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It's not Just Joel Salatin anymore
David Hare-Scott wrote:
songbird wrote: David Hare-Scott 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. 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. the time scale difference isn't minor and probably heavily depends upon the average annual rainfall. 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... 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. very little is sequestered and that would be because of fires that char and thus turn the carbon into a form not easily consumed... 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. Tropical rainforest is often on leached soil where most of the nutrients are actually in the trees. right, why is that though? you'd figure that if it was truely good for the ecosystem to have deep soil that it would have figured that out by now (millions of years of selective pressure). Different ecosystems work in different ways. In the case of tropical forests the very high rainfall leaches the soil and the biota has adapted to that reality. sure, but i'm thinking that what has happened is something else (more on this below)... .... You are right that it is not a panacea but wrong in saying we cannot build soil or sequester carbon by altering land use. yeah, i mispoke somewhat there, but what i meant was that the need for carbon storage is now more than what is going to be achieved using either of those two methods. building soil would help out all around, i won't argue against that. my wondering about topsoil is that if it is so good for overall life then you'd think that by this time (after millions of years) it would be selected for and there would be much more of it than there is instead of what we do find. so my curiousity is engaged on the topic of the disappearing topsoil. Two reasons. One: that there are environments where building and maintaining topsoil is too hard (eg tropical rainforest) so the adaptive pathway has gone in other directions. Two: humans have been making topsoil disappear since we started agriculture. We now live in an age where so much is transmitted culturally instead of genetically you could call it the post-Darwinian era. This is gross simplification of course because natural selection still takes place as it always has but now many factors interfere with it. i disagree to the first one, we have the example already of topsoil retention in some areas that have had something done to them already (terra preta), so in effect it is possible to have soils that hold up against tropical rainforest conditions. the deeper question is why hasn't nature in thousands-to-millions of years figured that out for itself? that is the thing i was digging at earlier with my previous question. the second part i do agree with. returning to the first part though is where it makes the most sense to look into further. i.e. the fact that given sufficient moisture any area goes "up" towards the source of energy instead of investing in the dirt. that is one thing i think that humans have come about to deal with, the fact that plants/animals/ other life forms cannot get any further towards the source of energy as things currently stand. the other problem of having all of the life-eggs in one basket (this planet/this solar system) is a proven strategy for failure longer term and i think we're "here" and have come about to deal with that too. we are the great innoculators. watch out universe. here we come! soon i sure hope. ascends soapbox Typically our cultures cannot deal with issues like topsoil because they take generations to see change. When motivation is dominated by the desire to eat today, to make a profit next month and to be elected again in 3 years time how can you spare any thought for problems that have taken thousands of years to develop and will take hundreds to fix? there are some people with longer range vision who can do micro-pocket type stuff. having a game-preserve and having natural areas at least gives a chance that all will not be lost. the fear of the results of poaching and other degradation due to mass starvation would always be there as i'm quite sure when push does come to shove that the wild areas will start to be sacrificed. the only salvation really is that much of life is pretty tenacious and likely to survive here or there in small pockets and there will always be conservationists who will do their part to keep some diversity going. the great extinction now underway is unlikely to reverse any time soon. it will be a wave we have to ride and the other side is far away and likely hundreds of years in the future. The way things are heading nothing will be done on a large scale until over population, over consumption, resource limits and climate change form the perfect storm. People will then cry out to leaders saying "why didn't you do anything about it?" The majority of leaders will say "elect me again and I will fix it next year", the few honest ones will say "because you didn't want me to" and they will be the first trampled by the hungry mob. descends soapbox heh, yeah, the visionaries find that public policy and the elected life are too eroding to their own values to maintain integrity for long. in any mass elected government you don't get the best governors, you get the best mass media manipulators. my own answer to this is to randomly select all gov't workers (and then after they are in office and serving they can be re-elected as a vote of confidence every four years). this would save a lot of empty campaign rhetoric and eliminate the corporate and lobbyists buying influence. sure, we'd end up with bad representatives but they can be voted out and the random selection process would pick the next person. if i didn't have to run for office and raise money to get elected and do all the wasted BS it takes to get elected i think it would be fun to actually be in office and try to deal with problems. if only i were king, songbird |
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