In article
,
Billy wrote:

In article
,
"Dan L." wrote:

In article
,
Billy wrote:

If you are interested, you might want to look at the article on
no till farming in the July Scientific American (page 70, I think). It
is mostly an industrial approach but the article finishes by saying that
the problems with industrial no till farming (pests and weeds that arise
from monoculture farming and the increasing amounts of agrichemicals
needed to suppress them) can be addressed with organic farming
approaches of crop rotation, interplanting, and the grazing of animals
on the land. The more things change . . .

The article does indeed start on page 70. I have subscribed to that
magazine for many years. That will be one article I will read.
But is this really new news?

Does refuting the industrial farming model pushed by Monsanto constitute
news?

For decades now, since WWII, agribusiness has propagandized that
modern chemicals and equipment could better feed the world. That lie is
slowly coming apart. As you will see, industrial no-till was introduced
to combat the erosion and loss of top soil. But industrial no-till
relies on expensive chemical inputs of fertilizers and increasing
quantities of chemical remedies to combat pests (vegetative and insect
problems) inherent in repeated planting of monocultures in the same
place (Additionally this affects soil cohesion, as as microflora and
fauna are killed.). The answer? Introduction of "organic farming
practices such as crop rotation to prevent pests from establishing
themselves, and reducing the eco-degrading in-puts of pesticides.
Interplanting of pulses or "companion" crops. Using the land to grow
animals which in turn fertilize the land with manure (see excerpt from
"Omnivore's Dilemma" below). The net result is greater total out-put
from the land, fewer costly inputs, and improved human and ecological
health.

This response is based on the article and "The fatal harvest reader :
the tragedy of industrial agriculture" / edited by Andrew Kimbrell. I
found no disagreement between the two sources.
------

"Omnivore's Dilemma"
p. 126

"Grass," so understood, is the foundation of the intricate food chain
Salatin has assembled at Polyface, where a half dozen different animal
species are raised together in an intensive rotational dance on the
theme of symbiosis. Salatin is the choreographer and the grasses are his
verdurous stage; the dance has made Polyface one of the most productive
and influential alternative farms in America.

Though it was only the third week of June, the pasture beneath me had
already seen several rotational turns. Before being cut earlier in the
week for the hay that would feed the farm's animals through the winter,
it had been grazed twice by beef cattle, which after each day-long stay
had been succeeded by several hundred laying hens. They'd arrived
by Eggmobile, a ramshackle portable henhouse designed and built by
Salatin. Why chickens? "Because that's how it works in nature," Salatin
explained. "Birds follow and clean up after herbivores." And so during
their turn in the pasture, the hens had performed several ecological
services for the cattle as well as the grass: They'd picked the tasty
grubs and fly larvae out of the cowpats, in the process spreading the
manure and eliminating parasites. (This is what Joel has in mind when he
says the animals do the work around here; the hens are his "sanitation
crew," the reason his cattle have no need of chemical parasiticides.)
And while they were at it, nibbling on the short cattle-clipped grasses
they like best, the chickens applied a few thousand pounds of nitrogen
to the
pasture-and produced several thousand uncommonly rich and tasty eggs.
After a few week's rest, the pasture will be grazed again, each steer
turning these lush grasses into beef at the rate of two or three pounds
a day.

By the end of the season Salatin's grasses will have been transformed by
his animals into some 40,000 pounds of beef, 30,000 pounds of pork,
10,000 broilers, 1,200 turkeys, 1,000 rabbits, and 35,000 dozen eggs.
This is an astounding cornucopia of food to draw from a hundred acres of
pasture, yet what is perhaps still more astonishing is the fact
that this pasture will be in no way diminished by the process-in fact,
it will be the better for it, lusher, more fertile, even springier
underfoot (this thanks to the increased earthworm traffic). Salatin's
audacious bet is that feeding ourselves from nature need not be a
zero-sum proposition, one in which if there is more for us at the end of
the season
then there must be less for nature-less topsoil, less fertility, less
life. He's betting, in other words, on a very different proposition, one
that looks an awful lot like the proverbially unattainable free lunch.

And none of it happens without the grass. In fact, the first time I met
Salatin he'd insisted that even before I-met any of his animals, I get
down on my belly in this very pasture to make the acquaintance of the
less charismatic species his farm was nurturing that, in turn, were
nurturing his farm. Taking the ant's-eye view, he ticked off the census
of a single square foot of pastu orchard grass, foxtail, a couple of
different fescues, bluegrass, and timothy. Then he cataloged the
legumes-red clover and white, plus lupines-and finally the forbs,
broad-leaved species like plantain, dandelion, and Queen Anne's Lace.
And those were just the plants, the species occupying the surface along
with a handful of itinerant insects; below decks and out of sight
tunneled earthworms (knowable by their castled mounds of rich castings),
pocket gophers, woodchucks, and burrowing insects, all making their dim
way through an unseen wilderness of bacteria, phages, eelish nematodes,
shrimpy rotifers, and miles upon miles of mycelium, the underground
filaments of fungi. We think of the grasses as the basis of this food
chain, yet behind, or beneath, the grassland stands the soil, that
inconceivably complex community of the living and the dead. Because a
healthy soil digests the dead to nourish the living, Salatin calls it
the earth's stomach.

But it is upon the grass, mediator of soil and sun, that the human gaze
has always tended to settle, and not just our gaze, either. A great many
animals, too, are drawn to grass, which partly accounts for our own deep
attraction to it: We come here to eat the animals that ate the grass
that we (lacking rumens) can't eat ourselves. "All flesh is grass." The
Old Testament's earthy equation reflects a pastoral culture's
appreciation of the food chain that sustained it, though the
hunter-gatherers living on the African savanna thousands of years
earlier would have understood the flesh-grass connection just as well.
It's only in our own time, after we began raising our food animals on
grain in Confined Animal Feeding Operations (following the dubious new
equation, All flesh is corn), that our ancient engagement with grass
could be overlooked.

All True, I stand corrected ... again

The greater and more words against agribusiness and their chemicals the
better. "Scientific American", "Omnivore's Dilemma" and others like
Billy continues the good work towards the truth

Enjoy Life and Independence Day ... Dan

--
Email "dan lehr at comcast dot net". Text only or goes to trash automatically.