Siwmae (Hiya) WK!

Actually my white-clover undersowings, growing strongly as ground cover in my no-till food plots beneath my positively BURGEONING food-plants (see! mine's bigger'n yourn! Nyah!) do seem to be fixing atmospheric nitrogen pretty effectively, just as the experts say.

Also, the plots get composting-john output, once it's been well composted in the holding bins. And the free-ranging Muscovey ducklings (with their Turkish [Anatolian, Kangal, Karabash, Akbash, take your pick of these names and do a Youtube search] Shepherd Dog bodyguard) are taking up a lot of nitrogen, phosphorus, and other goodies, in the form of slugs, snails, etc., and passing them along to the beds in the form of their collected night-droppings. Collected and spread by me, that is. The duckling don't go up on the raised beds. You can multiply detailed local tactics of food-growning like this endlessly, using the permaculture methods.

Bob's right: if we can just drag ourselves into being slightly brighter than yeast, and get sophisticated organinc growing going bigtime, in the form of the many already-proven tactics of permaculture, we should be able to replace the horrendously inefficient, abysmally low productivity of industag (see here: http://www.permaculture.com/drupal/node/141 for more vindication of that assertion) with an organic agriculture that could, realistically, feed everyone -- whilst we do something humane but effective about our current population overshoot.

But WILL humans behave more wisely than yeast......? What do you reckon! --RhG