Billy wrote:
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.

that wasn't me (FarmI is quote level not me, i
am quote level )


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.

yea, but i'm pretty sure the difference between
growth on the prairie vs. eastern grassland
is closer to an order of magnitude which to me
is a significant difference not so easily ignored.


the time
scale difference isn't minor and probably heavily
depends upon the average annual rainfall.
Time scale for what?

for building topsoil. one inch a year on the eastern
grassland (reasonably heavily managed otherwise
it converts to woodland) as compared to how
much per year on the prairie.


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..

wow, that's 5x worse than what i thought it
was. but i'd not looked into that specific
detail yet. i'm just noodling about numbers
and wondering why some things don't seem
to add up right about certain claims.


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.

i wonder if anyone has broken down how
much of that is char.


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 we're talking carbon effectively removed from
the atmosphere and not easily returned via rot
then yes. didn't you say something like 55,000
years? that's sequestered.

a forest at maturity is not sequestering much in
the way of carbon, it's cycling it (i.e. i agree with
DHS).


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.

not forgotten, it just seems that if
the forests were so good at sequestering
carbon in the soil (that is what we were
talking about was soil building) then the
Amazon would be much different than it
is and the eastern USoA would have
much thicker soils too than it has.


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.

reforestation is what happens to eastern land when
left alone. so to keep it from turning to forest means
some kind of management (which means energy
expenditure of some type to keep it clear of trees
be that via grazing or mechanical means the effort
is the same no matter what). grazing unfortunately
does not keep land clear.


So we got our farmers switching from grain crops to meat production.
This in turn leads to:

i'd say that the stats say we don't need more meat, we
need more exercise and more fruits and veggies.


1) cessation of the use of chemical fertilizers, which encourage some
bacteria to devour the organic material in the soil (topsoil)

yes, this is good to do, 100% with ya on this one.


2) stops the release of NO2 from the fertilizer, which is a greenhouse
gas.

in addition to the energy taken to produce the fertilizer to
begin with.


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.

i think those are not eliminated with our current river
management, wastewater and drainage systems.
reduced would be nice though -- i agree as it would
return large areas of the Gulf to productive use.


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.

this is good and i'm all for it, but i don't see how
you get from point A to B without a massive labor
shift. not many of the kids today have any plans of
working on the farm at minimum wage with no
benefits. only some small percent of the people
have the dedication this type of change takes.

even for me to go all organic would be
tough here, but i'm doing better each year.
that's all i can do and try to get people
around me to see easy things they can do
to improve.


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.

this is only partially true. large sections of agricultural land
is ditched, drained, drain tubed and trenched. to restore it
to the previous state would involve a lot more than letting it
go back to green and then putting livestock on it to keep
it short and having chickens pick their piles apart. for
mosquito control too. you're not going to get people
back to where they'll want more mosquitoes (even if i
think the current spraying program is poisonous, dangerous
and wasteful -- i'm not going to get many others around
here to agree with me as it is very flat and swampy with
a lot of mosquitoes if left alone).

add to that the runoff troubles from streets, parking
lots, storm sewers, rooftops, and then add the waste
from treatment plants and then make it even worse
by draining all the lowlands and farming them, building
levees so the rivers cannot flood, etc. well, we're nowhere
near getting a handle on groundwater restoration.

getting the farmers to stop dumping nitrogen is only
a small part of the problem. getting people to stop
burning ditches would do a lot too (stopping erosion),
getting people to stop using pesticides would accomplish
a lot more for the long term health, nitrogen is quite
simple a poison in comparison to the others. we've
got timebombs ticking on a long slow fuse. at least
we are looking now, but so many years from now
it will take to fix and trillions of dollars. instead we
will spend them on wars in far off places to support
criminally insane or corrupt gov'ts, etc.


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.

i know, once i heard about that use of antibiotics
i got sick to my stomach. f'n idiots. it should be
banned outright immediately (along with feeding
chickens arsenic, feeding cattle bubble gum or
any other animal byproducts, etc.).

but i disagree about meat production needing to be
increased.


8) Less grain will be needed to divert into CAFOs

fine by me.


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.

yea, we had someone doing a feedlot down the road
a ways. luckily we are miles away and not downwind.
but i felt sorry for any neighbors. a dairy farm smells
good when run correctly. a CAFO smells nasty.

there is a bison farmer on the opposite corner
and the CAFO is now returned to corn and soybeans
so i'm thinking the corn and soybeans are a better
tradeoff.


10) Gives us a good source of complete proteins (beef and chickens),
for healthy, growing kids.

too much protein already for most people.
the kids (who don't usually eat it anyways)
they like hotdogs, macaroni and cheese
and ice-cream -- nothing green please.


So to summarize; permanent ground cover on existing farms,

won't work for many crops, they don't do well
with any competition -- variety in diet being important
and i like some of those grains. if they can eventually
come up with perennial versions that would be great.
i know that is being worked on. that would go a
long ways towards stablising the soils and improving
the soil community/structure and it would also reduce
weed troubles if you could get a field going full of
mixed grains and legumes which could fruit at
different times and thus be harvested at different
times using different means. we're only starting on
this sort of figuring.

so while i agree that bare soil can be troublesome,
it can be worked around in some ways and at
other times it's necessary (to switch crops or to
deal with certain types of weeds -- beans and
sow thistle being specific examples) and then
there are certain perennials and annuals that only
get going in disturbed soils. do you suddenly
want to remove that type of plant from the
diversity of life?


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.

no, probably won't. it would help some things for sure,
but it is only scratching the surface.


Other than the above points, I think you made a very cogent response,
where you had your facts straight ;O)




songbird