Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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

'Intensive culture on a more or less extensive scale must, save in
exceptional circumstances, be treated as a business or run on business
lines ... to fully appreciate its possibilities it must be worked as a
commercial business." - (Intensive Culture of Vegetables, French System,
1913 p.8)

"Biointensive Mini-Agriculture allows people to feed themselves on a local
basis that provides total community food security and is a proven food
production system that is ecologically sound, economically viable and
socially responsible." - Ken Hargesheimer, (
http://www.bagelhole.org/?page=114 )

"In 2003, Four Season Farm grossed $100,000 on just an acre and a half of
ground, including 12,500 sq ft under cover. Now both in their sixties,
every year Coleman and Damrosch reevaluate "each crop's profit and pain
factor," as Damrosch puts it. As a rule of thumb, they say each crop has to
return $1.50/sq ft for two months to be worth growing." - (about Eliot
Coleman,
http://www.georgiaorganics.org/Files/Archives/GOnewsWinter05Web.pdf )

"Biointensive techniques can make possible a 200-500% increase in caloric
production per unit of area, a major increase in soil fertility while
productivity increases and resource use decreases, a 50+% reduction in the
amount of purchased organic fertilizer, a 99% reduction in the amount of
energy and a 67-88% reduction in the amount of water required per unit of
production, and a 100+% increase in income per unit of area."
http://biointensiveforrussia.igc.org/docs/695companion.pdf

"The premise of this book is that you can make a good living on five acres
or less of intensive vegetable production. .. if five acres is all you can
afford, it  is more than sufficient for an economically successful farm."
(Eliot Coleman in The New Organic Grower p.17)

"It takes about 15,000 to 30,000 square feet of land to feed one person the
average U.S. diet," he says. "I've figured out how to get it down to 4,000
square feet. How? I focus on growing soil, not crops."  John Jeavons
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/04/
13/HO126062.DTL

"Economically, conventional agriculture in the US produces on the average
up to $100 per sixteenth of an acre; the net return on a $500,000
investment on the average 500-acre farm is about $12,000, or a little over
2  percent. We are depleting our agricultural economic base and indirectly
our farming community base. Biointensive economic mini-farming, in
contrast, can produce up to $20,000 on a sixteenth of an acre through
increased yields, decreased resource use, and direct marketing." -- John
Jeavons, http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_3659.cfm

"John's methods are nothing short of miraculous" -- Alice Waters, from the
forward in How To Grow More Vegetables, Jeavons. And from Bob Bergland,
former Secretary of Agriculture, quoted in the same book, "The Jeavons
approach has done more to solve poverty and misery than anything else we've
done".

"While the “bigger is better” myth is generally accepted, it is a
fallacy. Numerous reports have found that smaller farms are actually more
efficient than larger “industrial” farms. These studies demonstrate
that when farms get larger, the costs of production per unit often
increase, because larger acreage requires more expensive machinery and more
chemicals to protect crops."
from http://www.keepmainefree.org/myth3.html

"The negative impacts of mono-crop, chemically intensive agriculture are
topsoil loss and soil erosion, aquifer depletion, pollution, loss of
genetic diversity and the overall breakdown of ecological systems. There
are deeper social issues connected with hunger and poverty. .. The
foundation of sustainability addresses concerns that go above and beyond
the term “Organic”. .."By nature, sustainable agriculture is generally
smaller in scale. From an economic standpoint sustainable agriculture works
to provide viable business pathways for small-mid sized farmers. The goal
is to create a decentralized, self-sufficient, local/regional food system
that empowers farmers and strengthens community."
http://www.communitymarkets.biz/questions.php

"Farmers are also in a perpetual struggle to maintain a decent standard of
living. As consolidations and other changes occur in the agriculture input,
food processing, and marketing sectors, the farmer’s bargaining position
weakens. The high cost of purchased inputs and the low prices of many
agricultural commodities, such as wheat, corn, cotton, and milk, have
caught farmers in a cost-price squeeze that makes it hard to run a
profitable farm." p.viii Building soils for better crops, 2nd edition, Fred
Magdoff and Harold van Es p.121
http://www.sare.org/publications/bsbc/bsbc.pdf

"Population will increase rapidly, more rapidly than in former times, and
'ere long the most valuable of all arts will be the art of deriving a
comfortable subsistence from the smallest area of soil." -- Abraham Lincoln
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paul tradingpost@lobo.net
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