Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["E. E. Mitchamore Jr" <emitch@att.net>]

Michael Pollan gives an excellent overview of Salatin's operation and how it fits into the Grand Plan in The Omnivore's Dilemma. In fact, the book gives an excellent overview of each of the main agriculture/food threads and the concerns we might have with each.

 

E. E. "Mitch" Mitchamore
www.hillcountrynatives.biz

----- Original Message -----

From: activism98201@verizon.net

To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 1:10 AM

Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Agriculture and Food Consumption

I highly recommend folks taking a look at what Joel Salatin is doing on his farm.  He is, as he says, first-most a grass farmer.

http://www.polyfacefarms.com

It's all a matter of scale of course.


-Mark Nagel
Everett, WA


=====================
From: TradingPostPaul <tradingpost@riseup.net>
Date: 2007/10/14 Sun PM 01:13:46 CDT

Basically agree, livestock have a place. I'm not vegetarian but have cut my
beef consumption way back in my later years, partly for health and partly
for other reasons. Yes, livestock do fertilize the land. I recycle manure
from nearby and value it highly. It's the factory farms and monster
feedlots, esp of the midwest breadbasket, that consume so much corn and
grain production, and their manure simply goes to waste and pollutes our
waterways instead of fertilizing cropland. It's way over the top. We don't
need to eat so much meat. And we need that productive farmland to be
producing wholesome food to eat directly, and we need to be using our
freshwater more efficiently. So if livestock was raised only in areas
suitable only for pasture, without grain diets, we'd raise a lot less beef
and farm far more efficiently and sustainably, and be better off for it.
This is the middle ground that seems sensible to me.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 10/14/2007 at 5:26 AM Ken Hargesheimer wrote:

>Vegetarianism
>
>  The vegetarian myth is disproved.  It is often stated that meat produces
>one-fourth to one-tenth the food that using that same land for a
>vegetarian diet would produce.  That is not the whole picture.  Animals
>who transform one-fourth of their food into meat transform three-quarters
>of their food into manures (high value fertilizer) which is transformed
>into humus which is transformed into crops for both livestock and people.
>Organic agriculture recycles everything and transforms inert minerals,
>air, water and sunshine into increased biota through feeding the microherd
>a full diet including animal wastes.  There is more life created into
>existence out of the dead planetary chemistry than vegetarians are able to
>account for with their tired false myth. [Lion Kuntz] 
>  
>  Much of the land in many countries is suitable only for pasture which
>can be used only to produce meat.  Meat [lean and fat] provides nutrients
>that are difficult to get from other sources.
>  
>  Ken Hargesheimer
>  
>  Aliza <realfood@wonderfulfarm.com> wrote:
>  I am getting so tired of this whole grain/water consumption commentary
>about livestock.
>      

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