Billy wrote:
....
So Rodale sent me some pdfs, which I've only very briefly looked at so
far. I doubt that they will be satisfactory on all counts to everyone.

unfortunately there isn't one overall study of the
whole 30yrs, but instead a series of smaller studies
and they did change their methods every so often for
the organic plots as they learned a better rotation
schedule.

i've skimmed through a few of them and found a few
items of interest. when i get more rainy weather
and have a bit more time i'll write up reviews of
each.

organic methods can still have nitrogen leaching
problems (if the nitrogen generating cover crop
(they had a bumper hairy vetch crop) is turned
under and the following crop doesn't grow well (weed
problems caused a failure with the corn crop) then
the leftover nitrogen still goes into the ground
water). i'm not sure how that compared to the
nitrogen leaching from a conventional fertilized
field for that same season. i still have to go
through that one again more slowly.

though i think the overall comparisons were done
well enough, including accounting for any extra
labor that was required for the organic spaces.

i'm not really sure if they gave the organic
method a credit for generating the nitrogen that
was used by the following crops and of course
they did put the seed costs down as minus, but
for an organic farm that is saving seeds this
expense could be much less too (after the equipment
for seed cleaning has paid for itself the rest is
all gravy).


songbird