[GSBN] The EU wants 5% strawbuildings by 2020 says the Economist..

Tue Dec 24 14:30:00 UTC 2013

Jacob reminds me of another aspect of sustainability, the economic sustainability of small farmers.  About 15 years ago, I met a north Texas wheat farmer at one of the Lama Foundation's Build Here Now sessions (organized by our own Catherine Wanek).  He said he had already supplied some bales to builders, and wanted to find out more about bale building, so that he could offer bales to better meet builders' needs.  I ran into him again a couple of years later, and he told me that the price of wheat had fallen to a third of what it had been when we first met, so that in that year, bales comprised his most valuable crop.

Commodities market price swings murder small farmers.  To the extent that bale building can provide a more stable market and a little diversity, we can contribute to preserving a valuable piece of human, social, and environmental ecology.  I haven't heard of any organized attempt to create a system similar to Fair Trade for bales, but perhaps more strategic partnering could be beneficial for both small farmers and small builders in some regions.

Derek

On Dec 23, 2013, at 8:00 PM, Jacob Deva Racusin wrote:

Y'know, we've started producing rice here in VT - small scale and still pretty experimental, mind you - but hey, maybe the future holds a similar pattern for us ;)

Quick quip - nutrient loading isn't necessarily the primary benefit to integrating carbon-rich straw into the soil (or as RT points out, even a benefit at all if not kept in proper chemical balance) - improving the tilth, which is heavily impacted by common cultivation practices (admittedly, I know nothing about large-scale rice production, so apply here to wheat et al) is a big benefit of integrating organic matter into the soil.  Assuming nitrogen is also introduced in good balance (i.e. manure - hence the benefit of closed-loop, diversified agriculture), about 80:20 C:N, it's a key part of maintaining/restoring soil ecology, even without a high nutrient content itself.  Often mixture crops, such as oats/peas or rye/vetch, are planted as green manures to serve this purpose without animal inputs.

But really, that's not the point, for me.  I have no expectations that industrial-scale ag account for the net removal of carbon from the soils, nor that we must address this in order to feel good about building with straw, nor that we need immediately shift our practice or stop advocating for working with straw as a solution.  I'm interested in the diversity of agricultural industries in which we as bale builders interface - and would still love to hear from others around the globe - to get a clear sense of how we weave in.  Because we are looking at seriously scaling up straw building production - it's already happening, and is clearly poised to grow much more in the next few decades - understanding that context is really helpful to guide how best to move forward leveraging the benefits while mitigating the liabilities.  Sounds like you folks out in Rice Country have nothing to worry about anytime soon.  Others of us may need to look a little more closely at sourcing (probably not a lot, but a little) in the near future, and at least understand our role - I have no expectations that straw will at any point be LESS ecologically-friendly than any other form of insulation, but having agency in which supplier we choose, or how we work with farms, or if we plan on scaling up regional pre-fab straw panel production what that impact and those relationships will look like, are born from a knowledge of that context.  Whether it's tilling in for tilth, or throwing down for bedding, or used for cellulosic ethanol, or wall insulation - it's all quite fascinating (at least for me, where straw isn't so abundant it's being torched in the fields) as we see changes in climate, economy, scale, and market...

Wrapping up day 2 of what's looking like a week-long power outage from a major weekend ice storm - wishing a safe and warm holiday to you all.

Jacob

On 12/21/13, 12:37 PM, John Swearingen wrote:
Interesting discussion.  We had an engineer from Ladakh visit the office.  He was interested in building with straw because of the great insulation value.  The Indian military has a big presence there, and they've built uninstalled concrete block buildings which they heat with very polluting diesel boilers. The problem is that for the native Ladakhis, the small amount of straw that's produced locally is a very valuable commodity with many uses; putting it into buildings would be a downgrade.  His idea was to import straw from India.  Sounds crazy, but the Indian military has a continuous stream of supply trucks going up Highway 1 from Shrinigar to Ladakh, the world's highest highway.  Often these trucks carry heavy, but small equipment, leaving space on the truck for light but bulky material, such as straw--the straw could get a free ride.  I don't know how that's going. He said the greatest obstacle is that the military governors in Ladakh make a considerable amount in kickbacks on the diesel trade, a disincentive for buildings that conserve energy.

Just out of curiosity, I found two maps of roughly similar scale.  The first shows rice fields in the Sacramento Valley ONLY. (incidentally part of a study about how pesticide run-off might be negatively affecting salmon.  The second is a map of Vermont.  It's hard to grasp the extent of rice growing.  A study in 1990 put the acreage of rice BURNED at about 1.2 million acres..
It wouldn't be a complete exaggeration to say it's as if all of Vermont were covered in rice paddies and ....interesting thought.

[Inline image 1][Inline image 2]

But I ramble.....

John

On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 8:57 PM, Jacob Deva Racusin <buildnatural at googlemail.com<mailto:buildnatural at googlemail.com>> wrote:
Really interesting.  Here on the east coast, common cover crops (green manures) are rye, wheat, buckwheat, oat - all common cereal straws we see in buildings (maybe not so much buckwheat, and oat's a bit weak but works alright for in-fill walls).  They all have different benefits for soil - rye is good for arresting spring erosion given its growth culture, buckwheat is a quick crop, oat is a good nurse crop - and certainly tilth may be more favorable than nutrient availability for some of these, but I'm out of my knowledge base here - suffice to say cereal grains are commonly planted for cover cropping out here.  I understand that the timing in which they are integrated as a cover crop is not necessarily the same as a harvest crop, but tilling in is a common practice in sustainable grain production (when the crop isn't marketable or prioritized) - although I'm sure it's much more nuanced than that (Derek, interesting point about disease).  John, sounds like rice is quite a different story!

I'm happy to hear that there is such good abundance out west - seems like this is much less of an issue out there.  I've noticed straw being less abundant in the 12 years I've been building with it - granted, some years are worse than others and seasonal variations abound.  Honestly, I don't know enough about the big picture here to comment much further - part of the reason I take interest in this topic, lots more for me to learn.  I don't want to take supply for granted, and since straw isn't a 'resource distribution' (aka waste) problem out here, I'm still a bit unsettled about how our burgeoning industry fits into the bigger picture.  Really, if this is what we're concerned with, we're doing great compared to most of the rest of the building industry - but it's not the complete no-brainer east coast as it still seems to be west coast.  I continue to be humbled by the intricacies of the ecologies and economies in which we operate.  Thanks John for describing more about the environment in which rice straw is used as a resource in your neck of the woods, very interesting indeed.

Like Derek, I too am interested in others' experiences with straw sourcing and regional production.  I'm grateful for the diversity of opinions and regions represented on this list.

Best,
Jacob

On 12/20/13, 11:20 PM, Derek Stearns Roff wrote:
However, this part of the discussion reminds me of the distance between what could be and perhaps should be, and how things currently work.  It's true that almost all agriculture is pulling nutrients from the soil, and replacing them with artificial fertilizers.  Plants have been bred to minimize the waste products and maximize the salable products. So even if all stalks and roots were returned to the soil, a large amount of mass would still be removed each year.

I'm told that two other factors militate against the return of straw to the soil.  For the same reasons that we like straw for building, it isn't particularly good as a soil builder.  It doesn't break down all that easily, and it doesn't have that many valuable nutrients.  A more severe impediment is that many farmers believe that returning plant stalks to the soil can increase the frequency of soil diseases affecting those plants.  Unless crop rotation is sufficiently diverse, tilling straw, or other plant stalks back into the soil can reduce crop yields in subsequent years.

I read that straw is still a waste product, and that in California, storage of excess straw is a problem.  Even though finding good bales is hard, I believe that straw is still treated as a waste product across much of the west.  I would be interested in learning more about the situation in the east, and in other countries.

Derek

On Dec 20, 2013, at 8:37 PM, Jacob Deva Racusin wrote:

I think that Carol makes a crucial point - straw is actually getting more difficult to find here, and there are a lot of competing industries both within ag and in landscaping.  Heck, there's a pretty big farm west of us that grows a straw crop specifically for horse stables (big horse racing country over there) - it's the primary crop.  Straw may be a secondary crop, but it is definitely not a waste product - and if we are considering the goal that folks in this thread have stated of dramatically increasing straw construction by adoption into the mainstream by prefab applications and other means, then we are talking about a future in which there is a lot more straw being grown for buildings (primary or secondary crop).

By removing all that carbon from the soil and not tilling in to restore soil nutrients and tilth, we are having a net-negative impact on soil health and ecology - inherently unsustainable.  If we till back in and/or cover crop, we reduce net yield, requiring more farmland or production somehow.  There is already a growing concern in this part of the world about the competition for farmland between food and energy production (i.e. corn-based ethanol); if we add a surge in straw construction to that, coupled with reduction in yields due to diminishing soil productivity, and throw in some climate change-induced natural disasters...whoa, ok, not trying to get too down here, I honestly don't think that straw is in scarcity danger right now - far from it.  But I do believe that source is an issue we should be taking very seriously, if we are planning for the long haul - around here, the sources of our straw are not stable for the long term (I'm not even sure how much longer I can get long straws, with all the farms switching over to chop-straw combines), and there is certainly none of it going to waste.  If we truly want to scale up in production, we need to be able to ensure availability of our raw materials, and I don't feel too secure in that right now.  Of course, this involves major paradigm shift in industrial agriculture production...good thing we're all such a bunch of fired-up change-makers.  Maybe we'll be using the PAKSBAB-style bale press and go back to gathering field grasses, old-school Nebraska-style, after the revolution...

So, are farms in CA/out west still burning straw?  I thought that was banned years ago...is there really such a glut of straw out there that it's still considered waste?  Regionalism is fascinating...

Cheers,
Jacob

On 12/20/13, 8:01 PM, carolatkn at aol.com<mailto:carolatkn at aol.com> wrote:
Sorry John, but straw is ABSOLUTELY NOT a waste product - its greatest value is as a soil improver - I can't stress how important that is - even if many "modern" farmers don't seem to agree these days. Farm soils have lost so much organic matter over the last 50 years that it is very a scary situation indeed. Of course, locking up carbon in a super insulated straw wall is the second best thing - and it would be sustainable to use straw for this wonderful purpose every third year or so - in an ideal world!

best wishes
Carol Atkinson
www.strawcottage.co.uk<http://www.strawcottage.co.uk/>
-----Original Message-----
From: John Swearingen <jswearingen at skillful-means.com><mailto:jswearingen at skillful-means.com>
To: Global Straw Building Network <GSBN at sustainablesources.com><mailto:GSBN at sustainablesources.com>
Sent: Fri, 20 Dec 2013 19:50
Subject: Re: [GSBN] The EU wants 5% strawbuildings by 2020 says the Economist..

Jacob's points about supporting local and sustainable business are well taken, but these are choices that we can make, with our pocketbooks, in order to bring about better communities.

That said,  I think the bottom line is that straw is a waste product. Unlike wood, it's not grown for construction, and it has limited use--for erosion control (composting) or to spread over muddy paddocks for livestock.  Extra straw, and there is a lot, would likely be burned.

Following the very sound sustainability principle of "highest and best use", any use of bales for construction involves taking garbage and putting it to good use and that's worthy of support. When you consider that bales sequester carbon, that's an extra benefit.

John (Trash Talk) Swearingen

On Wed, Dec 18, 2013 at 6:37 PM, Jacob Deva Racusin <buildnatural at googlemail.com<mailto:buildnatural at googlemail.com>> wrote:
Valentina,

I appreciate your perspective.  This is a conversation that has come up a number of times in our courses and conversations with our colleagues - namely, the roll of agribusiness in providing feedstock for our construction.  I think 'greenwashing' may be a bit strong, when I compare to the claims of the concrete and foam industries as being 'green'.  That said, the impacts must be considered, and the benefits of using straw in regards to deep ecological and social impact should not be overstated if the source of straw is not being considered.  We have access to straw that is grown from medium- and small-scale farms, which come closer to the higher potential of working with this material.  It is very analogous to working with wood -the same framing member can come from a local sawyer practicing sustainable silviculture, or from a genetically-engineered clear-cut plantation pine shipped across the world.

>From data I've seen, even industrial straw is a fraction of the embodied carbon of other common forms of insulation, so context is relevant when evaluating materials for deep impact. You make an especially good point about the danger of introducing this material to industrial scale, and losing more of the benefits/exacerbating the liabilities in favor of snapping the technology into the mold of industrial housing/building development.  We would do well as a community not to lose sight of the importance of scale, and as you mention the relevance of the social benefits of working with straw.  At the same time, access to a much larger market and making the technology available to many more people is an arguable net gain, even if there is a sacrifice for environmental and social impact in production - again, compared to the alternatives.  I think there is room for both, and as long as we continue to engage in the debate, I have confidence that we'll continue to move the ball further down the field.

Cheers,
Jacob

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Jacob Deva Racusin
Co-Owner
New Frameworks Natural Design/Build

Author, The Natural Building Companion
Chelsea Green Press, 2012

(802) 782-7783
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On 12/18/13, 12:43 PM, valentina maini wrote:
Martin, John, Caroline, and all
as Herbert Gruber recently suggested on Leonardo group,  this article maybe very well connected with the EU funded ( eco-innovation) investigation on @Modcell ....based in the UK and with BathUniversity support

I personally got in touch with the founder of this panels in 2011 and met with professionals here in spain that are collaborating in this EU funded program of analysis and implementation of this "patent" strawbale panels....i've seen fantastic software and marketing tools they were presenting at Eco event in London 2011

>From my point of view and with very recent experiences on professional development of strawbale in Spain i think and see this article as a call for action to present the real value of strawbale and strawbale network..that goes, in my view, very much beyond the "simple" energy efficiency issue...
and i very important reminder for all that straw is not at all a really safe for the environment product...since is a byproduct of one of the most contaminated  human "fabric"...as industrial agriculture ...as very well reminds Luc Foissac in is great book on strawbale...

from my point of view...The very big risk/reality at the moment is that straw is used very much as a "simple" greenwash.....
 and even if  i really celebrate the greenwash for what it means in terms of getting rid of toxic materials...i think and personally value much more the social innovation related to strawbale... the ability of people and networks to create opportunity and solutions....

what is happening is just "business as usual" with a more eco-material... what the strawbale network gave me  me is much much more than simple "strawbale tech"... i learned.... thank to you all.... the value and the tools to innovate and collaborate and manage uncertainty.... and adapt and always look for the best solution for people, planet...and even profit...

and personally i'm really convinced that the risk for environment and quality (equality) in our society is so big.....,  that is not enough anymore to "change" material... and hope that the strawbale network (that i value for itself) can make a huge step and show the world that strawbalers are bringing much more to community and economy that a "simple" prefab panel for passive house... a huge step to defend as the real value the mission and vision of all the pioneers in strawbale .... at least this is how i see you all ...

hope my english is good enough...and...my mind is getting clear on this issue just in this lasts months... so hope this comments are of some interest for you ;-)

best regards to you all, valentina

Valentina Maini
italy-spain

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Author, The Natural Building Companion
Chelsea Green Press, 2012

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New Frameworks Natural Design/Build

Author, The Natural Building Companion
Chelsea Green Press, 2012

(802) 782-7783<tel:%28802%29%20782-7783>
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Berkeley, CA   94710
510.849.1800 phone
510.849.1900 fax

Web Site:  http://www.skillful-means.com<http://www.skillful-means.com/>
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New Frameworks Natural Design/Build

Author, The Natural Building Companion
Chelsea Green Press, 2012

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