[HN Gopher] Pigeon Towers: A Low-Tech Alternative to Synthetic F... ___________________________________________________________________ Pigeon Towers: A Low-Tech Alternative to Synthetic Fertilizers (2016) Author : hacsky Score : 90 points Date : 2022-06-26 16:47 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.notechmagazine.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.notechmagazine.com) | jdadj wrote: | If you have 10,001 pigeons residing in a pigeon tower with 10,000 | holes, will there exist a hole with more than one pigeon? | worldsayshi wrote: | >Provide water and shelter, and they will come | | I find this hard to believe. There has to be a lot more to | attracting the pigeons? | | Reminds me of a recent trend, at least in Sweden - Bee hotels. | Small bird house like things that are said to attract bees. | Everyone started selling them for a while. I bought a few of them | to friends. But I don't think they got used. | | Putting up a structure and expecting it to just work seems a bit | optimistic. Is there more to the secret sauce? | 13of40 wrote: | If they're the ones I'm thinking about, with the pieces of | bamboo, holes drilled in wooden blocks, etc. I've seen those in | Germany, Switzerland, and the US. Can confirm that they work in | Western Washington, but they're for solitary "digger bees", not | your standard honey bee. | akmittal wrote: | We tend to think mankind is becoming smarter and effective. But | in reality we just started caring about profits in just near | future. | whirlwin wrote: | When started reading your post, I was certain the end would be | different: | | - "We tend to think mankind is becoming smarter and effective. | But in reality we just rely on birds' shit." | HillBates wrote: | [deleted] | guerby wrote: | Lots of pigeon towers in the countryside in France, nice pictures | here: | | http://www.alaingillodes.fr/patrimoine/pigeonnier/tarn.htm | leobg wrote: | Do you know if they were used for the same purpose? | oliwarner wrote: | > First, unlike chickens or ducks, wild pigeons are extremely | low-maintenance | | Until there are 5000 of them on the crop you've just sown. I've | shot crop protection before. A large flock can destroy a crop in | a few hours. | | This whole thing relies on your crop not being the crop they want | to eat. | wayne wrote: | I learned from the book "How to Hide an Empire" that an initial | motivation for US imperialism in the Caribbean was to harvest | bird droppings for fertilizer, even to the point of conflicts | with Britain and Venezuela: | https://www.vox.com/2014/7/31/5951731/bird-shit-imperialism | | There was a 1856 law that encouraged US citizens to claim land | for the country if there was bird poo on it: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano_Islands_Act | | This law is how the US originally got possession of Midway, which | became very well-known during WWII (I always wondered how the US | got it originally): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway_Atoll | dividuum wrote: | Odd that at the same time the Passenger Pidgeon[1] was hunted | to extinction. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon | wefarrell wrote: | Peru and Chile fought a war over seabird guano: | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Pacific | goldenkey wrote: | Guano deposits..is that the same root as iguana? | pirate787 wrote: | I always though the guano was desired for saltpeter, which is | used to make gunpowder. It doesn't seem economical to transport | as fertilizer. | comicjk wrote: | I thought so too, but Wiki says fertilizer was in fact the | main usage. I suppose you get many extra units of grain per | unit of added guano. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano | | "As a manure, guano is a highly effective fertilizer . . . | Guano was also, to a lesser extent, sought for the production | of gunpowder and other explosive materials. The 19th-century | guano trade played a pivotal role in the development of | modern input-intensive farming." | jhgb wrote: | You need only nitrogen for explosives, but nitrogen, | phosphorus, and potassium for fertilizer. Therefore guano | (which contains all three) is overkill for explosives but | great as a fertilizer, while synthetic nitrogen compounds are | insufficient as a "complete" fertilizer and have to be | supplemented with the two other elements from other sources. | Jistern wrote: | Well argued! | pfdietz wrote: | Pigeons don't fix nitrogen, so how is this an alternative to | synthetic fertilizers? The N has to come from somewhere. | hinkley wrote: | It's bioaccumulation. There is some potential for them to be | extracting phosphorous from the rocks in their gizzards, but | that will mostly be bioaccumulation too. | oblongx wrote: | Pigeon, like most bird poop is very high in N. | lven wrote: | It does not require fossil fuel heat or feedstock. So it's net | 0 at least. | _joel wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano#Bird_guano | pfdietz wrote: | So? The N still has to come from somewhere. The natural | sources of N (nitrogen fixing plants, NOx from lightning or | natural combustion), filtered through the birds, will not | come anywhere close to what synthetic fertilizers can supply. | | As many as 80% of the N atoms in your body were fixed | artificially by the Haber-Bosch process. Natural sources, | using pigeons or not, are not up to the task. | Valgrim wrote: | Nitrogen fixation occurs naturally in the soil by bacteria. | As the nitrogen is consumed by different species up from | one trophic level to another, from plants to insects to | bird, the nitrogen gets more and more concentrated. | | Birds are fairly high up the food chain, and their | excrements are very rich in various nutrients, including | nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. | | The Haber Process is faster but requires a lot of energy, | and provides no phosphorus or potassium, so you have to | source it elsewhere. Also it requires no technology and can | be installed pretty much anywhere. | analog31 wrote: | I suspect that this can work for low intensity farming, | like fruits and vegetables, but if you want to feed the | cattle of the earth, you'll end up running out of pigeon | food. | aaron695 wrote: | pstuart wrote: | Assuming the N comes from whatever they eat. | | This is so cool -- it's a pity that it's not economical to do | this. | tharkun__ wrote: | As for economical in the "traditional" sense, maybe not. I | don't know how much success they're (still/actually) having | but if you want a little glimpse into what should be possible | in easily digestible docu-film format, look up "The Biggest | Little Farm" (it's on Netflix for example). | | One thing I took away from that is that it's maybe not | economical in a "have a one crop pigeon poop farm" (i.e. you | sell pigeon poop from feeding pigeons), you can have a farm | that sells a lot of things that uses a lot of different | animals and crops in combination in order to not have to buy | in things from the outside that "traditional" farms have to. | pstuart wrote: | Yes, I was thinking of the wholistic approach in your | second paragraph -- where the fertilizer is used on site or | traded with neighboring farms. | dv_dt wrote: | I would be interested in seeing if that stays true in an | increased number of niches, especially with fertilizer | shortages and prices likely to play into the near future. | pstuart wrote: | Pissoirs to do the same with humans ;-) | YLE118 wrote: | There was recently an article about that in the New York | times. | https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/17/climate/peecycling- | farmin... | Jedd wrote: | In 1957 Fleming wrote his sixth James Bond book, Doctor No -- in | which the eponymous villain runs a guano mine in the Caribbean. | | Even some decades after the Haber-Bosch process was invented, | stripping massive islands of these resources was still lucrative. | bolangi wrote: | On our small farm, we use ducks for fertilizing our fruit trees. | We put a temporary fence for them around a tree.The ducks are out | during the day, at night inside the fence. After a week or so we | move the fence to another tree. | chaostheory wrote: | The issue you need to mitigate using this method is bird flu. | Still, having an alternative to synthetic fertilizer is nice ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-26 23:00 UTC)