Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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

I'll answer in between comments below.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. 
--Henry David Thoreau 
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 7/30/2006 at 12:53 PM Greg and April wrote:

>Replying to Harvey and Paul.
>
>So how does it matter how long it is before it is returned to the soil, so

>long at it returns to the soil?

It matters. The longer it waits the more nutrient loss.

>If a crop is grown, then cattle ( and/or other animals ) eat the stubble, 
>then the crop waste feeds the animals, while they manure the field.    Is 
>this bad?

Depends on how many animals on how much land and other factors.  BTW,
cattle don't put on weight eating stubble. 

>The point is, that crop wastes, leaves the field in different ways, but as

>long at there is not a long term negative flow of nutrients, the practice
>is 
>sustainable.

But how do you quantify flow of nutrients? Sustainability obviously
involves healthy soil building through certain practices such as cover
crops and legumes. 

>Wheat is a major negative flow crop, but, included with crop rotations,
>and 
>fallow fields it's not a problem.

Can't agree that cash crop rotations and fallow build soil. It depends
again on whether cover crops and/or green manuring is used with fallow, and
other factors.  

>If one year a crop ( including stubble ) is used in a negative nutrient 
>way( say for energy production ), as a part of a rotational system, the
>long 
>term effects should be no worse than growing any other nutrient negative 
>crop.   

But that's not saying much. It ought to be obvious that any crop grown for
fuel (there's ethanol again) is not a crop grown for food. And further, all
the costs, inputs, land, and labor that goes into it is not going to
produce food. We ought to be sobered by the news that this country is now a
net IMporter of food. We don't produce enough for ourselves. Moreover, with
energy getting more expensive, we're not likely to increase food crop
production, but continue decreasing it relative to population. And even if
ethanol has an EROEI of 1.5 (most optimistic claim), it still takes 2/3 of
the energy it produces just to grow and process the crop. Do the math.  Or
put another way, to get the ethanol energy from 100 acres, you have to grow
another 300 acres of it just to produce the energy to grow the first 100
and to produce the energy to grow the 300. A lose-lose situation any way
you cut it.  

> In the end, the negatives and positives have to balance out to a 
>neutral or positive nutrient flow to the fields to qualify as sustainable.


Sorry, never heard that claim made before, haven't seen anything to support
it. 

>It is just a matter of picking and choosing the crop and field use at the 
>proper time, after all you wouldn't plant wheat in ground that had no hope

>of receiving water.

I think there's a lot more involved than that. 


>----- Original Message ----- 
>From: "Harvey Ussery" <huboxwood@earthlink.net>
>To: <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
>Sent: Saturday, July 29, 2006 8:50
>Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Wheat is the new oil
>
>
>>
>> But in the original context, I took "crop wastes" to mean things like
>> corn and soybean stalks, the residues of crop plants after the
>> harvestable parts (the people-food parts) have been taken off. Many
>> claim that we can make lots and lots of biofuels by fermenting these
>> crop wastes--even manures--and extracting out the volatile burnables.
>> And of course we can. But the more we use such "wastes" to run our cars,
>> the less are available to return to the soil as organic matter/humus.
>> We're already returning vastly less OM to agricultural soils than we're
>> taking off--accelerating that trend will only increase the rate at which
>> we are turning some of the best agricultural soils God ever took the
>> time to turn out--into desert.
>>
>> ~Harvey
>> -- 
>
>AND
>
>----- Original Message ----- 
>From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
>To: <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
>Sent: Saturday, July 29, 2006 13:29
>Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Wheat is the new oil
>
>
>>
>> Think that needs to be stressed. You can't make two and two equal five.
>> Returning all available organic waste to the soil was the prime
directive
>> Sir Albert laid out back in the '40s. It was his demonstrations and
>> lectures that prompted J.I. Rodale to start pushing organic growing.
>>
>