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  • From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <london AT metalab.unc.edu>
  • To: market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Micro Farming Discussion Forum (RFI)
  • Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 19:58:31 -0500 (EST)



---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 18:50:40 -0500 (EST)
From: Lion Kuntz <lionkuntz AT email.com>
To: sanet-mg AT ces.ncsu.edu

Is there a "MICRO-FARMING" message-group or email-list that anyone can point
me to? Or if nothing yet exists, are there some individuals interested in
corresponding around the concept of micro-farming?

Definition: MICRO-FARMING is the profit-making cultivation of mixed
livestock and
plant crops on areas of land between two-to-five acres. My personal
definition
includes (nearly) closed food-web ecological cycles which produce all the
fertilizers,
herbicides, and pesticides through on-site biologial processes. This is
closely
similar to "J.I.Rodale-style organic" farming, but has important
distinctions which are
not usually noticable unless a person is greatly familiar with
Rodale-organic growing
as it has developed to present times.

Micro-farming requires small livestock. (One cow or beef cattle requires two
acres
of pasture and two years to grow to suitable size to be harvested, which is
obviously
not a profit-making sustainable practice on a two acre micro-farm.) Such
candidate
livestock includes chickens, ducks, fish, and perhaps a few geese or quail.
These
render inedible plant parts and farm wastes into two valuable products, meat
(and
eggs), and fertilizing manures. Another small livestock not usually
considered as
such is worms, which are high quality manure processors (as vermicompost)
and
high nutrition feed for fish and fowl.

Mushrooms and a full selection of green groceries, berries and fruits can be
integrated with the livestock to coexist on micro-plots for perpetual
sustainablility
(both economically and ecologically) with surprisingly little active
maintenance of
approximately 40 hours per week by one farmworker for year-round
productivity. It
takes a great deal of cleverness to manage over 1,000 chickens, 1,000
rabbits, and
1,000 fish on 87,000 square feet of land, while putting in and harvesting
out
tomatoes, lettuce, celery, peppers, etc. to supply a CSA of thirty
subscribers.
Especially if one wants to keep the workload down to 40-hour work-weeks for
one
farmworker.

Normally, this kind of concept is not in the range of discussions active on
Sanet-mg,
and is more the subject matter for overseas agricultural missionaries trying
to
improve the lot of the burgeoning poor in undeveloped nations. Ironically,
although
this micro-farming is four to twelve times the net productivity of "green
revolution" or
high-yield mechanized farming, and would certainly benefit the lot of
developing
country rural populations, it requires infrastructure to be low-tech. In
oher words,
without infrastructure one cannot have the benefits of highest yields, even
though the
micro-farm is not mechanized nor high-tech in itself. So missionary groups
are not
the ideal interest group for correspondence on this subject.

Intentional communities looking for revenue-producing activities might have
some
interest, as might the back-to-the-land folks who went back and then found
that it
takes money to afford your escape. Small (I mean SMALL = under ten acres)
farmers familiar with organic farming might find a huge boost in
productivity if they
understood the value of (nearly) closed loops of food-chain webs integrated
into
living systems, but after over a year subscribing to "homesteading" email
list failed
to turn up one person who didn't already think they had a good thing going.
Yet the
homestead list was filled daily with people looking for advice on solving
problems
caused by simple lack of foresight, careening from one "crisis" after
another. It
seems people really wanted to go back in time as well as back to the land.

Previous attempts here on Sanet failed to find one correspondent on
micro-farming,
but maybe you have seen a group somewhere in your net travels who likes to
indulge in ideas about how to make life easier by using modern
knowledgebases
instead of grandpappy's handed-down lore from his grandpappy. Permaculture
is
out. That is a design system based on outside income, not profitable design
of living

systems which sustain the homeowner fiscally so that he/she does not have to
be
selling seminars on "how to permaculture" and never actually has to compete
selling
tomatoes. If everybody in the world lived a permaculture lifestyle it would
take three
or more planet-Earths to diffuse the population so each could have their
ecologically-compatable homestead.

Micro-farming with four to twelve times the net productiviy of "intensive"
farming,
called "high-yield" or "green revolution" by it's proponents, and
unflatteringly called
"industrial farming" or "factory farming" by it's deractors is wasting or
despoiling four
to twelve times the agricultural lands required by micro-farming wherever it
competes raising the same crop(s).

Dennis T. Avery (Sanet's most popular villian) uses classic bad accounting
when he
cites statistics in his frequent publishings. In an essay entitled
"Earth-Friendly
Agriculture Unkind To World's Hungry" Avery cites activists who have helped
Peruvian farmers in the Andes revive an ancient system of farming which
employed
raised fields surrounded by water-filled ditches. These "waru-warus"
moderate soil
temperature and extend the growing season, allowing 14 tons of potatoes per
hectare, against the regional average of less than 4 tons. Then he goes on
to point
out that Idaho farmers grow 20 tons of french-fry perfect potatoes per
hectare. His
accounting is flawed because he does not show how round-up ready no-till
potatoes
would moderate the soil temperature and extend the growing season. He also
does
not subtract from the 20 tons/hectare the costs of machinery
purchase/amortization/operations costs, and the costs of round-up ready GE
potatoes, the "round-up", the fertilizers and other inputs bought out of
that 20
tons/hectare, not needed because it is not used by the Peruvians. If the
Idaho farmer
nets half after expenses he would get a NET productivity increase of 6
tons/hectare
by going the "waru-waru" method.

This kind of false statistic is used routinely by liars trying to justify
land-wasteful,
polluting, toxic agriculture which is filled with cruelty to animals.

Organic farmers are so used to being abused in print by the Avery's out
there that
they don't take criticism as worth considering, but Avery is right on one
thing. If his
favorite agriculture is four to twelve times less productive than integrated
living
systems of micro-farming, most organic farmers have a large margin of
possible
productivity gains yet to be achieved.

Both organic farming and industrial farming are wasting large tracts of
wildlife-
owned habitat lands for no good purpose. The world is neither being
sustained
(when 30,000 species are driven into extinction each year by inefficient
farming of
all types) nor are the farmers delivering enough of their best possible
productivity to
consumers. It is a tragedy on every front. Who wouldn't want to talk about
better
alternatives. Well, in fact, it seems just about everybody is quite
satisfied with the
status-quo judging by the lists and newsgroups I monitored for the last two
years.

It was once predicted that the internet would make possible distantly
located people
into "communities of interest". I have most often found that not to be true,
but instead
ideological warriors battling for cyber-turf, with spontaneous juntas
forming to
ambush dissimilar interest groups have often been seen on usenet newsgroups
and
mail-lists like Sanet-mg. IF you are interested in micro-farming as a
lifestyle or
solution to environmental usurpation of biodiversity habitat, THEN we may
have a
common interest to communicate about.

My email addresses are: LionKuntz AT email.com, LionKuntz AT aol.com,
LionKuntz AT yahoo.com

A list of about seventy webpages I maintain can be located at
http://ww.nav.to/LifeSaviors or you can begin perusing pages at
http://homepages.msn.com/VolunteerSt/lifesaviors and follow links to pages
of
interest.

An essay about the worst of the worst kinds of farming I call "satanic
farming" is
posted at URL =
http://homepages.msn.com/VolunteerSt/lifesaviors/666extin.htm

Sincerely, signed __Lion Kuntz__
Santa Rosa, California, USA.





  • Micro Farming Discussion Forum (RFI), Lawrence F. London, Jr., 03/21/2000

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