Erik Hoffner’s Posts

• Ah, the sweet smell of composting putrescents

  Black (fly) magic 5

  Posted 1 week, 3 days agoBlack soldier fly larvae are all the rage in composting, and the star performer in a new kind of "ultimate vermicomposting" system.

• Octopus(sy) Galore

  James Bond calls for more marine protected areas 5

  Posted 2 weeks, 4 days agoThe feds and the fishing industry aren't interested in new marine protected areas, but ocean advocates sure are. They get the message out with a new PSA starring Pierce Brosnan and a few other familiar faces.

• Bioreactor reaction

  Gulf dead zone fix falls flat 6

  Posted 1 month agoIt's good to see a big Midwest "land grant" agricultural program that's concerned about the Gulf Dead Zone, and upper Midwest farms' large contribution to it.

• Urban Ag Revolution

  Will Allen talks about growing the 'Good Food' movement 3

  Posted 2 months, 3 weeks ago

  This weekend I caught up with Will Allen who was keynoting the always excellent Northeast Organic Farming Association's Annual Conference in Amherst, MA. He's founder and CEO of Growing Power, and also a MacArthur Genius Award Winner and former pro-basketball player.

• Prison Farms and the Future

  Canada set to close important asset: its prison farms 0

  Posted 2 months, 4 weeks ago

  In February 2009, Canada's Public Safety Minister and the country's Correctional Service announced a planned closure of all six of the prison rehabiliation farms because "prison farms are training people in skills that are 50 years behind the times."

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Erik Hoffner’s Recent Comments

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  You're right about waste streams, but to a point. The real sticking point on that is construction and demolition debris, which most fans of clean air will say contains so many plastic and other bits that the resulting emissions are toxic. It's very tough and time consuming as I'm sure you know to clean c/d debris. What kinds of waste streams is your company taking advantage of, and how clean do you think they are? Erik, Orion Grassroots NetworkOn Big biomass, bigger opposition posted 2 days, 3 hours ago 10 Responses

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  Holy smokes, Sailor, that time lapse of the flies taking down the two trout is amazing. In less than 24hrs, they are entirely devoured. I like this simple technology b/c we could grow prodigious amounts of these bugs on our waste to feed to farmed fish, b/c we all know that the industrial fishing of small fish to feed to big fish in aquaculture systems as practiced now is completely unsustainable. And to dial up the ick-factor, they can be used to devour human waste as well, so called humanure. Then feed the bugs to birds or what have you. I know that the one thing one should not do is feed soldier fly larvae chicken scraps and then feed the larvae back to chicken. Could result in mad-chicken disease. Or something. ErikOn Black (fly) magic posted 1 week, 2 days ago 5 Responses

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  Michael Pollan's recent speeches include a bit about cover crops, how cover crops on Iowa's overwintering farms would end the dead zone. I presume that's the combined effect of their ability to fix nitrogen, staving off the need to fertilize in the spring, combined with the cover crop's ability to prevent erosion. Now that's a tech fix simple enough for me to support. Pollan says that guvvy should support it, too, with subsidy. ErikOn Gulf dead zone fix falls flat posted 2 weeks, 2 days ago 6 Responses

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  Scott G: you'd be surprised how many fish actually stay resident on pieces of 'structure' like those often encompassed by MPAs. Reefs, but also rocks, kelp forests, bad guys' ships that James Bond sank, what have you, attract fish like snapper and grouper that like to stay put. But when they do, they breed, and their larvae float away, out of the MPA, and take up on other structure, benefiting the whole area. Then there's octopus, oysters, mussels, urchins, and the zillion things that like to eat them that hang around too. One MPA can become quite a garden of eden. ErikOn James Bond calls for more marine protected areas posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago 5 Responses

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  Jason, good ideas. The fourth one, the one that I use, anyway, is 'hey, we're running out of of oil!' ie so let's get on with what's next. That makes sense to people, and peak oil/coal/tar sands/nat gas etc, while still being controversial for some, is much more verifiable and easier to understand. Att: Erasure and Timeslayer: don't feed the trolls Erik, Orion Grassroots NetworkOn So what if global warming is a hoax? posted 2 weeks, 4 days ago 35 Responses