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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] A regenerative agriculture (was Re: Antibiotics)

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: Harvey Ussery <harvey@themodernhomestead.us>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] A regenerative agriculture (was Re: Antibiotics)
  • Date: Thu, 03 Dec 2009 06:42:10 -0500

Tommy Tolson wrote:
That's as radical as saying to quit tilling the soil.
Just these two behavioral changes might save our species.
If enough of us do them, we buy time to figure out how to
nonviolently seize society's decision-making process from
corporations and return to valuing the priceless.
By maturing our culture to interdependence?
The meek may even inherit the earth while it's still viable.
No one can force us to do/not do either.
Knowing what's at stake, it's a choice we each have.

Smiles.
Tommy

On Dec 1, 2009, at 11:17 AM, Jaylee Barzo wrote:

Easy solution--quit eating meat.

Thanks for your thoughts, Tommy. I couldn't agree more that "quit tilling the soil" is at the heart of regenerative agriculture. That's a major reason I see animals as an essential part of the mix. Mark referred to Joel Salatin's Polyface farm. Well, I've had my boots on Polyface's pastures many times over more than two decades, and there is no question whatever that animals (grazing cattle and pastured broiler and layer flocks) have been the key to the regeneration of a huge piece of ground that had been raped and worn out by production of oh-so-righteous plant-based foods. If you *care* about land you will not plow slopes (like most of Polyface) to grow grains and soybeans and other vegetable fare--a far better alternative is to clothe that ground in grass ("quit tilling"), and let grazing animals heal and improve it. The model is the symbiosis between buffalo and grass on the prairies of the midwest before their invasion by European humans: Buffalo herds--up to a million individuals each--helped create among the richest ecologies and deepest soils anywhere on earth--by grazing them. Humans fed on the buffalo as a key to a way of eating that was in balance with their world.

The mantra that feeding humans an exclusively plant based diet sounds great; but like most mantras, its repetition can become a substitute for thought about hard questions. I for one don't buy it. Can you show me any thriving ecology on earth in which animals are not a key part of the balance? If agriculture is most likely to succeed when imitating nature, why adopt a plants-only farming?

And by the way, when the oil runs out, even righteous vegans will probably rediscover what farmers have known forever: Shit is priceless. Tractors don't shit. What is wrong with this picture?

~Harvey

--
Harvey in northern Virginia
www.themodernhomestead.us





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