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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] TWO AGRICULTURES, NOT ONE, By John Michael Greer

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: <pbunch@cox.net>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] TWO AGRICULTURES, NOT ONE, By John Michael Greer
  • Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2010 14:11:46 -0700

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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