Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

All tillage is destructive to soil, basic principle. No-till advocates point 
out that soil that "needs" tilling doesn't need tilling; it needs cover crops 
and/or ruminants to improve it's percolation and moisture retention 
properties. If it can't be taken out of production to start rebuilding it, 
then it shouldn't be in production in the first place, and those depending on 
its income should be flipping burgers. You don't improve the productive 
capacity of soil over time by plowing or tilling; you weaken it. What kind of 
soil would you say needs weakening?

Topsoil loss and degradation is old news and it's been a growing threat to US 
production for decades. It's a threat to food security, to national security. 
Is there any other way to turn it around? I'd like to hear it.

We just don't need corporate megafarms producing endless tons of grains and 
corn and hay to feed millions more cattle and pigs in CAFOs than we need for 
good diet. We don't need them competing with the rest of us for increasingly 
scarce water and fossil fuels for FF-based fertilizers and pesticides. They 
could go broke tomorrow and that would suit me fine. Without your tax dollars 
subsidizing their corporate owners they would go belly up tomorrow. They 
could be sold off in small parcels to family farmers to grow all the calorie 
foods needed and much more. Statistically small farms are more productive per 
acre - on an annual basis of diversified cropping.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net


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

On 6/18/2010 at 12:52 PM Pete Vukovich wrote:

>Good points it is and should be a spectrum. I also think that optimal
>frequencies and types of tilling depend on the soil and crops themselves. 
>Logsdon seems to also be leaving out orchards for some reason, or perhaps
>where he lives they get tilled.....
>
>