Natural Horse Care
- ISBN13: 9780911311655
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Proper horse care begins with good nutrition practices. Chances are, if a horse needs medical attention, the causes can be traced to poor feeding practices, nutrient-deficient feed, bad farming and, ultimately, imbalanced, demineralized soil. Pat Coleby shares decades of experience working with a variety of horses. She explains how conventional farming and husbandry practices compromise livestock health, resulting in problems that standard veterinary techniques can’t properly address. Natural Horse Care addresses a broad spectrum of comprehensive health care, detailing dozens of horse ailments, discussing their origins, and offering proven, natural treatments.
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(out of 6 reviews)
List Price: $ 20.00
Price: $ 12.75
The Biochar Debate: Charcoal’s Potential to Reverse Climate Change and Build Soil Fertility (The Schumacher Briefings)
- ISBN13: 9781603582551
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
The Biochar Debate is the first book to introduce both the promise and concerns surrounding biochar (fine-grained charcoal used as a soil supplement) to nonspecialists. Charcoal making is an ancient technology. Recent discoveries suggest it may have a surprising role to play in combating global warming. This is because creating and burying biochar removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Furthermore, adding biochar to soil can increase the yield of food crops and the ability of soil to retain moisture, reducing need for synthetic fertilizers and demands on scarce fresh-water supplies.
While explaining the excitement of biochar proponents, Bruges also gives voice to critics who argue that opening biochar production and use to global carbon-credit trading schemes could have disastrous outcomes, especially for the world’s poorest people. The solution, Bruges explains, is to promote biochar through an alternative approach called the Carbon Maintenance Fee that avoids the dangers. This would establish positive incentives for businesses, farmers, and individuals to responsibly adopt biochar without threatening poor communities with displacement by foreign investors seeking to profit through seizure of cheap land.
The Biochar Debate covers the essential issues from experimental and scientific aspects of biochar in the context of global warming to fairness and efficiency in the global economy to negotiations for the future of the Kyoto Protocol.
Rating: 
(out of 18 reviews)
List Price: $ 14.95
Price: $ 7.99
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Review by Ronaye Ireland for Natural Horse Care
Rating:
Truly a must read. It really puts horse care back to 101. If you thought it was complicated, it truly is simple. I wish my own personal health care was that simple. In particular adding the seaweed supplement makes a huge difference in how the horses assimilate their feed. They seem so much more efficient. In any event, read it. It will not only teach you about feed, but also pasture management. Something so much ignored.
Posted on October 20th, 2010 at 10:27 pm
Review by Vicki Kenny for Natural Horse Care
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Pat explains how over the 70 years that she has been working with horses diseases have developed in horses that never existed previously. The use of artificial fertilizers being the main reason – which ties up the minerals in the soil – especially the really important ones for horses!
She tells you how to simply remineralize your soil and will save you lots of money which you spend on expensive chelated processed vitamin and mineral supplements you don’t need.
She has a simple treatment using minerals and vitamins for every ailment, but her main concern in the book is with getting the pH and the mineral content of your paddocks balanced and ‘available’ for use by your horse.
Posted on October 20th, 2010 at 11:20 pm
Review by Louise Jenkins for Natural Horse Care
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Terrific reference! Now I need to tell my co-op man … “I read this book and …”
Posted on October 20th, 2010 at 11:47 pm
Review by Kim Littlehorse for Natural Horse Care
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This book could be more thorough; however, it is great for a novice to natural horse care.
Posted on October 21st, 2010 at 12:23 am
Review by P. Au for Natural Horse Care
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This is one of the best practical horse care book available. It is a no nonsense approach using proper nutrition to correct a wide variety of health issues affecting horses.
Posted on October 21st, 2010 at 1:06 am
Review by Malvin for The Biochar Debate: Charcoal’s Potential to Reverse Climate Change and Build Soil Fertility (The Schumacher Briefings)
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“The Biochar Debate’ by James Bruges is a primer about one of the few known solutions to not just alleviating, but reversing the effects of global warming. In this informative book, Mr. Bruges positions biochar as an earth-friendly response to an urgent environmental challenge imposed upon nature by industrial capitalism. Written with clarity, passion and purpose, Mr. Bruges encourages us to support biochar as an integral part of a strategy that puts people before corporate profits.
Mr. Bruges provides an overall view of global warming, making clear that the planet is well on its way towards becoming inhospitable to human civilization. Mr. Bruges briefly recounts how biochar was used successfully by generations of farmers in the Amazon to improve soil fertility, musing how biochar might help resuscitate soils that have been depleted by industrial agriculture. Indeed, he provides compelling case studies that demonstrate how biochar is used today by growers around the world to achieve better yields at lower cost. The author goes on to discuss the science of how biochar absorbs greenhouse gases and provides estimates on how much biochar might need to be produced to achieve meaningful results, offering hope that a solution may be within our reach.
Importantly, Mr. Bruges stresses that biochar must be a tool that is used to empower small farmers and not push farmers further into the tentacles of big agribusiness. The author discusses the many reasons why top-down schemes that privilege financial speculation in the form of carbon trading generally do not benefit those who work the land. On the other hand, the author believes that the knowledge and the means to produce biochar could provide badly-needed revenues to small farmers, allowing them to nurture the environment and strengthen their local communities. Indeed, the recognition that the kind of sustainable living and production practices of which biochar might be a part are essential towards envisioning a more hopeful future.
I highly recommend this book to everyone.
Posted on October 21st, 2010 at 1:21 am
Review by Dennis Littrell for The Biochar Debate: Charcoal’s Potential to Reverse Climate Change and Build Soil Fertility (The Schumacher Briefings)
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Before I had read this book I had not even heard of biochar. But then I am a city boy. And therein lies a tale of today’s world. Too many of us are city boys and not enough of us have any real understanding of where our food comes from and how.
Biochar is the result of the pyrolysis of biomass, including trees, leaves, grass, and everything that grows. Biochar is also made from the waste products of animals. The method is to heat the “feedstock” (the biomass) to a high temperature in the absence of oxygen. The result is charcoal which ideally is used, as the subtitle of the book has it, to build soil fertility. Biochar–”finely crushed charcoal used for soil enhancement” (p. 107)–does this by returning minerals and especially carbon to the soil. Because of its porous nature biochar is excellent for dry soils because it can hold water in the soil. Mixed with manure and compost, biochar is an ideal fertilizer and has been used as such by indigenous people the world over for thousands of years.
Mixing biochar into soils is also a way of sequestering carbon. When biomass is burned without the presence of oxygen the carbon in the biomass does not combine with oxygen to form carbon dioxide. Consequently there are two main advantages of using biochar: one, it helps the soil to be more fertile, and two, it keeps carbon from getting into the air as carbon dioxide which is a greenhouse gas. To the extent that the biochar stays in the soil, the production and use of biochar reduces the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere: the plants that are made into biochar drew the carbon dioxide out of the air for their growth. According to author James Bruges biochar can stay in the soil for literally hundreds, maybe thousands of years.
Bruges has observed the use of biochar in many places in the world and especially in India. This book reports on his experiences. Central to his experience is that the production and use of biochar works wonderfully well in an environment of smallholders in agrarian communities. If biochar becomes part of a cap and trade process, Bruges warns, land will be given over to industrial farms growing a monoculture in order to get carbon credits. This would be a disaster for small farmers and would result in higher food costs.
There are a number of other problems with implementing and maintaining a biochar culture. Bruges explores these difficulties and offers solutions. Clearly biochar is just one method in our effort to return the world to sustainability. Heaven knows we need all the help we can get.
Posted on October 21st, 2010 at 1:29 am
Review by Charles Ashbacher for The Biochar Debate: Charcoal’s Potential to Reverse Climate Change and Build Soil Fertility (The Schumacher Briefings)
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At this point in the scientific argument, few if any people with any credibility doubt the reality of global warming, in fact that is really no longer the issue. The debate is over the economic consequences of proposed solutions, which drives the last remaining doubts being expressed over global warming. Given the enormous scale of the problem, any effective solution will have costs that are also enormous. Government intervention is fraught with political problems as wealthy interests are willing to spend enormous sums to delay any countermeasures that will affect their welfare.
Fortunately, there is a solution and you see it being implemented all over the world. Small units, from the family to farms to other businesses, are implementing green policies and lowering their carbon footprint. The method to remove additional carbon from the atmosphere put forward in this book is the creation of charcoal, an easy process given a biomass raw material and then incorporating it into the soil. There is a great deal of evidence that charcoal will restore the fertility of depleted soils. This is not a new idea, when I was young a relative that was an old farmer was adamant about spreading the ashes from his wood stove on his garden and farm fields. What makes this solution practical is that it is a tactic that could be used by small farmers around the world and could be done at a profit.
Agriculture produces an enormous amount of biomass, a great deal of which could be utilized. Bruges describes historical and recent examples of societies and farmers that have converted biomass into charcoal and achieved significant improvements in soil fertility. Given that the carbon in the charcoal stays locked in the soil for thousands of years, this is an effective way to “permanently” extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The threat of global warming is real and we may have already reached the tipping point of no return. Solving this problem is going to take a concerted and diffuse effort and the use of charcoal is yet another effective tool that can be used. This is a fascinating book as it puts forward a solution where carbon can be extracted from the atmosphere in a profitable manner that is easy to implement.
Posted on October 21st, 2010 at 1:56 am
Review by Sheri Fogarty for The Biochar Debate: Charcoal’s Potential to Reverse Climate Change and Build Soil Fertility (The Schumacher Briefings)
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This is a fascinating book, about the process of using charcoal – Biochar – to build fertility in the soil and reverse climate change.
I had heard some conversations about this in my organic gardening group and was very curious to read the book. There are many things that we can do to increase soil fertility, compost and rotate grazing so that the soil can be fertilized by animals. Using charcoal to fertilize turns out to be a very old method and very useful in areas of sparse conditions.
The Biochar fund even developed a stove that can be used in countries where there is a shortage of firewood, such as desert areas of Africa. The stoves are very simply made, use less natural resources and have the added bonus of producing Biochar which can then be added to the soil to increase yields.
If you are interested in Permaculture, organic gardening or climate change you will find this book has some great new information.
Posted on October 21st, 2010 at 2:03 am
Review by Lance M. Foster for The Biochar Debate: Charcoal’s Potential to Reverse Climate Change and Build Soil Fertility (The Schumacher Briefings)
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This is a good introduction to the concept of Biochar as a soil amendment and its possible use in addressing climate and soil fertility issues on a global level. It is fairly thin and a quick read for those with not much time or just wanting a quick overview. It looks at the crisis in soil productivity and industrial agriculture, the ancient form of biochar called terra preta (dark soil) which allowed intensive agriculture by indigenous peoples in the nutrient poor soils of the Amazon, agricultural applications, some examples of biochar operations around the world today, the science underlying biochar, and the place for biochar in carbon credit systems. The author has been active in global sustainability and engineering all his life, and writes from that perspective.
For those who already know something about biochar and are wanting to give biochar a more serious look, whether for personal use on one’s land, at the scientific level, for development as a commercial product, and/or as a policy issue, I would suggest that one purchase either Biochar for Environmental Management: Science and Technology by Lehman or Biochar: Charcoal, Pyrolysis, Biomass, Biosequestration, Carbon capture and storage, Geoengineering, Bioenergy in China, Carbon sequestration, Terra preta by Miller.
Posted on October 21st, 2010 at 2:22 am
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