[Stoves] Air pollution in cities

[Nikhil Desai]

Neil:

Generally speaking, in urban areas of the developing world, land has higher
value for building purposes than for crop productivity. Biomass for heating
and boiler use, on the other hand, may have great potential for fuel cost
reduction as well as employment generation (along with land-scaping and
arborists and myriad skills).

I have long been impressed by the value chain in urban land management -
homes, parks, streetside - in northeast US. There are comparable
geographies around the world, but somehow employment is low-tech and
limited to garden/park management with very little value buildup and
exploitation. A few years ago, I discovered that Kabul in decades gone by
had a very strong garden culture. Same in certain parts of north India.

Nikhil


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On Mon, Nov 20, 2017 at 8:46 AM, <neiltm at uwclub.net> wrote:

<snip>


>
> Composted autumn leaves makes for a very high quality fertilizer/soil
> amendment, and to burn them in open heaps in gardens is an ignorant waste
> my family were no less guilty of participating in until switching to
> composting.  I would expect their value as a soil improver for fertility
> and soil structure to be in excess of their fuel value.  My parents clay
> soil garden was totally transformed over the years (50) from the 'leaf
> mould' they made from the fall from their 30 or so mature deciduous
> trees.  I remember an experiment at the Henry Doubleday organic garden
> centre at Ryton near Coventry comparing the size of cabbages grown with
> different soil amendments, and the leaf mould winning hands down.
>
> You only have to go back to before the ban came in in 1993 in England to
> know what stubble burning was like.  I can remember a day in the Essex
> countryside where the midday sun was a dull orange glow in a smoke filled
> atmosphere for miles.  Horrendous madness.  After the ban some of those
> farms installed straw bale boilers which met all their heating needs year
> round.
>
> Neil Taylor
>
>
>
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