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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Exotic Plant Eradication

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  • From: Mark <mpludwig@facstaff.wisc.edu>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Exotic Plant Eradication
  • Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 10:41:03 -0500

At 08:09 AM 8/28/02 -0500, you wrote:
Steve,

>> Give me about a dozen examples of what a farmer would encounter. Let's
talk about land management in terms of 0.5, 2.5, 5, 10, 20, 40, 60, 120,
360, 720, and 1500 acre size farms, OK? <<

What would a farmer encounter? Well, let's first consider a principle of
scale that, the larger a farm is the less likely it will be sustainable and
the more likely it's pollution by-products will reach lethal concentrations
and go largely unused.

I'll put Charlie Opitzes 1000a/1000cow grass dairy up against any small red barn traditional dairy in WI and Charlie will be twice as sustainable. Small farms also frequently lack the labor or economic strength to implement best practices and are far more likely to slop through regulations than large visible farms

But specifically a farmer (in the U.S.A.) will
encounter...

Many weeds and woody plants coming up behind his plow which he would surely
feel compelled to spray with round-up or 2-4-d. Critters attacking his
crops and endless efforts to eradicate such critters.

Again this is overstated. Most farms use chemicals as little as possible as they are very expensive. There are abuses of course, but the biggest users of chemicals are lawns, not farm fields.

The loss of nearly
all soil nutrients and minerals.

More like too much NPK, not enough of everything else. Probably the biggest problem faced by ag today, and increasingly being regulated.

An increasing dependency on genetically
modified crops,

Certainly popular, BT being the most dangerous.

the latest super hormones and deviously clever chemical
cocktails.

Mostly Band-Aid "solutions" that could be minimized if soil fertility and ration balancing issues could be fixed.

New and intriguing outbreaks of BSE (mad cow disease) and hoof
and mouth disease.

Scary stuff, esp BSE. The rendering industry probably needs to be shut down and carcasses composted on farm (bury them in wood chips).


Fertilizers destroying the soil microbes, collapsing his
soils and causing algael blooms in local water ways.

The wrong fertilizers are problematic. Again it's a simple shift to better products that will fix this without having to dump the whole infrastructure there to distribute fertilizer.

Manure lagoons that
the neighbors despise and the state never quite gets around to noticing.

Anaerobic digesters.

Freezing peaches towards the end of summer.

Talk to God, lower CO2.

Overspraying pesticides and
defoliants so that the once wildlife rich margins of his property won't even
support a single tree.

Seldom happens. If farmers take out fence rows they use bull dosers.

The loss of all of his topsoil and organic matter.

Some progress on this front. Grazing would certainly stop this.

Subsidies that encourage him to produce a commodity in an already flooded
market.

A serious problem. WTO may actually solve this one. Need to redirect all of this to conservation programs.

What are you getting at, Steve, that Farmers have too many obstacles in
their way to allow exotic plants to flourish? Or that permaculture ethics
should be waved for anyone in a commercial venture?

Farmers have been burned by every snake oil salesman on the globe and are conservative by nature and necessity. We need to offer steps toward sustainability that use their existing infrastructure and skills. I have presented PC to farmers a few times now and they are generally interested, and will adopt those practices that make sense for them.

At the very least we need to treat exotics like pollution and consider them
to be an under-utilized resource. At the best, we should be ecstatic that
something manages to survive and cover the soil inspite all of our best
efforts to denude the planet.

Thank god for Quack Grass! Amen!

Mark

For the real scoop on environmental and social justice issues check out the
archives of Democracy Now!
http://www.webactive.com/webactive/pacifica/demnow/archive.html

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Mark P. Ludwig
Poultry Research Lab
University of Wisconsin -Madison
608-262-1730 WK
608-846-7125 HM





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