Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

I had forgotten about all those problems with grain diets for cows. 
Serious problems for those who eat cows.

On 9/17/2014 1:42 PM, John D'hondt wrote:
> 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.
>
> <Yes, unfortunately the world is full of money grabbing varmints. In 
> my book the only justification for being alive is trying to make this 
> a better world. And making money from someone elses ideas does not fit 
> in there. I'm not even sure that making money from your own ideas is 
> so great. Invent a new super efficient engine or a new way of free 
> energy and try to patent it and chances are you will find yourself 
> killed by the vested interests who don't want to loose out on their 
> old ways of raping the planet.
> So far I have only made minor inventions, mostly to do with plant and 
> animal diseases and I have always given them away for free to anybody 
> showing an interest. If I should come up with a potentially rich 
> making new something you will be able to read all about it on line 
> shortly afterwards for free.
>
> 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.
>
> < OK and I agree that that is sick. Cows have adapted to a food that 
> is useless to us and that we can't digest and that is the only food we 
> have ever given them. Feeding them grain makes them a different animal 
> altogether and not very good for human consumption. They then develop 
> E. coli H157 in their digestive tracts that can be easily deadly to 
> people and they lack omega 3 fats to name but a few differences.
> We happen to live in a country that grows gras better than anything 
> else and it makes sense to keep cattle on such land. We don't need 
> grain, equipment, not a lot of transport (and a good bit of this by 
> horse cart) and the cattle finish themselves by the end of summer when 
> they look round and happy and with have a gleaming coat. We do need to 
> feed silage and hay during winter but the energy this costs is much 
> less than people driving to town every day to go shopping. Feeding 
> cattle in winter is all hand work for us. Also with our way of rearing 
> cattle a sick animal is something we don't see often at all. I can't 
> remember when we last had to call in a vet.
>
> John
>
> 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