In article
<wildbilly-4F358C.16534803072008@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
Billy <wildbilly@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> In article
> <doesnotwork-9F361E.14461403072008@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> "Dan L." <doesnotwork@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> > In article
> > <wildbilly-C88524.10082903072008@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> > Billy <wildbilly@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> >
> > > If you are interested, you might want to look at the article on
> > > no till farming in the July Scientific American (page 70, I think).
It
> > > is mostly an industrial approach but the article finishes by saying
that
> > > the problems with industrial no till farming (pests and weeds that
arise
> > > from monoculture farming and the increasing amounts of agrichemicals
> > > needed to suppress them) can be addressed with organic farming
> > > approaches of crop rotation, interplanting, and the grazing of
animals
> > > on the land. The more things change . . .
> >
> > The article does indeed start on page 70. I have subscribed to that
> > magazine for many years. That will be one article I will read.
> > But is this really new news?
>
> Does refuting the industrial farming model pushed by Monsanto constitute
> news?
>
> For decades now, since WWII, agribusiness has propagandized that
> modern chemicals and equipment could better feed the world. That lie is
> slowly coming apart. As you will see, industrial no-till was introduced
> to combat the erosion and loss of top soil. But industrial no-till
> relies on expensive chemical inputs of fertilizers and increasing
> quantities of chemical remedies to combat pests (vegetative and insect
> problems) inherent in repeated planting of monocultures in the same
> place (Additionally this affects soil cohesion, as as microflora and
> fauna are killed.). The answer? Introduction of "organic farming
> practices such as crop rotation to prevent pests from establi****ng
> themselves, and reducing the eco-degrading in-puts of pesticides.
> Interplanting of pulses or "companion" crops. Using the land to grow
> animals which in turn fertilize the land with manure (see excerpt from
> "Omnivore's Dilemma" below). The net result is greater total out-put
> from the land, fewer costly inputs, and improved human and ecological
> health.
>
> This response is based on the article and "The fatal harvest reader :
> the tragedy of industrial agriculture" / edited by Andrew Kimbrell. I
> found no disagreement between the two sources.
> ------
>
> "Omnivore's Dilemma"
> p. 126
>
> "Grass," so understood, is the foundation of the intricate food chain
> Salatin has assembled at Polyface, where a half dozen different animal
> species are raised together in an intensive rotational dance on the
> theme of symbiosis. Salatin is the choreographer and the gr***** are his
> verdurous stage; the dance has made Polyface one of the most productive
> and influential alternative farms in America.
>
> Though it was only the third week of June, the pasture beneath me had
> already seen several rotational turns. Before being cut earlier in the
> week for the hay that would feed the farm's animals through the winter,
> it had been grazed twice by beef cattle, which after each day-long stay
> had been succeeded by several hundred laying hens. They'd arrived
> by Eggmobile, a ramshackle ****table henhouse designed and built by
> Salatin. Why chickens? "Because that's how it works in nature," Salatin
> explained. "Birds follow and clean up after herbivores." And so during
> their turn in the pasture, the hens had performed several ecological
> services for the cattle as well as the grass: They'd picked the tasty
> grubs and fly larvae out of the cowpats, in the process spreading the
> manure and eliminating parasites. (This is what Joel has in mind when he
> says the animals do the work around here; the hens are his "sanitation
> crew," the reason his cattle have no need of chemical parasiticides.)
> And while they were at it, nibbling on the short cattle-clipped gr*****
> they like best, the chickens applied a few thousand pounds of nitrogen
> to the
> pasture-and produced several thousand uncommonly rich and tasty eggs.
> After a few week's rest, the pasture will be grazed again, each steer
> turning these lush gr***** into beef at the rate of two or three pounds
> a day.
>
> By the end of the season Salatin's gr***** will have been transformed by
> his animals into some 40,000 pounds of beef, 30,000 pounds of ****k,
> 10,000 broilers, 1,200 turkeys, 1,000 rabbits, and 35,000 dozen eggs.
> This is an astounding cornucopia of food to draw from a hundred acres of
> pasture, yet what is perhaps still more astoni****ng is the fact
> that this pasture will be in no way diminished by the process-in fact,
> it will be the better for it, lusher, more fertile, even springier
> underfoot (this thanks to the increased earthworm traffic). Salatin's
> audacious bet is that feeding ourselves from nature need not be a
> zero-sum proposition, one in which if there is more for us at the end of
> the season
> then there must be less for nature-less topsoil, less fertility, less
> life. He's betting, in other words, on a very different proposition, one
> that looks an awful lot like the proverbially unattainable free lunch.
>
> And none of it happens without the grass. In fact, the first time I met
> Salatin he'd insisted that even before I-met any of his animals, I get
> down on my belly in this very pasture to make the acquaintance of the
> less charismatic species his farm was nurturing that, in turn, were
> nurturing his farm. Taking the ant's-eye view, he ticked off the census
> of a single square foot of pasture: orchard grass, foxtail, a couple of
> different fescues, bluegrass, and timothy. Then he cataloged the
> legumes-red clover and white, plus lupines-and finally the forbs,
> broad-leaved species like plantain, dandelion, and Queen Anne's Lace.
> And those were just the plants, the species occupying the surface along
> with a handful of itinerant insects; below decks and out of sight
> tunneled earthworms (knowable by their castled mounds of rich castings),
> pocket gophers, woodchucks, and burrowing insects, all making their dim
> way through an unseen wilderness of bacteria, phages, eelish nematodes,
> shrimpy rotifers, and miles upon miles of mycelium, the underground
> filaments of fungi. We think of the gr***** as the basis of this food
> chain, yet behind, or beneath, the grassland stands the soil, that
> inconceivably complex community of the living and the dead. Because a
> healthy soil digests the dead to nourish the living, Salatin calls it
> the earth's stomach.
>
> But it is upon the grass, mediator of soil and sun, that the human gaze
> has always tended to settle, and not just our gaze, either. A great many
> animals, too, are drawn to grass, which partly accounts for our own deep
> attraction to it: We come here to eat the animals that ate the grass
> that we (lacking rumens) can't eat ourselves. "All flesh is grass." The
> Old Testament's earthy equation reflects a pastoral culture's
> appreciation of the food chain that sustained it, though the
> hunter-gatherers living on the African savanna thousands of years
> earlier would have understood the flesh-grass connection just as well.
> It's only in our own time, after we began raising our food animals on
> grain in Confined Animal Feeding Operations (following the dubious new
> equation, All flesh is corn), that our ancient engagement with grass
> could be overlooked.
>
All True, I stand corrected ... again :)
The greater and more words against agribusiness and their chemicals the
better. "Scientific American", "Omnivore's Dilemma" and others like
Billy continues the good work towards the truth :)
Enjoy Life and Independence Day ... Dan
--
Email "dan lehr at comcast dot net". Text only or goes to trash
automatically.
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