EMERGING IMPULSES IN THE SOILS OF THE ALABAMA BLACK BELT: Farmscape Solutions in Notasulga, Alabama

摘要

Alabama is home to some of the most biologically diverse ecosystems in the United States. Her extensive and diverse waterways flow with life, from mountain tributaries of the Appalachian foothills to creeks and rivers, then through deltas and estuaries to bays emptying into the Gulf of Mexico—a warm-water estuary and nursery to a significant portion of the world's ocean life. This diversity is also found in Alabama soils, with seven defined physio-geographic regions, each with their own unique soiltypes, micro and macro flora and fauna, land conditions, and water resources and usages. This is Alabama, the heart of Dixie, with its lively circulatory system of many tributaries, creeks, and rivers, and this heart has its own heart—the Alabama "BlackBelt," referring to the region's thick, black topsoil—running east-west through the center of the state. The Black Belt once had some of the best soils in America, but unsustainable farming—especially cotton—used up the land. People fled, especiallythe African Americans, to better jobs in the urban North. Now Third World conditions exist in this potential bread basket of Alabama: 20,000 households without running water; food deserts with limited or no access to fresh healthy food or clean water; rampant unaddressed health issues; and limited government social structures.