alternatives in land use

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Oooooh no. I am off pork from Denmark!


Thats a bit over my head Dave! I do know that one of the main reasons for switching to chem fallow was to improve the habitat for all the little buggies and worms and such. I figured it was a bit of a dream at the time.

I agree that cover crops are an excellent way to improve soil health and conserve moisture. Everywhere, every year, magic bullet, I am not so sure. But I do not have all the answers!

What is your background Dave? I feel like you are setting me up for a first round knock out a bit!

I will admit I have not stayed abreast of the current "sustainability" trends. I feel a lot of it is sensationalized, but a lot of it is good science. Most studies seem to take place on farms like the one in the video, fifth generation places with no debt. That makes a big difference.

I would genuinely like to hear some of your ideas for sustainability. Like I said, I have not kept abreast of the trends.

I would venture a guess that we read different magazines and articles when it comes to agriculture.
 
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FireFighterZero said:
...What is your background Dave? I feel like you are setting me up for a first round knock out a bit!....
Click to expand...

Ha! Nothing so devious, Jim. I made my original post in the hopes that you would join in because I have learned from your other posts that you say what you think and because I agree with most of what you say, you must be right, haha! I am hoping that you will be able help me understand agricultural from the nut and bolt side of it.

My background is being a square peg living in a round hole world. My earliest memories were of discomfort around people and joy in the woods. So not a real people person. But the natural world and how it functions I find fascinating. This is a good part of why I love tree work and not just the chainsaw side of things but the workings of biology as well. I have no formal education, in fact my ignorance on some of life's simpler workings is astounding.

So my only exposure to modern ag is from reading research papers and articles most of which are funded by universities that are also funded by big ag. It is a great place to research about things that can be done with little regard as to whether it should be done. The most often cited explanations for some of these is, feed the world, ecologically and economically sustainable.

Jim, I am hoping you might be able to fill in the blanks of why things are being done the way they are currently being done, when all I can see is an end game that looks very bleak.
 
You fellows are really helping an old tree trimmer who also happens to teach soil science expand his horizons. I have suggested that some of my online soils students look into this thread. Most work with NRCS, so have a little background of their own. Maybe we can recruit a few more members to add to these discussions.
I am truly enjoying this discussion and think my knowledge is much like Dave's, very interested but out of the ag loop. I will have to hang around with my brother and brother in law for a while, until I start to understand the "foreign" language they speak on the farm.
Keep it up.
 
Buffalo tastes like the back of bigfoots dick. It's not for me. If one wants to be truly Eco friendly and not be responsible for much carbon footprint, go kill a deer and eat that.
 
I hate to wonder how you were able to make that analogy, but Buffler is deliciious imo, and tastes virtually identical to steak. Deer is an excellent alternative imo, except possibly in suburbia where they likely feed on lots of shrubs etc that have been treated with pesticides and fert, etc. I presume that stuff trickles up the food chain to us. Nice low carbon footprint for sure.
 
Especially here, where the place has become so overrun with roe deer after mange killed off most of the foxes, that you are doing mother nature a favour every time you kill one.
Whether you bother to eat it or not.
 
Cory, i can't help but wonder about suburban deer and what they've ingested, like you mentioned. I wonder what the answer is to that question? Regarding flavor, suburban deer taste good versus some woodland deer. I've eaten both, too many times. Farmland deer is my preference, followed by suburban deer. Deer that live exclusively in a woodland environment taste strong and gamey to me.

I'm not a venison expert though. I cook venison into dishes like chili. I don't eat straight venison such as burgers or roasts.
 
I would think that a farmland deer would be exposed to much of the same chemicals as urban deer.

Sagebrush deer dont taste as good, but are still quite adequate.

My buddy used to keep mesquite smoked salt with him all the time, just in case we killed a rabbit or a dove or a frog or a deer, what ever. Build a fire on the spot.
 
The debate about plowing versus cultivating is ongoing. It seems to never end.

Production here is pretty different from US and needs to do well with little effort in comparison.

Plowing is a art that I still have lots to learn in, but I know a bit.

I know there is better way's to avoid erogation and lost of nutrition than just choosing what way to work the soil.
Projects to catch this before it go up or down is the way to get more out of what we put in ground.
Catch crops that you put in for this purpose is a great way to use the resources other wise wasted.
Light plowing and being careful with deep cultivating is other tricks that work.

I was in a seminar this summer about surface packing and stuff around it.
There was a ditch we walked in to see the difference in plants depending on what was done and how.
How the plants react and grow. You could easily see roots depths and how the ground had reacted.
Big mashines and large areas is not the way, I know that for sure.
Better plant half of it and get double out of ground used instead.
 
I understand the importance of saving topsoil but I think we will learn in the future the planet can only deal with so much poisons in the form of pesticides and herbicides as well. Round Up was touted as environmentally friendly when it was new. It seems there is no such thing. Not only in the application but what is left over from the manufacture of the product.

Atrazine is an herbicide used for decades. One would think it had been well tested. It went from over the counter available to a restricted use herbicide in NY. Pesticides are around for years and then suddenly they take them off the market. Ooopps, that one is bad also.

Like any other field money is the biggest factor. I noticed back in the 70's the bullfrogs were vanishing. I attributed it to Atrazine. After 30 years one person made the connection and started doing research. Yup, it acts like estrogen to the males and turns them into hermaphrodites. How many chemicals are we ingesting every day? More than we would care to know.

I told my sister that they can put pesticides right on the grain as it goes into storage to keep bugs out of it. She doubted me. Maybe being in the dark would have been better for her and me. The more you know the less you want to know.
 
Disturbing.

What problems have been found with Round Up?
 
The bad effects run the gamut from Parkinson's to cancer. One never knows if that is true as well. The worst deception Monsanto spread was it biodegraded in a short time. Not true. I talked to a state water tester some years ago when MTBE from gasoline was contaminating our surface water. I asked him if he found much of that. No, but he found lots of Round Up. I said i thought that biodegraded quickly. He told me that's what Monsanto wants you to think.
 
I dont have much to offer, but glyposhate has been around for a long time. It replaced paraquat as the leading grassy weed killer.

Just to play devil's advocate a little, but we have seen studies in our hazmat classes where we now see chemicals in water that we did not see 20 years ago, even 10 years ago. That does not mean that they just showed up yesterday, we just couldn't test to such minute levels ten years ago. Not saying that is a good thing, but I bet there is uranium in my water, if you look close enough. Like parts per trillion. Which we can do now.

Yes, chemicals are common in grain storage. One popular additive is daicon. It is diatoms that abrade the the shell of the grain bug and dry it out.
 
Jim, it takes quite a while for water to seep down to the levels, from which we get our drinking water.
At least around here, it does.
So those findings would be pretty consistent with that.

We have a small sandy island here where they grew lots of lots of xmas trees. Heavy Atrazine use in those.
Since it was so sandy, it only took about 5 years before the groundwater was so full of Atrazine, they had to close up the wells.
That was 30 years ago and they still bring water in by boat.

That was the final straw that caused Atrazine to be taken off the market here, except for use in corn fields.
When it was found a few years later, that the amount sold would be enough for 7 times the amount of corn grown, it was finally taken off the market alltogether ( Farmers will be farmers, I guess)

Now we are waiting for the rest of the Atrazine used in the country to reach our drinking water.
 
Wow, that was radical. Jim, you'll want to watch that.
 
Um no, I meant it. The guy says systematic grazing by livestock is the only way to reverse desertification. Grazing, of the right amount, not too much nor too little, is what land needs to be aerated and beat up a little and pooped and peed on to fertilize it. It mimics the grazing by wild animals, e.g. buffalo, that land experienced before humans started overgrazing with livestock. Another interesting thing I picked up there was that most of that vast world-area of marginal land at risk of desertification can basically only yield meat food for humans, it's not land that can be farmed for crops.
 
Oh, I completely misunderstood you. I thought you were giving me a warning about some of my previous posts.

Yep, I have seen that one. Us aggekulture doods arent all knuckle draggers ya know.

We are quite clever, us humans. We have known for years that we can do things our way and not follow the laws of nature.

You can manage your grazing land poorly for a lifetime and never know the difference. You make changes and adjust your inputs to cash flow. Happy as a pig in shit.

You can produce more with less if you take some hints from mother nature, like intensive grazing.

Diverse grazing can help too. A pasture that will run 100 cow calf pairs will run 60 ewes with twins at the same time. 60% is the rule of thumb. Sheep and cattle eat different things. Plant life is improved as long as you dont stay too long.
 
That reminds me of what I was telling my wife today.
I have let my neighbour run her sheep on one of my pastures for years.
I never could get her to understand that if she just let those sheep run all over year round, the grass would never produce enough to feed them, because it would be kept too short to produce any growth.
No green stuff, no photosynthesis, no growth.

Then one year I had enough of the yearly sheep famine, so I set up a stripe grazing system for her.

Lo and behold, those sheep got nice and fat on the same amount of land.

The wonders of nature:)

On the same note, one of my apprentices went to work for an NGO organization and was sent to Bolivia for a year to teach farmers in the mountains crop rotation.
They hadn't figured that out by themself, but would grow the same stuff in the same place ( Potatoes, typically) till it wouldn't grow any more.
 
FireFighterZero said:
Yeah, I think I will stop now before I completely alienate my self.
Click to expand...

We have different opinions. Ain't that what makes discussing stuff fun?

I mean, if we all felt the same way about everything, this place would bore the hell out of me, and I'd only visit because it gives me a chance to write "ain't".

Being able to bounce stuff off a knuckle dragging Montana farmer is FUN.

To me at least. Next time I come to the US, I'll have to run out and meet you in person. Then we can stand out in your back forty and yell at each other to our heart's content.
 
:lol: I would like that very much.

I actually had a dream last night that you made me a bird house. I made a comment that it was a little off plumb and you threatened to fly over and kick my ass!

That's kinda weird now that I think about it! :)
 
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