Nino will be facilitating our learning about the effects of different agricultural practices on ecological systems this week, so he'll be responsible for leading half of Monday's class on that subject. I'll suggest that we use the other half to deal with any course logistics that we need to take care of, talk about Novella Carpenter's visit, review your progress on your gardens, and discuss your goals for the coming week.
Even though Nino will be providing the primary material for Monday's class, I'll offer links to a few articles/videos that I think might be useful to consider.
Dr. Wollenberg mentioned the difference in the diversity and abundance of microbial life in agricultural soils vs soils in other ecosystems such as prairies or rainforests. Here's an NPR blog that takes a larger comparative view of biodiversity in these environments: http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/11/29/166156242/cornstalks-everywhere-but-nothing-else-not-even-a-beehttp://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/11/29/166156242/cornstalks-everywhere-but-nothing-else-not-even-a-bee.
This TED talk by Jonathan Foley details the destructive effects of agricultural world-wide: http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_foley_the_other_inconvenient_truth.
And this article by Joel Salatin asks the question "What can we do about it?": http://wanderlust.com/journal/guest-scribe-joel-salatin-can/.
Looking forward to talking with you about agro-ecology on Monday.
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