In article ,
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote:
"Billy" wrote in message
Well, in this case, it would be prairie grass (reflecting Salatin's
pasture),
What sort of species are you talking about when you say 'prairie grass'?
The reason why I ask is that the You-tube clips of Salatin's place doesn't
look like anything I'd call a 'prairie'. He looks like he's got a farm on
quite rich land in a well protected area. 'Prairies' to me suggest very
open and exposed locations and the grasses there would, TMWOT, be much
tougher and less nutritious than in good pasture land. I might be talking
through my hat 'cos I haven't got a clue about US farms, but that's what I'd
expect here in Oz if we were looking at farms of differing capacities.
OK, you got me walkin' on thin ice here. Having escaped the housing
tracts of southern California, I'm long on book learnin' and short on
experience, BUT the proposition was to create a carbon sink. Quoting from
"The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability" by Lierre Keith
http://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myt...ability/dp/160
4860804/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1281718588&sr=1-1
"Salatin's rotating mixture of animals on pasture is
building one inch of'soil annually.4
Peter Bane did some calculations. He estimates that there are a
hundred million agricultural acres in the US similar enough to the
Salatins' to count: "about 2/3 of the area east of the Dakotas, roughly
from Omaha and Topeka east to the Atlantic and south to the Gulf of
Mexico."5 Right now, that land is mostly planted to corn and soy. But
returned to permanent cover, it would sequester 2.2 billion tons of
carbon every year. Bane writes:
That's equal to present gross US atmospheric releases, not
counting the net reduction from the carbon sinks of existing
forests and soils ... Without expanding farm acreage or remov-
ing any existing forests, and even before undertaking changes
in consumer lifestyle, reduction in traffic, and increases in
industrial and transport fuel efficiencies, which arc absolutely
imperative, the US could become a net carbon sink by chang-
ing cultivating practices and marketing on a million farms. In
fact, we could create 5 million new jobs in farming if the land
were used as efficiently as the Salatins use theirs."6
So were not talking about using the same pasturage (grasses), but using
the same practices, i.e. chooks following steers into the pastures.
Prairie grasses (grasses that supported the buffalo in the American
midwest) created rich topsoil that was exploited (and consumed) by
Europeans with ploughs.
See http://ed.fnal.gov/entry_exhibits/grass/grass_title.html
for a quick overview of prairies, and
http://www.stockseed.com/prairiegrasses_default.asp
for grasses.
Switching from the idyllic setting of Salatin's farm to American
"factory farming", we find that feed is a huge issue.
DAVID KIRBY: We worry about what we eat, but we also need to worry about
what we eat eats. And the quality of feed can be highly compromised in
these factories, where the drive to lower costs and prices is so great,
and the temptation to cut corners is there, and this is the result. And
we have to remember that factory farming has produced not only
salmonella, but also E. coli, also mad cow disease, also swine flu, I
believe, and MRSA, the drug-resistant staph infection that now kills
more Americans than AIDS.
AMY GOODMAN: You say, "Swine flu. Bird flu. Unusual concentrations of
cancer and other diseases. Massive fish kills from flesh-eating
parasites. Recalls of meats, vegetables, and fruits because of deadly
E-coli bacterial contamination." All as a result of animal factories, as
you put them.
DAVID KIRBY: Correct. Now, those diseases could conceivably emerge in
any farm, even the smallest, most sustainable farm, but theyıre far more
likely to emerge in these large industrial factories. And again, the
scale is so much larger that when you have an outbreak, you have this
massive problem thatıs going to cost millions and millions of dollars,
just in terms of the lost eggs and productivity.
And just to mention the workshops that you were mentioning earlier with
the federal government, the Obama administration has vowed to try to
even the playing field a little bit more, so that we have greater access
to smaller, independently raised farms. And one way, I think, to do that
is to address the subsidy issue. This farm got very cheap grain from a
farmer who got millions, perhaps, of dollars in our money to lower the
price of that feed. If DeCoster (one of the 2 egg companies involved in
the present egg recall) didnıt have access to that cheap feed, he
wouldnıt be able to operate in this way, and that would provide greater
access to the market for smaller producers.
AMY GOODMAN: And explain the significance of feed and whatıs in it.
DAVID KIRBY: Well, feed is a huge issue. And for example, with the
chickens that we eat, so-called broiler chickens, they often add arsenic
into that feed to make the birds grow faster and to prevent intestinal
diseases. Another thing we do in this country
AMY GOODMAN: Arsenic?
DAVID KIRBY: Arsenic, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Isnıt that poison?
DAVID KIRBY: It is poison. Yes, it is poison.
AMY GOODMAN: And how does it affect humans? I mean, the chickens eat the
arsenic. Why do they grow faster?
DAVID KIRBY: They donıt know. No one knows. The theory is that when you
poison a chicken, it gets sick, so it eats and drinks more, consumes
more, to try to get the poison out of its body. That makes a chicken
grow faster, and it prevents intestinal parasites. The risk to humans,
there have been studies done, and they have found residue of arsenic in
some chickens. The real threat is in the litter that comes out the other
end of the chicken. When that gets spread on farmland, people breathe in
that arsenic dust. And thereıs a town in Arkansas where cancer rates are
just through the roof. Thereıs been over twenty pediatric cases in this
tiny town of Prairie Grove with just a couple of thousand people.
AMY GOODMAN: Letıs go to Arkansas. Donıtletıs not shortcut this,
because you have a very interesting book, where you look at families in
several different communities. Arkansasdescribe what are the animal
factories that are there and what happens to the people in the
community.
DAVID KIRBY: Most of them are so-called broiler operations. Tyson
chicken is from Arkansas. The big operators, theyıre in northwestern
Arkansas. Itıs justitıs chicken country. And with consolidation, youıve
had the rise of these very large factory farms. And again, up until
recently, Tyson was using this arsenic product in its feed, and the
other companies were, as well. And around this little town of Prairie
Grove, as an example, this stuff is dry spreadthe litter is dry spread
on the cropland. And where the school was
AMY GOODMAN: You mean the chicken manure.
DAVID KIRBY: The chicken manure. And the dust has been found in the air
filters of homes and schools in this town, and itıs been found with
arsenic that has been traced back to the feed in the chicken.
Something else we feed chickens that people donıt realize is beef
products. And when those chickens eat that beef product, some of it
falls into their litter. Well, we produce so much chicken litter in this
country, because of these factory farms, and it is so rich in phosphorus
and nitrogen, its land application uses are limited. So you have surplus
chicken litter and nothing to do with it. What do they do with it? They
feed it to cattle. So we feed beef cows chicken crap. That chicken
litter often contains bits and byproducts of cattle. So we are actually
feeding cattle to cattle, which is a risk factor for bovine spongiform
encephalopathy, better known as mad cow disease. We actually feed cattle
products to cattle in three different ways: chicken litter, restaurant
scraps, and blood products on dairy farms. And all the mad cow cases in
this country came from mega-dairies where, when that calf is born, they
remove it from its mother immediately, because that motherıs milk is a
commodity, itıs worth money, so instead they feed that calf a formula
that includes bovine blood products, and again increasing the risk of
mad cow disease. "
The conversation winds on through beef, and pork production, to
contamination of wild fish.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/24/david_kirby_on_the_looming_threat
A quick aside to David,
when you consider inputs to monocultures you have to figure in the
expense of the fossil fuels (exploration, production, delivery,
pollution), and the greater reliance on pesticides that comes from
growing the same crop, in the same place, year after year. There is a
reason why gardeners are supposed to rotate crops. "IF" monocultures are
more productive in terms of calories, you still need to subtract the
calories lost in marine life due to the "dead zones" at the mouths of
the big rivers, such as the Mississippi, where the dead zone is the size
of the state of New Jersey.
---
p. 125
"It is a twisted irony that the oil pumped from the bottom of the gulf
is eventually returning energetically as runoff that pollutes the marine
ecosystem. The estuaries of the Chesapeake, Massachusetts, North
Carolina, San Francisco Bay, and nuinerous others all regularly
experience the ecological destruction this runoff brings.
Runoff of soils and synthetic chemicals makes agriculture the largest
non-point source of water pollution in the country. It is estimated that
only 18 percent of all the nitrogen compounds applied to fields in the
United States is actually absorbed in plant tissues. This means that we
are inadvertentiv fertilizing our waters on a gigantic scale. When this
runoff reaches waterways, it promotes robust growth in algae and other
waterbome plants, a process known as eutrophication in fresh waters and
algal bloom in oceanic systems. This unbalanced growth depletes the
level of oxygen dissolved into waters. Aquatic life of all varieties is
literally asphyxiated by the transformation. The additional algae blocks
the transmittance of light energy to depth, creating a less biodiverse
water column. Over time this addition of nitrogen changes the whole
structure and function of water
ARTIFICIAL FERTILITY ğ 127
ecosystems. Less aerobically dependent organisms prevail, which
compromises the productivity of fisheries. Many of these organisms
produce toxic materials as a by-product of their metabolism. Toxic "red
tides" and the resulting fish kills and beach closures are brought on by
excessive nitrogen levels. Pathogenic organisms such as Pfieste-ria and
Pseudo-Nitzschia also proliferate in these polluted waters.
Numerous farming communities in the United States have experienced
nitrogen pollution in their aquifers and drinking supplies. When
ingested by humans, nitrogen compounds are converted to a nitrite form
that combines with hemoglobin in our blood. This changes the structure
and reduces the oxygen-holding capacity of blood, which creates a
dangerous condition known as methemoglobinemia. Various communities
throughout the midwestem United States have suffered from outbreaks of
this condition, which is particularly acute in children.
A large quantity of the nitrogen compounds applied to fields volatizes
into gaseous nitrous oxides, which escape into the atmosphere. These are
greenhouse gases with far greater potency than simple carbon dioxide.
Elevated levels of these gases have been directly linked to
stratospheric ozone depletion, acid deposition, and ground-level ozone
pollution. In this way, our fertilizer use exacerbates the already
untenable problems of global air pollution and climate change.
THE DEBT IS DUE
All of these adverse effects of fertilizers result from their
application. It is equally important to consider the problems associated
with the production of fertilizers. The Haber process first made for the
direct link of fertility to energy consumption, but this was in a time
when fossil fuels were abundant and their widespread use seemed
harmless. The production of nitrogenous fertilizers consumes more energy
than any other aspect of the agricultural process. It takes the energy
from burning 2,200 pounds of coal to produce 5.5 pounds of usable
nitrogen. This means that within the industrial model of agriculture, as
inputs are compared to outputs, the cost of energy has become
increasingly important. Agriculture's relationship to fertility is now
directly related to the price of oil.
The Fatal Harvest Reader
Edited by Andrew Kimbrell
http://www.amazon.com/Fatal-Harvest-.../dp/155963944X
/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282583500&sr=1-1
--
- 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