permaculture

[Claude William Genest <genest@pivot.net>]

Unchecked grazing doesn't work.
Check out Allan Savory

www.holisticmanagement.org

Contrary to popular belief, intensive grazing is necessary for the  
regeneration of soils !


On Jan 31, 2006, at 3:29 PM, Will Carey wrote:

> 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. “If grazing  
> isn’t managed
> well, it can be as bad for the environment, and maybe worse, than a
> confinement operation,” 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.
>
> “On a local scale, grazing can be important [for water quality] if  
> you are
> simply looking at one watershed because it’s basically a method of  
> earning
> your living off more land with less production,” 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> permaculture mailing list
> permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture