so much of water feeding a cow,, approximately 40L of water, just so that we could drink a Litre of milk.So, we have had to invest 40L of good to drink water for just a mere 1L of milk
I mean, really, it is absolutely wastage.Soymilk prepared from beans uses water to grow the plants but ofcourse that is all it needs besides soil minerals.
One pound of soybeans , Yield a lot of soymilk besides the byproducts thereof after the milk has been extracted which are absolutely edible and rich in minerals.
We could very well, skip the step of feeding the cow the soybeans and then drinking the meagre yield of cow's milk
The cow needs to be fed as well, besides being given water, to produce a Litre of cow's milk.
Get my point?
we could have saved that much of food and that much of water, had we decided to just go ahead and drink soymilk .While excluding a step in the foodchain we save a lot of resources.
We feed the cow, corn and soybeans ,peanuts and what not, which for a fact , could actually be useful as food to us ourselves.Thus, by eating that very corn and by eating soybeans and peanuts and not breeding more cows just to be slaugthered, we are actually countering the food shortage.A 40L of water would be enough for twenty people for a day.The amount of feed that a cow feeds per day would be enough as filling meals for five or six people.
Simply said, if we can eat wheat and carrots and soybeans and corn ourselves, why go ahead and feed pounds and pounds of that to a cow and finally kill the cow after having fed the cow for months this way?
Had we been a tiger or a lion or an alligator which cannot survive on carrots or soybeans , i would never have suggested this idea.
Afterall, our ancestoral primates were herbivores.We sure can go back to that and save the environment.

Misinterpretation of the term 'BIOFUEL' and problems thereof

I am NOT really for BIOFUEL that is manufactured from edible foods..converting good to eat food into fuel when there is so much of population explosion and the ensuing increase in food needs.
The term BIOFUEL has in the recent day and time come to include various varieties of fuel.Some of them make sense and stay true to the concept of them being environmentally friendly while some others are totally defying the basic principle.
The word Biofuel was initially coined to denote any fuel that is organically derived from organic sources.
To be very technical, Petroleum by itself is also derived from Plant matter or organic material.The only difference is that it has taken that organic matter thousands of years to convert into crude oil..So, technically, Most fuel is biofuel including coal and crudeoil.
But then, the term by itself was coined to denote alternative organic sources of fuel that don't take as long to be formed and are renewable in a certain way.
I had to write this blog entry coz a lot of people wanting to be environmentally conscious are mistaking Biofuel to be a fool- proof green option.Well..it has its own pitfalls.
Let me broadly classify the various Biofuel options available to use
1/ COMPOST OR WASTE DERIVED BIOFUEL-By far the best and ideal source to create biofuel would be waste---that can be composted to produce cooking fuel-- Everyone who has a garden or backyard can try doing this. .All the kitchen waste/farm animal waste/human fecal waste and other biodegradable matter could be buried in a deep trench like enclosure to produce compost.This then can be further degraded in specially constructed tanks(which are fairly easy to construct) to produce very very efficient cooking fuel or gas based heating for the home.
This option is a WIN-WIN SITUATION, All you are using is waste-You are recyling the stuff-the compost can be as such used as organic garden manure..The cooking gas takes care of kitchen cooking energy needs.The same gas can work for heating needs too.Very good , dontcha think?

2/Using already used cooking oil to produce biofuel for vehicles--I am very skeptical about this option.
I hear that MC donald's uses the already used oil-(the oil that was used to fry the various things they make and sell ) to make biofuel and then run their transportation trucks...
Well..for one, the oil they are using has already been used and if it is not used to make biofuel would perhaps just be discarded by then..Keeping that in mind..the option that such oil instead of being dumped in garbage dumps is actually being put to use..That is AN ATTEMPT AT SENSIBLE RECYCLING.
But having said that, all i am wondering is "HOW MUCH OF OIL DOES MC DONALD'S OTHER FAST FOOD CHAINS USE IN A DAY TO BE ABLE TO PRODUCE THAT MUCH OF WASTE OIL" cough cough..that much of oil fried stuffs are being consumed by people each day and that pretty much explains the obesity and diabetes and coronary artery diseases amongst the fast food chain patrons..But that is going be a whole other blog entry on unhealthy food patterns.

3/MAKING BIOFUEL OUT OF FOOD THAT HAS BEEN SPECIFICALLY GROWN FOR the PURPOSE of producing biodiesel-
One must remember that such crops are grown on farmland and that crop of food is actually edible and i consider this kind of biofuel absolutely defeating the purpose of environmentally sensible...Food is precious..
The human population is ever exploding and so are food needs which grow each year..If one is going to go ahead and use good farm land to produce food that is not going to be eaten and is used instead to power vehicles..that is absolutely undesirable....
There is already not enough land to produce enough food to feed everyone..By using more farm land to produce fuel to run the vehicles of some elitist pseudo environmentally conscious group while a whole other group are going to bear the brunt of this act by going without food is NOT ACCEPTABLE.It doesn't make sense.
Using good to eat food to make fuel defeats the purpose of minimizing vehicle usage and saving the environment .unless you are using already used vegetable oil to make your fuel...you are not doing justice to the purpose of environmental conservation .
4/FIREWOOD etc-wood is by itself biofuel too(technically speaking since it doesnt take thousand years to grow a tree-but mind you it does take years and years to grow a big enough tree to yield firewood)..but firewood produces more smoke than energy..not really a great trait for an ideal fuel..there ya go...worst possible option .If you are using wood chips to burn your barbeque..think twice..you are doing no good .

Now for the summation :
An energy source is considered to be efficient only if it can produce large amounts of energy with minimum wastage....and In lieu of recent developments where the production of biofuel from edible foods has been more or less banned , i would like to explain more about why they had to do it...
BIOFUEL PRODUCED FROM VEGETABLE OILS IS NOT ENERGY EFFICIENT.It doesn't provide enough energy that qualifies it to be deemed efficient.We are all attempting to find fuels that produce a lot of energy with complete combustion ...and gasoline definitely is highly energy efficient which is why we use it to run vehicles..Our attempt all along has been to find enviromentally efficient fuels that are comparable to gasoline and yet somehow are more enviromentally friendly .Also..I am sure all of you are aware of the food shortage situation too...it is senseless to let some people starve while some others get to use that food as biofuel..ya know..get my point?

CONCLUSION:
Compost derived methane gas is a great biofuel while vegetable oil derived Biodiesel is not such a good idea. Solar powered vehicles are definitely better than biodiesel.Ofcourse , Solar power has its own pitfalls..but that is a whole other blog entry.
Take care everyone..ride a bike for short distance solo commutes.hugs !