ECHO Asia Note Articles

Uptake of Heavy Metals in Tire Garden Planters

This article is from ECHO Asia Note # 40.

Tire gardens have many good uses, including growing a variety of crops where only concrete or poor soils exist, such as urban gardens, homegardens, and refugee camp settings. They can be raised onto supports to keep vegetables out of reach of livestock, and have also been used for vermicompost bins among other things. Tire planters make nice additions to many kitchen gardens around the world, being accessible right out the front door. Best of all, they are a cheap raised bed, and reuse an otherwise voluminous waste product.

We use them at the ECHO Global Farm in the US for growing perennials and annuals, including fruit trees and seed crops. Tires are not used exclusively by ECHO, but have been promoted by our partners in many places, as appropriate container options. An emerging question is whether or not they are a safe option for planting edible crops. Is it possible that plants take up heavy metals or other toxic elements present in the tire?

Highlighted Resources from the Asia Agriculture & Community Development Conference - 2019-01-20

This article is from ECHO Asia Note # 40.

This year’s 7th Biennial ECHO Asia Agriculture & Community Development Conference took place in Chiang Mai, Thailand 1 - 4 October, 2019. This four-day event was full of practical information relating to sustainable agriculture and community development in the region. We are thankful for the many practitioners (from 28 countries) who gathered to present their expertise, share ideas, swap seeds, and enrich each other through networking! Let us share with you some highlight workshops from this year’s conference. Resources on our ECHOcommunity.org website are hyperlinked throughout this article, so please let this article serve not only as a window into this year’s conference, but also as a gateway to more practical information.

家庭后院蚯蚓堆肥系统：以缅甸为例

Introduction to Vermiculture

There are over 6,000 species of worms in the world, many of them not even named or studied. However, the farmer is interested in two main categories of earthworms, namely “deep burrowers” and “surface dwellers”. Deep burrowers include the common garden worm or Nightcrawler, (grey/pink color and about 15 cm long) and they eat soil mixed with decaying organic material. An early expert on worms was Charles Darwin, who established that earthworms process and enrich soil endlessly, and without whom, farming as we know it, would not be possible. The deep burrowers create long tunnels that go down almost 6 feet in depth, allowing deep penetration of water and oxygen. At the same time, deep burrowers bring up minerals that are incorporated into surface soil. The value of earthworms to the farmer cannot be overstated.

难民营的微观世界:临时城市的恢复与可持续发展

[Editor’s Note: This article seeks to address the broader challenges of food security in refugee camp environments, of which there are many within our Asia region, while offering individual practical options that may be implemented to address the need for nutritional diversity in these challenging settings.  For further questions or feedback please feel free to contact the author at etf26@cornell.edu]

东南亚为储藏种子建造的低成本的自然建筑

Introduction

Given the proper facilities necessary to store seeds long-term, whereby low temperature and low humidity are kept stable over time, it is very possible to store most orthodox seeds for several years at a time in the tropics (Harrington, 1972). Unfortunately, implementation and maintenance of the proper facilities can be very costly and many existing seed bank and gene bank facility examples do not satisfy the needs of many smaller organizations or communities. Thankfully, many diverse options currently exist, with varying levels of investment for a wide range of facilities, from expensive, high-tech facilities down to low-cost, low-maintenance models. At ECHO, we operate our own range of seed storage facilities at our various seed banks around the world, from a high tech, walk-in climate-controlled cold storage room, to a retrofitted refrigerated shipping container, to a low-cost, foam-insulated cold room cooled with a standard split-unit air conditioning system.

用低成本的控制方法预防贮藏种子的虫害

This article is from ECHO Asia Note # 37.

在亚热带和热带种子储存是一项挑战。如果没有干燥和冷环境，种子的质量可能会急剧恶化。储藏时的高温高湿会加速种子的新陈代谢并且促使食种虫增殖（Lale and Vidal, 2003; Upadhyay and Ahmad, 2011）。冰箱、除湿机和杀虫剂等技术能防止这些毁坏种子的情况发生，但是热带地区的小型农户不一定能利用这些技术。很多当地传统方式被用于防止虫害。一些处理剂通常在种子储存前添加到种子中，为了毒杀害虫，或者破坏和阻止昆虫在种子周围移动。一些处理剂能非常有效地减少害虫生长，但是他们同时也就降低了种子的活性；对于农民来说识别哪种方式有效且合适是非常重要的。.ECHO亚洲研究人员分析了5种低成本的处理方式来处理扁豆（Lablab bean seeds (Lablab purpureus L.)）种子中的一种常见的害虫叫豇豆象鼻虫（cowpea bruchids (Callosobruchus maculatus)），从而确定处理剂的效果。延续ECHO research by Croft et al. 2012 之前的研究风格，每种处理方式我们都分析了密封和没有密封的情况。 

黄金般的稻壳：稻壳的 10 个农业用途

This article is from ECHO Asia Note # 37.

可持续农业最大的挑战之一就是如何将充足且价格实惠的有机资源（碳基）用于食物和饲料生产。利用堆肥、肥料、覆盖物和其他来自农业的有机投入本身就是一个挑战，而 且每一种生产往往都需要自己特有的投入材料。有的材料在农业生产中常常是有直接竞争关系的，完全供应给土地小和劳动力少的农场是有挑战性的。例如，地膜可能与牲畜饲料直接竞争，因此在生产足够地膜的同时喂牲畜是一个挑战。使用同样的材料来制造堆肥或燃料就更有挑战性了。 

在访问了该地区许多不同的小规模农场后，最成功的农场似乎都有一个共同的方法，那就是找出一种容易获得的有机“废物”，并将其作为农场的投入资源。菲律宾的一个农场从当地鱼市获取鱼渣和废物，将其转化成一种鱼粉（蛋白质来源），作为牲畜饲料的补充。另一个泰国的农场从当地的一个市场获取了大量的蔬菜废弃物来做成蚯蚓堆肥系统。其他农场也因毗邻啤酒厂、磨坊和加工厂而受益，获得了用于制造堆肥、生物炭和饲料添加剂等的各种各样的资源。 

这篇文章将总结一种在热带许多地区都很容易得到并被广泛使用的副产品“废物”——稻壳的许多潜在的农业用途。

Soil Amendments for Healthier Soils 土壤改良剂让土壤更健康

This article is from ECHO Asia Note # 36.

介绍 
土壤化学、物理学和生物学特征把土壤划分为高度适宜植物生长到高度不适宜植物生长。非常罕见能找到所有属性都高度适宜植物生长的原生土壤，尤其是在热带。但是，只要有充分的土壤厚度来提供一个足够深度和排水良好的根系区域，相应的改良和土壤属性管理能让几乎所有的土壤变得合适植物生长。甚至是自然状态下不肥沃的土壤和保水性特别低的土壤在合适的管理和投入之后都能有非常高的农作物产量。  
土壤对植物生长的不利影响必须通过改良剂、物理处理（耕作）、改变土壤管理行为或这三种方式的组合来消除。例如，土壤板结只能通过翻耕土壤，破碎板结区块来改善。不合适的土壤化学特性需要土壤改良剂改良，然后合适的土壤管理能降低问题再出现的频率。生物问题，如土生真菌或寄生线虫的感染，能通过化学手段快速处理，或者采用其他相对缓慢但健康的，改变农作物和土壤管理方式的手段。 
以下内容包括 1）定义土壤改良剂，2）讨论改良剂能处理的一般土壤问题，3）描述土壤改良的种类 

种子的价值: 在亚洲建立一个社区级别的种子银行网络

This article is from ECHO Asia Note # 36.

作为一个致力于为人们提供农业资源和技术的机构，我们的重心常常会放在种子上。我们一次又一次地见证了自由授粉的种子价值被挖掘，土生适应性强和未充分利用的有价值的植物被发现，以及低成本种子储存技术的研究创新。这些特点构成了 ECHO 能力的基础，让地球上的其他人也有能力改善食物和农业系统。

 
我们种子银行的运营历史很长，一开始是在佛罗里达，现在到了亚洲和非洲，ECHO 尽全力不断地将种子给到最需要的人手中。2009 年，亚洲区域影响中心和种子银行建立，第一步也是现在还在不断进行的工作就是收纳有区域优势对当地非常重要的种子。到现在，ECHO 的第一个区域种子银行依然致力于满足我们会员对当地适应性强自由授粉的种子的需求，它的成功证明了设立它是明智的。2017 年亚洲种子银行从 175 个品种里挑选了 4600 个实验种子包提供给 29 个国家网络合作伙伴，这些种子的就是在东南亚生产的！ 

将生物炭放在边缘使用：质量、土壤和测量

This article is from ECHO Asia Note # 35.

Michael Shafer 博士身为美国罗格斯大学政治学退休教授，其于 2008 年创立了暖心基金会。在于 2013 年 ECHO 会议上首次了解到生物炭之后，暖心团队开始为小型农场主设计并测试改进型生物炭制造设备，其具有成本低、技术要求低的优势。在 2017 年，暖心团队因开发村级生物炭社会企业模型而获得世界能源全球奖(泰国)。该团队刚刚推出了一家以“Rak Din”品牌销售农民生物炭产品的社会企业。 

在这篇文章中，Shafer 博士分享了他在发展中国家世界中实际使用生物炭的经验。他的目标是重新关注生物炭的研究，将其从学术实验室转移到发展中国家混乱的农场环境之中。他希望让“泥巴里的靴子”开发实践者放心，他们可以在现场制造、使用甚至测试生物炭。