Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

Good discussion! What you're pointing out there, John, is a most 
sensible approach to agriculture, which is NOT "one size fits all". Of 
course you wouldn't know that from most gardening books and "experts". 
Too many variations in soil, climate, location, markets, traditions etc. 
And certainly there are places where livestock work best, and I use aged 
manure when I can get it. But I join Frances Lappe & many others who 
oppose the enormous waste of declining resources for excessive and 
unnecessary constant consumption of meat. It may be a lot worse here. 
What we have now is CAFOs, confined animal feeding operations, that are 
wrong in all the worst ways, and put extreme demands on water and fossil 
fuel resources that could instead feed the hungry billion or so. Most of 
our corn and grains goes to feed cattle, not people. Which is nothing 
like free range beef etc grazing where crops are impractical.

You mention "not smart to get rid of the ruminants, plow up the land and 
sow corn or soy." I agree again. Plowing up millions of acres - whole 
states - in our Midwest caused the great Dust Bowl in the 1930's. It was 
home to endless bison herds before the govt extermination (bison AND 
plains indians) in the late 1800's. What was behind all that tragedy? 
Wealthy land speculators of course.

On self sufficiency I might add that we don't aim for that ourselves. We 
feel that through history humans have been tribal and cooperative, with 
some specialization of labor which is far more efficient than individual 
self sufficiency. Community self sufficiency - partially - is more 
practical. We wish we could do more local barter but this is Tea Party 
Central, sorry to say. Total self sufficiency is a myth. We can feed 
several markets but we can't build the van to get there .

This is hard writing for me that touches on so many critical issues. And 
I need to finish clearing the old tomato beds to start repairing that 
greenhouse for winter. It won't get done by wishing.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net
-------------------------------------

On 11/10/2013 1:26 PM, John D'hondt wrote:
> Situation is a wee bit differnt here Paul.
> We never eat popcorn or any corn for that matter (gmo, no thank you)  except
> for a little bit of our own home grown, coloured,  heritage corn. And that
> is not very suitable for making popcorn. We would also avoid any microwaved
> food.
>
> But were we live you can not try for self sufficiency and not eat meat. You
> have vegetarians here but 90 % of what they eat is imported from the other
> side of the planet.
> Also much of Irish land is only really suited for grass or sitka spruce
> growing. Sitka spruce plantations are green desert where no local animal can
> survive. And grass is only suitable for herbivores.
> It is just not smart to get rid of the ruminants, plow up the land and sow
> corn or soy. I have tried to grow soy (one row in the garden) and it only
> produces a minimal crop once in ten years or more. Same with corn, the
> regular corn you know does not ripen here. Most corn is cut still green as
> cattle food. Other grains? Not possible on our steep mountain slopes.
> Plowing with modern machines causes massive errosion and the harvest is
> unpredictable. I know one man who set barley on almost 200 acres and he
> ended up with less than a hundred kilos of grain. That same acerage would
> have fed a hundred cattle for most of the year and as I said they would not
> have damaged the land as that barley cultivation did.
> There are farmers here with flat land who grow wheat, barley or oats. The
> one we know best fertilizes his land with cattle manure and cheese whey from
> the cheese factory near him. Without those inputs he would exhaust his land
> in a very few years.
> John
>
> ./
> > Trans Fats Ban Could Have Devastating Effect On Popcorn Industry
> > http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/09/popcorn-trans-fats-ban_n_4245453.html
> >
> > I suspect what they'll ban is simply artificial hydrogenation. Gov
> > interest in it of course is the fact our taxes pay for so much treatment
> > of the health problems, plus we all pay higher ins premiums for it.
> >
> > We've avoided margerine & such as much as we can for quite a while but
> > we don't rule out all animal fats. We do eat out but still try to eat as
> > low on the food chain as possible. Plus our fresh market products
> > encourage that. We use meat more like European style for flavoring,
> > since cutting down high meat consumption would free up farmland &
> > resources that now go to feed livestock & extend our global resources
> > further into the future.  Maybe even buy time for people here to learn
> > to cook again :-\
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