In article ,
"songbird" wrote:

Billy wrote:
...
Joel Salatin on his farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, yearly
transforms his pastures into "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 it
will be the better for it, lusher, more fertile, even springier
underfoot (this thanks to the increased earthworm traffic)."

these numbers do not look right. i don't think there's that
many calories available on 100 acres of pasture for that
many animals (figure the herd must be around 100 animals
for cows alone).

does the basic math add up right here Billy?


songbird

Sorry, I'm no a rancher. The above is a quote from

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dile...als/dp/0143038
583/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206815576&sr=1-1

p. 126

I see where he goes from pounds of beef to rabbits and turkeys, so he
may be talking weight before slaughter and not weight of meat (maybe).
Then you need to remember that the steers are eating the cellulose in
the grass, and the chickens are eating bugs from the grass and the
bovine poop, so they are each taking a separate slice of the pasture.
For more information go to http://www.polyfacefarms.com/default.aspx

SAVE THE FOREST MULCH
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/2/maude
http://english.aljazeera.net/video/m...515308172.html