David Hare-Scott wrote:
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?

The quote is accurate. It is misleading though as Pollan points out
later (p222) Salatin does not claim this level of productivity
because there is 450ac of woods as well as the 100ac of pasture. The
woods make a sizeable contribution to the farm, it produces much pig
feed and biomass that is used for a variety of purposes and assists
in other ways. So to be more accurate the above production is from
550ac.

ah, ok, thanks, that makes a lot more sense.

(it just so happens that i requested that book
from the library interloan today when i was
there so i'll read it all soon. )


I would be interested to know what can be done by conventional means.
The comparison would be very difficult to make fair I think because
the conventional system uses many external inputs and would have
trouble matching that diversity of outputs. I suspect that just
measured in calories per acre the intensive monoculture might win.
The whole point of this is that you can only do that for a limited
amount of time with many inputs and many unwanted side effects. Not
to mention that man does not live by bread (or high fructose corn
syrup) alone.

lately i've been doing a close job of living by tomato
alone. we surely didn't need two cherry tomato plants
and 16 regular size...


songbird