In article ,
"songbird" wrote:
FarmI wrote:
Billy wrote:
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.
Having another bi-polar day? I just loves the way you flog that strawman.
right, anyone talking about grassland production in
the eastern seaboard of the USA being equivalent
to what happens on the prairies is full of it.
If you take the time to read the quote, you will notice that it says,
"similar enough". That takes us from "equals" to "approximates" which, a
sane person would agree, don't mean the same thing.
the time
scale difference isn't minor and probably heavily
depends upon the average annual rainfall.
Time scale for what?
the soil of the prairies was probably produced over
the period of time after the last ice-age. it isn't that
thick. if it could accumulate at a rate of an inch a
year it would be much deeper...
Best guess is 500 years/inch to produce prairie topsoil which was
approximately 10" thick when Europeans showed up..
ok, so let's return to the eastern seaboard and
wonder why the topsoil in unmolested places isn't
deeper? if it can be so productive why isn't it?
because it is woodland and not grassland and
unmanaged woodlands cycle carbon but do not
sequester once it's reached maturity.
Actually, it takes a pine forest, roughly, 50 years to develop 1/16" of
topsoil.
very little
is sequestered and that would be because of fires
that char and thus turn the carbon into a form not
easily consumed...
The sequestered CO2 in eastern forests is charcoal?
if trees and forests were so good for carbon
gathering and keeping the soils of the Amazon would
be deep and fertile, but they are not unless you
find the places that were altered by the natives in
prehistorical times.
And don't forget the warm weather, and heavy rains that wash the quickly
decomposing organics out of the laterite soils, unless you find the
places that were altered by the indigenous prior to 1492.
so this says that reforestation is barking up the
wrong tree when it comes to CO2 sequestration
and rebuilding topsoil.
Ah . . . hmmmm? Who said anything about reforestation? Not that it's a
bad idea, and we do need to stop cutting them down. You silly goose, the
proposition was returning the farm soil to permanent ground cover, like
you might use to graze cattle on, and then run out some hypothetical
mobile chicken coops (hypothetical chickens included) to do clean up
duty on the cow flops from the hypothetical cattle.
So we got our farmers switching from grain crops to meat production.
This in turn leads to:
1) cessation of the use of chemical fertilizers, which encourage some
bacteria to devour the organic material in the soil (topsoil)
2) stops the release of NO2 from the fertilizer, which is a greenhouse
gas.
3) stops the pollution of ground and run off water, thus improving
the quality of drinking water, and cutting off the cause of ocean
dead zones.
4) At the very least, what remaining topsoil would be protected by the
permanent ground cover, and the is the expectation that we may add to
it.
5) Additional topsoil (because there is more of it, and it is made from
organic material) would effectively sequester CO2 to some extent.
Again the question is where to put the decimal point, not "if one is
needed". Peter Bane (google the name) puts the sequestration
potential at being equivalent to the US production of CO2.
6) Increased topsoil leads to increased absorption of rain fall,
recharging aquifers, and reducing chances of flooding.
7) Increased meat production on grassland instead of in CAFOs, means that
70% of antibiotics in this country won't go into meat animals,
thereby creating antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria.
8) Less grain will be needed to divert into CAFOs
9) Fewer CAFOs means fewer stinking lagoons of animal excrement, that
won't be dumped into public water ways, or find its way into ground
water.
10) Gives us a good source of complete proteins (beef and chickens), for
healthy, growing kids.
So to summarize; permanent ground cover on existing farms, which is used
to raise beef, more or less along the lines of Joel Salatin's paradigm,
results in clean food, clean air, clean water, and just might save the
world.
Other than the above points, I think you made a very cogent response,
where you had your facts straight ;O)
(but i won't argue that
it's bad for species preservation and diversity
because that's needed too in many places -- so
there has to be the tradeoff there).
songbird
--
- 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