In article
,
Billy wrote:

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

If you got to http://www.polyfacefarms.com/default.aspx and click on
"Principles" there are 3 videos to watch. In the first video "Mimic
Nature", Daniel Salatin mentions that the turkeys get 20% of their feed
from the pasture, so it isn't a closed system.

Today on "Democracy Now" http://www.democracynow.org/ there are 2
reports on food production. One is on egg production and the other is on
meat production. They both fit nicely into the discussion that we we
having on the quality of food. They don't talk about increasing supply,
but rather about maintaining quality.

Since the food supply has become so integrated, just on supplier can
screw up the system for many others. It's like the dog food scandal,
where one supplier provided the cheapest source of protein powder, which
turned out to be adulterated with melamine and cyanuric acid to give the
appearance of higher levels of protein.
--
- 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