Compost Vingnanam (Tamil Quarterly' Bulletin on Composting). Inquire on price from: "A. S. Venkat Rao, editor Compost Vingnanam 28 New Street Tiruµelveli District (Tamilnadu) South INDIA Also covers manure and methane as the editor has built more than 170 methane generators. The next issue·, to be published Jan. 1976, will feature the-ORE PLAN (see RAIN, no. 1, p. 22; no. 4, p. 14, or no. 6, p. 5). Future issues will •include plans and photos of simple, new methane plant designs and a full textbook on methane generation is at press. Pesticide,and Organic Gardening Ruling. , The Lartgans of Toppenish sent·us a clipping on the recent court ruling in their favor over a pesticides damage suit filed in June 1973. The Langans con'tended that pesticides sprayed near their 2-1/2 acre farm prevented their crop from receiving an organic gardening certificate. The ruling could obviously have implications elsewhere. They also mentiope~ that January 24, 1976 is the annual meeting 6f the Northwest Organic Food Producers Association, to be held at the Home Federal Savings and Loan, 5th & Yakima Ave., in Yakima, Wash. Green Fun: Instant Toys, Tricks and Amusements from Weeds, Seeds & Flowering Things,' by Maryanne ' Gjersvik, 77 pp. $1.95 from: Devin-Adair Co. 143 Sound Beach Ave. Old Greenwich, CT 06870 Dandelion curls, plantain violin, snapdragon puppets, burr baskets, grass whistles, daisy wreaths and more. And take a child with you . .. an excellent introduction to green, ~rowing things for the 2 to 6 year old~·... kid ecology! Tilth Newsletter, $5 /yr. . P.O. Box 2382 Olympia, WA 98507 More and more sure of itself. We often find out about things iri our own back ·yard related to agriculture and energy. Last issue was an unexpected packet-of things including "New Food Systems in Vermont," "Ecology of Compost" (a t how-to) and "A Decentralist Approach to World Food Crisis." Conseroation of the I.And a'!d the Use of Waste Materials for Man's Benefit, Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, U.S.Senate, March 2S, 1975. A pretty well-known summary of the present and prolonged effects -of mono crop agriculture in the midwest. and lack of or failure of adequate windbreak ~ystems. The second half of the report is most interesting, outlining the use of sewage sludge and animal man-ures as fertilizers. "Of the 7 million tons of dry sewage sludge equivalent now produced annually in the United States, it is estimated that 40% goes into landfills, 20% is applied.on land, 25% is incinerated and 15% is discharged into the ocean. Because land use is the only direct beneficial use of thjs matedal, we have op- •portunities for a five-fold increase in such use: Implementation of the Water Quality Act of 1972 (Public Law 92-500) is expected to result in a three- to five-fold increase in the production of sewage sludge in the next 5 years. We can thus anticipate a large increase in the pressure to use sludges on agricultural land." • Enhancing Biological Nitrogen Fixation, edited by Harold Evans, single copies free from: • Office of the Deputy Assistant Director for Biological and Sodal Sciences, NSF 1800 G St., N.W. Washington, DC 20S50 The annual market value of nitrogen obtained from the atmosphere by •agricultural legumes in the U.S.. is about $3.3 billion dollars. This nonpolluting biological process utilizes neither natural gas nor petroleum as its major source of energy, but is primarily dependent upon solar energy captured by plan ts -through photosynthesis. This report summarizes present knowledge about nitrogen fixation and suggests ways to increase the process in other species. It suggests gaps in understanding where 'further research would be useful. Nov 1975 RAIN Page 3 Countryside Small Stock Journal 130 E. Madison St. Waterloo, WI 53594 This journal is mostly for the ser10us farmer, but/and especially for the farmer who wants to find simple, resource-saving met~ods. "When water has-to be carried from a well, average usage is 8 gallons per day. When a pump is put at the kitchen sink, consumption increases _to 10 gallons per person per day. Put in a fau~et and that figure goes up to 12 gallons. Introduce hot water in the kitchen and you'll use 18 gallons a day-.... Put in a complete pumping system and usage increases to 30 gallons a day." It is mostly written by _the readers, li~e Smallhqlder, Alternative Sources of Energy, Living in the Ozarks, Tilth. , • Generally a notch richer lo~king than those magazines. Enough good stuff for anyone and urban farmers as well. Organic Gardening Under Glass, by Katy & George Abraham, 308 pp., index, $8.95, from: Rodale Press Organic Park Emmaus, PA 18049 ,Covers, with explanatory photos, drawings and charts, greenhouse typesJloca- . tion and layout, simple homemade hotbeds and cold frames; greenhouse vs. outdoor garden soil, how to mix_topsoil, compost and other plant food; how to control growing conditions in terms of moistl,lre, temperature, ventilation a~d lighting. Tips on energy conservation . are useful but incomplete without solar _ heating and thermal storage a la Steve ,Baer's 5 5-gal. drumwalls. -Good but conventional. A primer for more advanced environments such as Jim deKorne's . integrated agriculture-aquaculture~solarwind ecosystem (next issue) and Bill . yanda's Solar Sustenance Projec;t (last issue, vol. 2, no. 1, p. 7).
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