"David Hare-Scott" wrote in message

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.

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.

Fair comment David, but then there is a much higher cost to the quality of
life for the animals? I'm sure that you, like me, have seen intensive
operations such a feed lots and caged chooks.

I grew up on a poultry farm and my mother refused to have any cages on the
place with the exception of a row of 10 where she used to put birds that
were off colour and needed to be taken away from the bullying tactics of the
rest of the flock. In the 50s and 60s when other poultry farmers were
moving to cages and proud of it, we were free ranging. We once had a city
person come back to us and complain about the eggs they bought off us.
According to them, the eggs were 'off' and had to be thrown out because they
had 'very yellow yolks'.