Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Robert Norsen <bob@bnbrew.com>]

I have to agree with some of your message, Paul.   Feeding cattle grain and hay is a severe waste. Meat in general is not efficient calories for people. 

 

Some problems with solving the entire problem by eliminating beef.
Beef or other meat is essential in human diet.  We need less than we eat of course.

The market is not going to give  up beef easily

Normal pasture grass produces on typical beef cattle, 1 pound of added weight per day. 

It takes a long season, lots of water, huge area to produce an animal ready to send to the feed lot.  Yes the feed lot is an atrocity both for humane animal treatment, degrading to look at or breath down wind and can creat some of the most dread diseases, fails to incorporate CLA in the "finished" beef.   So the product is sadly not good food.   

 

 Without ACT it takes a lot of water just to keep the grass growing.

One advantage of ACT in addition to deep roots and slime that saves water, when plants are short of nutrients they pump more water in an effort to sustain nutrients for plant growth.  Bacteria at the roots, by being eaten by protozoa, feed the plant roots efficiently.  The plants there by need and  use less water.  Proof?  Test were made where ACT and water was applied equally to side by side areas.  The ACT area thrived green  while the water only area suffered damage from drought. 

 

Act provides more efficient food production.

Betsy Ross reported 2 to 4 times the weight gain per day.

The grass, with ACT is building the soil, building deep roots etc,  not detroying the soil.

The ACT enriched grass is good enough to market directly from the pasture.  Much more efficient.

Much more economically useful to the rancher. 

Eliminates need for expensive, vile feed lots.    

Elliminates the hazard of some dread disease.

Would squash, tomatoes, corn, beets potatoes etc...  produce more food calories per acre?.

With more water, more labor,  heavy loads of fertilizer -  Would we be more than self sufficient for food if we grew, marketed and ate more garden stuff, less meat?  Of course.  Can ACT help make meat more efficient, better food, less imposition on the land?   Looks that way.   

Saves one helluva lot of oil and CO2 by elimination of hay, grain, growing, harvesting, transport.

 

There will be ridicule that ACT can't do all of this and it ain't  proven.  Well  like Tom, one very capable contributor, adds at the end of his message -

 

" Those who say it can't be  done, please step out of the way of those who are doing it!!"

 

Science long ago proved that a bumble bee can't fly.  But not being aware of that the Bumble Bee  does fly and makes a little honey every day too.  That is more than you or I can do!!

TradingPostPaul <tradingpost@riseup.net> wrote:

> Skipping over your points I can only agree with, you ask
> > But will small areas save Texas from desertification? 
>
> Robert, we know the beef industry sucks big time. The country eats ten
> times the beef that it needs; cattle are by far the most inefficient use of
> land and increasingly scarce (and expensive) fresh water, compared to food
> grown for direct human consumption. How many people realize the U.S. is
>  not
> "feeding the world" but is a net importer of food? We can't feed ourselves
> - the way we farm. Those " vast areas of poor grass land that is grazed by
> skinny cattle" should tell cattlemen to give up and get out and leave the
> land to people who know how to make sustainable use of it. If people like
> Betsy can produce grass-fed beef sustainably (and profitably) in certain
> areas, fine. The feedlot factories of the Midwest are obscene. Personally
> I couldn't care less how to raise cattle sustainably. Cutting down cattle's
> waste of diminishing resources needed by future generations is of more
> concern to me. How much of the productive land could be turned into food
> production for people instead of hay and grain for cattle? Besides, cattle
> should be kept out of delicate ecosystems. I discussed this (tactfully)
> with old ranchers in western NM a while back and they're going to keep on
> keeping on till they're pushing up daisies in the Quemado
>  cemetery. To get
> buried there you only have to tip the guy with the backhoe ... but they
> admitted my Genovese were the best tomatoes they tasted since they were
> kids eating out of their grandmothers' gardens. Surprising as it may be to
> some, grown entirely without compost tea ;-) 
>
> I am somewhat familiar with Texas grazing land - at least East TX blackland
> clay. My dad had a small grass-fed herd of registered Herefords so we had
> pot roast weekly year round. After the drought of '55 and '56, he had me
> putting in permanent pasture of Coastal Bermuda and vetch for nitrogen, and
> from then on no plowing, discing, or haying. And just in time for record
> rainfall in '57, the year of the tornado in Big D. And the old cotton
> farmers wore out their acreage and left the land for the banks to put in
> permanent pasture. And then nobody knew how to produce any of their own
> food.
>
> paul, tradingpost@riseup.net
> ---------------
>
> The
>  outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not
> television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism. Only
> those who know the most about it can appreciate how little we know about
> it. 
> - Aldo Leopold in Round River, 1933
> *********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
>
> On 6/14/2006 at 3:11 PM Robert Norsen wrote:
>
> >>From the message below, " concentrate lots of stuff on a small area to
> >build top soil". 
> > I don't doubt that with enough added good stuff on a small area one can
> >build deep good productive ( top) soil. If raising a garden is the
> >objective, certainly concentrating on a smaller area, producing heavily in
> >that area with minimal cost in labor and energy makes sense. 
> >
> > But will small areas save Texas from desertification? We don't want
> >to lose the SW USA or any other part of the EARTH to Sahara like
> >conditions. Enough of that already. There are
>  vast areas of poor
> >grass land that is grazed by skinny cattle. ( herded by skinney people))
> > Once the cattle are old and big enough to market they are sent to
> >feeding pens, stuffed with high calorie grains ( etc.) from chemically
> >fertilzed fields so they produce meat that has rather high fat content but
> >no CLA. Don't know why CLA is not formed in feed lot fat. It ain't. 
> > 
> > These marginal pastures might respond to heavy horse manure or other
> >good stuff. And water
> >would sure help. Heavy applications of manure are not available or not
> >economic. Don't know which. One alternative already used is chemical. 
> >Chemicals work to make more grass but you and I know it also destroys the
> >pasture because chemicals reduce the LIFE that generates the nutrients f
> >rom the soil. Chemicals are momentary benefit. Tend to wash away or
> >percolate down below the root zone. 
> > As chemicals pass
>  by the roots some is picked up by plants. The
> >majority of the chemical load passes unused into pollution. As chemicals
> >are used, MORE chemicals are needed. Good sales system! 
> > 
> > The LIFE of compost would be great if applied in enough volume and if it
> >could be applied effectively and economically. Compost, multiplied many
> >fold, enriched by nutirients that are either absorbed by the LIFE and /
> >or are included in easily managed liquid form is ACT. 
> > 
> > The effect of ACT, as has been recorded by years and infinite area of
> >pasture and other grass, is to increase growth, root depth, resistance to
> >drouth, reduction of water needed, improvement in nutrient value and
> >quantity. The only records on pasture kept and reported that I know of, 
> >are by Betsy Ross. If there are conflicting / supporting records I am not
> >aware of them. Anyone? 
> > 
> > Betsy's records showed mortgage
>  paying improvements in cattle weight
> >gain per month. 
> > 
> > The advantage of grass fed - no Mad Cow hazard - is assumned. Mad Cow
> >is the result of feeding MC diseased animal parts that were often included
> >in feed lot feed. Hopefully no more. 
> > 
> > The higher CLA content of ACT grazed cattle vs cattle grazed on non ACT
> >grass and vs feed lot cattle was measured and reported by laboratory
> >measurements. The report was that the CLA content was about the same as
> >is found in wild salmon. If true that is a significant economic value in
> >the market. 
> > 
> > The advantage of CLA in the human diet was described at lenght in
> >articles published by Life Extension, a group of research oriented
> >doctors I consider highly reliable. www.lef.org 
> > 
> > Why not, to be scientific, compare ACT to other applications? 
> > good idea. There have been eons & tons of other stuff added
>  to
> >pastures in Texas. If they had worked and been economical would Texas
> >ranchers still be using them? Maybe they are. What Betsy did with ACT
> >appears to be so effective Texas ranchers are gathering to go in the same
> >direction. 
> > This move involves vast amounts of compost just to make the ACT. Vast
> >compost involves vast amounts of whatever it takes to make compost. When
> >you look at Texas grazing land, you can't see it all because of the
> >curvature of the Earth. Methods need to fit the task. Bob 
> > 
>
>
>
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