"Michael Percy" wrote in message
...
Gordon Couger wrote:


"Michael Percy" wrote in message
...
Gordon Couger wrote:
Ruminates are one of the most important food sources on earth in arid
regions turning grasses, trees and forbs into top quality protien.
Only
in
countries that can raise a surplus of grain do you feed it to
ruminants.

While not knwoing much about arid land, I imagine it to be not very
productive whatever use it is put in. Most beef must originate
elsewhere.

Well it is not as productive as high rain fall areas with out irrigation
but it makes a very damn large part of the world.

http://earth.rice.edu/mtpe/hydro/hyd.../rainfall.html

My argument stands. Sahara is very big, but even then it must be
sustaining
a pitifully small cattle herd.

In my lifetime we have increased the wheat production by 100 to 125%.
The
successful no till farmers are getting 10 to 20% more out of cotton as
well and organic mater increases of 1 % a years and fuel reductions of
50
to 70% per acre. It is closing the gap on weather areas. As we lean that
tillage is on of the worst the worst enemy the farmer has it burns fuel,
oxidizes organic matter in the soil, dries out the ground and gets the
soil ready to blow and wash on the next rain.

Many of the arid soils are fertile and high pH becase they have not been
ravaged by man and mother nature by using up the fertility and washing
out
and carrying of the nutrients that are washed away in high rain fall
areas. High rainfall is the main culprit in using or washing away all
the
nutrients and leaving an acid soil.

I guess that you could call it low production when I take 30 or 40
bushels
of wheat and 150 pounds of beef off an acre of wheat from grazing the
tops.

On the contrary, I'm very impressed. That is much more than I had
imagined
could come from arid land. I thought New Mexico was semidesert with very
little plant production, only about 200 lbs dm/acre, I thought wheat could
not be grown there at all.

Many areas do not grow wheat. Some area are measured in square miles to
carry a cow. But the bread basket of the world is under 40 inch rain fall.
Timeliness of rains matter a great deal as well. My wife inherited a place
2/3 of the way between Lubbock and Clayton New Mexico. It has 20 inches of
rain a year and I was raised in a an area that has 30 inches and the dryland
cotton yields were nearly the same. Up until then I didn't realize Texas had
a monsoon season. It's usualy only good for 3 or 4 inches of rain but it
comes in July an August. Years ago when I was trying to model cotton yields
that best model I could get was the inches of rain in July and august time
80 plus 50. Were I was from July and August were dryer.

Framing in high rainfall areas has it's own special set of problems. Low pH
is number one from the rain leaching all the calcium out of the soils. I had
an average pH of 7.2 with spots as high as 9 in alkali springs. They also
have an order of magnitude more insect problems and disease problems. If you
add tropical to that it is a real big problem. With out fertile,
insecticide, fungicide it easy for tropical agriculture to be less
productive than arid areas.

The tropics are where GM crops have the most promise. The Round UP Ready
gene was easy to isolate if lived it had it. It showed a clear and quick pay
off to the farmer any one with an IQ greater than his belt size can figure
out it works and it met the need of the increasing problem of incresing
extremely difficult to control weeds. BT was an already proven safe
herbicide that in the case of cotton that uses about 1/4 of the all
insecticides in the world a good part of the rest used on the same bug when
it ate corn an easy choice.

They increase the US farmers profits and help the yields a little But BT
cotton doubles the yield of third world farmers and they don't have to spray
insecticides I would only apply by airplane and wouldn't go in the feild for
a week by hand. The third world will be the real winner with GM crops where
it dramatically increases yield, saves lives and save them from clutches of
loan sharks in the first world it just cuts cost and increase yield -5 to
+10%. depending on the method of farming. If the farmer is going for max
profit sometimes the yield suffers a little when they don't get it all just
right.

Very little wheat is grown in New Mexico. Just the South east corner that is
in the monsoon pattern. Mostly it is cow and sheep country.

Gordon