Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[su do <speakingbeareturns@yahoo.com>]

I'm not advocating going all grain. Certainly the
terrain should dictate best farming practices. BTW
Linux??? I'm not a tech savy person :+)
--- Harvey Ussery <boxwood@nelsoncable.com> wrote:

> >
> > Many ppl can live on a macrobiotic diet which
> consists
> > mosty of grain.  ~su do [Love your handle--gotta
> be a Linux gal/guy, right?]
> 
> I appreciate the concern for wise agricultural
> resource use that lies 
> behind, this statement, su do. Frances Moore Lappe
> got us all thinking 
> along these lines with DIET FOR A SMALL PLANET--"ten
> pounds of grain for 
> one pound of flesh" and all that. But Lappe wasn't a
> farmer, and was 
> completely blind to some fundamental facts of
> resource use. There are 
> real-world situations in which eschewing meat as
> "wasteful" and growing 
> for a diet "which consists mostly of grain" either
> ignores potential 
> resources or is a disaster in practice. Examples:
> *You have a sloped field you want to produce food
> on. Plow it to grow 
> those oh-so-efficient grains to feed people, and it
> will erode 
> disastrously. OTOH, you can plant fruit trees on
> that slope, and graze 
> sheep on the mixed-pasture groundcover. Oh, and
> let's throw in some 
> geese--both they and the sheep are grazers, but
> select different plant 
> species by preference, hence more efficiently
> utilize the resource.
> *You have an existing forest. The "efficient grains"
> point of view 
> dictates cutting it down and plowing. But getting
> rid of forest has 
> *serious* cascading consequences. Maybe smarter to
> turn in pigs and 
> turkeys to forage and fatten on the abundant acorns,
> leaving in place a 
> diverse and valuable ecology? (Which can also be
> used to grow medicinal 
> and culinary herbs, edible and medicinal mushrooms,
> nuts and berries, on 
> and on.)
> *You have areas in shrubby growth. You can plow them
> all--to grow 
> grains--and destroy habitat for countless species
> essential for 
> ecological balance. [This is not hypothetical
> fancy--I'm simply talking 
> about "conventional" agriculture here.] Or you can
> leave that habitat in 
> place, and browse goats there. As long as you don't
> over-browse, you 
> keep ecological diversity in being while using the
> space as a 
> food-producing resource (milk and meat).
> 
> I could multiply examples all day, if it would help
> change the 
> persistent mantra that grain production is *always*
> more "efficient," 
> less "wasteful." Wise land use always fits the
> production model to the 
> existing ground/climate/other conditions--never the
> reverse.
> 
> ~Harvey
> 
> -- 
> Harvey in northern Va
> www.themodernhomestead.us
> 
> "Can't you see those dark clouds gathering up ahead?
> They're gonna wash this planet clean, like the Bible
> said.
> Now you can hold on steady, try to get ready,
> But everybody's gonna get wet--
> Don't think it won't happen just because it hasn't
> happened yet!"  (Jackson Browne)
> 
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>
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> 



      
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