Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

First let me agree the permaculture principles are sound; it's what the 
money grubbing "certified" teachers have done to it. $900 US to listen 
to somebody talk for a week, then you get a certificate! & then you can 
put on your own seminars & charge $900, as they advertize, all without 
actually doing any growing or homesteading of any kind. They even 
copywrited the word "Permaculture" to be able to sue anybody using it 
without their royalties.  BTW Mollison feels the same way. And he wrote 
the book on it.

Second, I believe the emissions they refer to include ALL the fossil 
fuel use that goes into the grain growing, equipment, feeding, watering, 
& transporting & finishing beef for market with CAFOs that make up the 
vast majority of beef production in this country. Not cow farts.

On 9/16/2014 3:14 PM, John D'hondt wrote:
> I have been thinking about this for a long time Paul and I have the 
> distict feeling that blaming "emissions" of 36 % of the grand total on 
> cows is complete balderdash. A complete lie that does not become more 
> true even if it is steadily repeated.
>
> - in the first place all herbivores have bacteria inside them that can 
> break down and make use of cellulose which is a major constituent of 
> plant cells. Not just cows but elephants, deer, goats and rhinos, 
> sheep and rabbits and horses have what it takes to break down very 
> resistant plant molecules. If it were not for these herbivores and 
> their commensal micro fauna and flora dead plant material would just 
> pile up and stay there forever and life would grind to a halt. All 
> these herbivores live on a diet in the natural state that would see us 
> starve very fast if we tried to live on it.
> Cows are extremely efficient at breaking down cellulose, more so than 
> deer, horses or elephants for instance but I doubt very much that they 
> constitute even 4 % of all herbivores or herbivore biomass (and this 
> includes insects) on the planet.
>
> - I have lived in close proximity with cattle for now almost 30 years 
> and I have never experienced a cow pass wind even once. They do burp 
> while ruminating on average 6 times per hour and they ruminate for on 
> average 8 hours per day. Every burp has a volume of about 250 ml and 
> for a part consists of the air they swallow while ruminating and that 
> comes back up.
> A grand total 4-5 gallons per day?
> Take a cow of 400 kg which would be 6-7 average adult humans. It is 
> thought that an average human passes wind some 7 times per day and the 
> total gas emissions can be over 3 liters per day which means that the 
> 6-7 humans would be just beaten in emission production by one cow.
> How many humans are there on the planety compared to cows? I think 
> humans outnumber cattle 5 to 1 so bovine and human emissions would be 
> about the same.
>
> -the world consumes some 90 million barrels of oil per day leading to 
> some 20 million metric tons of climate altering emissions per day? I 
> won't even look at burning coal and wood figures to be added to this.
> But blaming 36 % of all  emissions on cows is ridiculous and very bad 
> science.
>
> Further, I am also guilty of bastardizing original permaculture here 
> where I live. We have to row to the best of our abilities with the 
> oars we have been given. But I think the general ideas behind 
> permaculture are very sound.
>
> John
>
>
> I agree but those figures do average in pastured beef & all kinds of
> agriculture. Also I have no respect for the way "permaculture" has been
> bastardized in the U.S.
>
> On 9/15/2014 6:28 PM, John D'hondt wrote:
> > "beef makes up 4 percent by weight of available food, but 36 percent of
> > emissions"
> >
> > CAFO beef probably but I severely doubt that gras grazing beef is 
> > worse weight for weight than humans.
> >
> > "Direct emissions from agriculture make up between 10 percent and 12
> > percent of overall greenhouse gas emissions. If you throw in factors
> > such as fertilizer and chemical production, fuel use and agricultural
> > land-use change, the proportion rises—along with the uncertainty—to
> > between 17 percent and 32 percent.
> >
> > that is regular industrial agriculture and not organic-permaculture!
> >
> >
> > "Researchers may enhance yields and farmers may use resources more
> > efficiently, but populations will increase—and so will demand for meat
> > and dairy products."
> >
> > The human population exploded thanks to oil. Oil production and human 
> > population graphs follow one another very closely.
> > Past peak oil...we can only keep people fed by trashing the planet 
> > for short term gain. I can see a breaking point in the not too far 
> > distant future and then populations will crash and so will demand. 
> > Just extrapolating graph lines is oxymoronic.