Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

Sorry, but if you're claiming dry, fragile ecosystems are transformed into
"lush grass land" by your comost tea machines, then I have a bridge in
Arizona to sell you. Make you a real good deal, too. 

Don't try to paint your non-customers as some idiotic opponents of
grassland improvement. That's hitting below the belt and a false dichotomy.
I for one happen to be a fan of the Quivira Coalition: "The mission of the
Quivira Coalition is to foster ecological, economic and social health on
western landscapes through education, innovation, collaboration, and
progressive public and private land stewardship".  They're at
http://www.quiviracoalition.org/ . I know a fine fellow who belongs to it
and was cited for his riparian ranchland improvements where I lived in west
central NM Catron County. 

And accusing the rest of us of a "Pre hardened mind set" because we don't
see the need for your compost tea machines is a sure sign that you lack
hard evidence to support your business. 

paul, tradingpost@riseup.net
---------------
The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all
our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to
foster its renewal is our only hope.
   - Wendell Berry 
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 6/15/2006 at 11:00 AM Robert Norsen wrote:

>A Pre hardened mind set is not gonna change by a report that doesn't
>match the prior mind set.  Ranchers are / were growing skinny cattle on
>marginal grass land - over much of Texas and many other areas of EARTH.  
>Some hundreds of acres have been given the blessing of ACT with a result
>of  "Fat" cattle on lush grass land.  For some it didn't work.  So some
>can't accept that others made it work.
>   
>  Does that make it wrong to improve grass land, even if just to save the
>area from desertification?  .  
>   
>  Oh well  . . .      Any new news? 
>      
>
>Soilsecrets@aol.com wrote:
>      Paul,
>   
>  That is hilarious and made my day,  good points for sure?   It reminds
>me of when NMSU was doing research with compost tea and trying to grow
>better grass on the high desert soils of the Jornada Ranch which is
>Chihuahuan desert.  The Research Ranch is located at high elevation of
>4,000 feet to 5000 feet.  Of course I've already said that the compost tea
>project failed big time, but the real issue I guess is why the heck are we
>trying to grow beef on such fragile land in the first place.  There is
>also the Leyendecker Plant Science Research Center and Farm that the
>compost tea was applied on irrigated crops such as alfalfa, onions, cotton
>etc., and it failed on those sites as well.  
>   
>  Your point about the building of top soil/humus in the soil as the
>foundation of a good effort is well taken and significant because again
>compost tea cannot directly be responsible for such benefits.  I think it
>can contribute the foliar uptake of minor and major nutrients that a crop
>does need and consequently if you measure for those benefits you could see
>a reason to use compost tea.  And perhaps on the long run if you are
>recycling biomass that was made healthier by providing these minor and
>major nutrients via foliar feeding with a good quality compost tea, then
>the re mineralization of this biomass could help to contribute to the Soil
>Food Web and result in a slow Humification process.  But it will be very
>slow and not a ridiculous claims like building 12" of top soil in just one
>year.  
>   
>   
>  Dr. Michael 
>
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