Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Harvey Ussery <boxwood@nelsoncable.com>]

I agree with much of what you say, Liz. However, I always object to a 
straight Frances Moore Lappe type approach to this question: ten pounds 
of feed grains for one pound of flesh produced and all that. Lappe's was 
an eminently useful contribution, but unfortunately she assumed that 
feeding beef animals feed grains is the norm, whereas in historic (and 
evolutionary) terms it is anything but.

I'm not sure that what we need to do is eat more *corn* directly--if 
you've read Pollan's latest and most important book OMNIVORE'S DILEMMA, 
you know that we're already eating a *mountain* of corn, usually hidden 
away in unsuspected but ubiquitous nooks of our diet. Eat more sweet 
corn?--yeah! But I think we should vastly decrease the amount of 
commodity corn we grow (for highly manipulated/extracted additives to 
the industrial food supply as well as for animal feeds), and re-learn 
the benefits of clothing much of our agricultural land with grass, and 
the ways we can use meat-producing ruminants in synergistic relationship 
with grasslands.

This is not to say that I don't agree with Liz--eating lesser quantities 
of meat may well be essential for a more sane and sustainable food 
future. But of equal importance is re-learning *traditional* ways of 
using meat animals--whether beef or other ruminants like sheep and 
goats, or pigs, or poultry--so that they support best use of prime land, 
help stabilize marginal land (slopes, rocky ground) thru grass/grazing 
rather than plowing, and gleaning around the edges (hedgerows, food 
processing cast-offs). Eating meat in such paradigms is eminently 
wholesome, and healing.

~Harvey

> "A "perfect storm" of ecological and social factors appears to be gathering
> >force, threatening vast numbers of people with food shortages and price
> >rises."
>   
>
> Perhaps I'm in the minority in seeing a silver lining to this cloud, 
> but one problem for decades has been the diversion of corn to beef 
> production rather than the direct consumption of it by people. If the 
> use of corn for ethanol (which of course has its own ecological 
> issues) causes people to look at other food sources than 
> feedlot-produced beef, maybe the balance of corn usage can be tilted 
> back at least a little toward more direct consumption.
>
> What concerns me more is that with increasing corn production comes 
> increasing use of pesticides and GMO varieties (if the corn isn't 
> going to be eaten anyway, I can hear people saying, what does it 
> matter if it's GMO?). Increasing soil erosion, increasing machinery 
> and fewer people, increasing run-off into streams and rivers, 
> increasingly powerful pesticides because, again, if it's not being 
> grown for food, it doesn't matter what we put on it.
>
> Whatever individual mechanisms enter into the equation, switching to 
> a less meat-dependent diet may become a necessity rather than a choice.
>
> Liz in SW VA

--
Harvey in northern Va
www.themodernhomestead.us