Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[<pbunch@cox.net>]

Interesting point. I wonder if anyone has calculated the ratio(s) between the 
the amount of extensively cropped land and the amount of intensively farmed 
land required to provide a given level of nutrients available for transport. 
This of course would vary for different climatic and grazing systems. 

It might be more efficient from the point of view of nutrient harvesting to 
directly compost the extensively grown materials since there is a loss from 
uncollected urine. Trying to push such a system too far would likely result 
in degradation of the extensively farmed areas over time as the nutrients 
would be exported and not replaced. Catch-22?


---- Dieter Brand <diebrand@yahoo.com> wrote: 
> >Thus America a century ago had two separate systems of food production.

These two systems always existed side by side, and still do in many parts of 
the World, but they are not “separate”, since the intensively farmed kitchen 
garden depends on the fertility input from the fields, in particular from the 
grazing land, mostly in form of manure.  Thus the “intensively” farmed 
kitchen garden is only possible because of the fertility inputs from the 
“extensively” farmed fields.

Dieter Brand
Portugal



      
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