permaculture

[Will Carey <cure@rtinet.com>]

Rob, all...

Since this series of threads started with a discussion about soil- building&
CO2, Grass-fed dairy, etc... I thought people would like to see this
analysis of grass-fed strategy and the complex issues it brings up.

Do we, as Permaculture designers, have the tools to do multi-criteria
analysis on strategies like this?

<http://www.bayjournal.com/article.cfm?article=2678>

An excerpt from the article...

-----
Whether the Bay would benefit if everyone switched to grass-based dairy
production, though, is a matter of debate.

If pastures are not carefully monitored, cows may wander into streams, or
consume too many legumes, such as clover or alfalfa, which fix nitrogen out
of the atmosphere. and release it in their wastes. ³If grazing isn¹t managed
well, it can be as bad for the environment, and maybe worse, than a
confinement operation,² Muller said.

While grazing operations produce less nutrients per cow and per acre, some
studies indicate that‹because of their low milk production‹they actually
generate more nutrients per unit of milk than traditional confined
operations. That means if everyone switched to grazing, nutrient pollution
may actually increase.

³On a local scale, grazing can be important [for water quality] if you are
simply looking at one watershed because it¹s basically a method of earning
your living off more land with less production,² said Rick Kohn, an
associate professor of animal and avian sciences at the University of
Maryland.
-----

Will from Oregon

on 1/31/06 09:00, permaculture-request@lists.ibiblio.org at
permaculture-request@lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

> Message: 3
> Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 07:00:01 +0000 (UTC)
> From: "robscott@freeshell.org" <robscott@freeshell.org>
> Subject: [permaculture] Ethanol proposals
> To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.62.0601310634060.10837@sdf.lonestar.org>
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
> 
> 
> To Dylan, and others who must be having the same thoughts,
> 
> I agree with you
> A small-scale farmer, running a solar still, could be viable
> micro-enterprise. As a single component of a diverse farm, re-using all
> outputs for multiple on farm uses, and creating a variety of products, its
> a way to keep fueled vehicles in the equasion. Good point.
> 
> The portrait Fortune magazine paints is a very different one, and that's
> what I'm referring to. The gas stations here in Illinois have "10%
> Ethanol" in every pump, and we may soon see that go 20%, 30% and more as
> the mentality sets in. And this flies in the face of the environmental
> scientists in the midwest who designed these systems - they're the ones
> saying NO because it's just PR and handouts to giant landlords, not
> environmentalism.
> 
> The USDA is primed to promote ethanol as a major U.S. corn-belt product.
> Remember the original mixed enthusiasm for USDA Organic Certification?
> That's what I'm trying to point out.
> 
> There are often calls to mainstream Permaculture, and I've begun to
> undersand mainstreaming to mean "commercial mainstreaming" -- in other
> words: understanding the significance of hard numbers isn't mainstream
> activity...
> 
> Until micro-farming is a way to be in the mainstream,
> scientific data can be used to fight the mainstreaming.
> 
> Rob Scott
> Urbana, IL