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It's not Just Joel Salatin anymore
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"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 |
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