Daryl's Journal

What Happened Today? We all left at 6:00 AM to drive to Orlando to see Chris. We arrived around 8:00 AM. Chris seemed to be in good spirits. We played Jewish gin almost 6 hours. When we got home I went to the Sunshine Raceway. Robert Crisp came all the way in the back to the front in 14 laps. San Francisco Giants beat the California Angels (4-3) to win Game 1 of the World Series.

GAIA- Planetary Management:

396. The year-round warmth of the tropics is fine for crop plants, but it is also fine for weeds, pests, and diseases; the tropics lack that great herbicide and pesticide of temperate zones, known  as winter.

397. Moreover, many temperate-zone lands feature naturally fertile soils, whereas many tropical soils have lost their nutrients through millennia of tropical downpours that wash out crucial minerals.

398. An area of just one hectare of naturally rich soil in East Anglia (UK) or Iowa can yield as much harvest in one year as 10 hectares of naturally impoverished soil in Bolivia or Zambia.

399. At the same time, temperate-zone farmers, being members of the affluent world, can afford to maintain their soils’ fertility by mans of ever-growing inputs of synthetic fertilizer, plus capital-intensive machinery and other investments.

400. In other words, temperate-land farmers can now engage in “industrialized agriculture”, an option not generally available in the developing world.

What Happened Today? Feather Sound walk. Worked at home. Presentations for the New Orleans Paint Show are nearly complete. Kay and I went to AJs Sports Bar for dinner.

GAIA- Planetary Management:

391. The growth of agriculture: The first great developments in agriculture took place some 10,000 years ago in a series of river basins, notably the Nile, the Euphrates/Tigris, the Ganges/Brahmaputra, and the Yangtze.

392. In these tropical areas, with their year-round warmth and river-supplied water, people exploited the fertile floodplains.

393. They embarked on an enterprise that ranks as a human advance to match  mastery of fire and the art of writing– and much more important in terms of basic human survival.

394. Since this first exercise in agriculture, we have dug up a sizeable sector of our planet, one-and-a-half billion hectares in all (the US covers just under one billion hectares.).

395. The most productive areas to date have often been the temperate-zone lands, so-called because of their supposedly clement climates.

What Happened Today? Feather Sound walk. Drove to the Tampa office. Many good things happening with Gulf Coast Chemical. New products and new Opportunities. Talked with Chris. He’s in Orlando. He may possibly go to Okeechobee Correctional Facility. 3 hours from the house.

GAIA- Planetary Management:

386. Hence the forest loses its leaves for extended periods.

387. Open dry woodland or wooded savannah receives less than 1,000 mm of rainfall, and often experiences prolonged drought. 

388. How we benefit from tropical forests: We derive many benefits from the mere existence of tropical forests. Through their watershed effects, they act like a sponge, soaking up rainfall before releasing it slowly and steadily into rivers.

389. They protect precious topsoil.

390. Above all, they regulate climate, whether at regional or global levels.

What Happened Today? Feather Sound walk. Drove to the Tampa office. Sales calls at Color Wheel and Tool World. Melvin, Chris’ friend, called and said Chris had been moved. We don’t know where.

GAIA- Planetary Management:

381. Occasionally standing 60 meters high, the several distinct strata give an impression of “forest piled upon forest”.

382. In wetter areas, it is known as rainforest.

383. Moist forest receives at least 2,000 mm of rainfall a year (no more than 3 months with less than 100 mm).

384. It is very similar to evergreen forest, except that it lacks the ecological complexity.

385. Deciduous forest receives 1,500 mm of rainfall a year, with 4-6 months virtually dry.