The merits of natural versus chemical fertilisers

[the_lyniezian]

Interesting that he totally removes ten million pigs from your diet as well as the meat and eggs from close to a billion chickens and other poultry. No eggs and sausage for breakfast? no Christmas turkey, No roast duck?

I'm sure we will be healthier with many fewer fry-ups in the morning, and there's a reason turkeys and the like were traditionally only eaten at Christmas by many- it was a rare treat. Now you can just walk into the supermarket at any time of year and pick one up, I'll bet. (In our family it wasn't even turkey, but chicken. Now we can eat chicken every Sunday and midweek too.)

In the war meat, eggs and dairy were all rationed. We (or our forebears) survived, Hitler's bombs aside.

He laments the drop in farm jobs after 1947 and blames it on government policy but it was inevitable when a tractor that could do the work of ten teams of heavy horses came on the field you not only no longer needed the twenty horses and their hay and pasture land but you no longer needed nine of the teamsters that walked or rode all day behind the horses driving them.

Yes of course those tractors need to be fuelled somehow and may end up being too uneconomical to run.

[biffvernon]

I'd still like to hear from vt why the lawns in front of and around the houses in his piece of American suburbia can't be dug up and turned into veg patches.

[RenewableCandy]

I don't think he's denying that they can. I think what he's saying is, even if they are, there won't be enough food to go 'round. I happen not to agree with that, but that's what he seems to be saying.

What I *do* notice, that no-one else seems to have pointed out in this thread, is how bloody knackering farm work is. I am in reasonable good health (definition: can lift 20 lb, can walk 10 miles, can jog 1 mile) but I'm all-in after just a few hours on the Plot, and also ravanously hungry.

However, we can all start gently and work up to it. Beans it is, then

[vtsnowedin]

I'd still like to hear from vt why the lawns in front of and around the houses in his piece of American suburbia can't be dug up and turned into veg patches.

Well of course they could be, but in a town of 25,000 acres there is less then 500 acres of lawn so digging them all up won't amount to much. As the dairy industry declines here many marginal fields are reverting to forest and it is there that land could be profitably returned to production if food shortages world wide raise prices sufficiently. It would be hard to beat the productivity of a 200 acre dairy farm here that for decades shipped 2000 lbs of milk a day ether to the cheese plant or dairies in Boston.

[vtsnowedin]

[Yes of course those tractors need to be fuelled somehow and may end up being too uneconomical to run.

Grist for another thread but the short answer is that they will always be the most economical way to grow the bulk of our food. Even if all the fuel was grown on the farm and converted to biodiesel they will be superior to human or animal labor as they don't require off season feeding and the speed that they can get the job done greatly improves yields by having planting and harvesting done at the most opportune time.

[RenewableCandy]

in a town of 25,000 acres there is less then 500 acres of lawn

Crikey I think even we have got more than that! Are you sure??

[Little John]

I'd still like to hear from vt why the lawns in front of and around the houses in his piece of American suburbia can't be dug up and turned into veg patches.

Well of course they could be, but in a town of 25,000 acres there is less then 500 acres of lawn so digging them all up won't amount to much. As the dairy industry declines here many marginal fields are reverting to forest and it is there that land could be profitably returned to production if food shortages world wide raise prices sufficiently. It would be hard to beat the productivity of a 200 acre dairy farm here that for decades shipped 2000 lbs of milk a day ether to the cheese plant or dairies in Boston.

The thing about milk and beef, though, is that acre for acre, they produce far fewer calories than vegetation. I do mean massively fewer calories. Farmed beef is just about the most energy inefficient form of food production per acre and it only works if you have massive acreage per beast or if you can import massive amounts of energy from outside.

When the hydrocarbons get too expensive, mass produced beef is going to be one of the first things to go.

On the other hand, I agree with your central premise that, in the end, there is not enough good land and nutrients to organically produce enough food, even on a largely vegetarian diet. Or, that is to say, that is precisely what we are going to be forced by circumstance to do in the end. It's just not going to be enough to feed 7 billion. Some of us have got to go.

[vtsnowedin]

in a town of 25,000 acres there is less then 500 acres of lawn

Crikey I think even we have got more than that! Are you sure??

Ayup pretty sure, There are only 885 parcels in town and 480 year round houses. The eighty or so houses in the main village front on the state highway/main street with many lots less then a half acre. There are a few that mow a couple of acres, mostly transplants from the Boston suburbs but people here as a rule have better things to do then waste every summer weekend mowing lawns and we don't have Mexicans come around to do it for us. The Mexicans we do have living here milk cows.
If you pull up Goggle earth and zip code 05038 you can take a look and see. My homestead is up in the northwest corner of town.
This what I do my mowing with.

[vtsnowedin]

[......
amounts of energy from outside.

When the hydrocarbons get too expensive, mass produced beef is going to be one of the first things to go.

A cow is a wonderful invention that goes out and harvests grass and leaves that you could not eat and converts them into milk, butter, cheese, yogurt and beef. It will do it on land ill suited for any other purpose and no matter what happens they will still be the best use of quite a bit of the worlds land.

[Little John]

[......
amounts of energy from outside.

When the hydrocarbons get too expensive, mass produced beef is going to be one of the first things to go.

A cow is a wonderful invention that goes out and harvests grass and leaves that you could not eat and converts them into milk, butter, cheese, yogurt and beef. It will do it on land ill suited for any other purpose and no matter what happens they will still be the best use of quite a bit of the worlds land.

Ah, well now, if you are talking about land that is unfit for other purposes, then maybe e so. However, you know as well as I do that far more land is used for beef farming than is warranted by the condition of the land and this state of affairs is only possible via the massive inputs of hydrocarbon based energy, both directly and indirectly. Secondly, I remember reading that the great plains could actually support more tonnage of buffalo than it can beef (in the absence of hydrocarbon inputs). This is due to the more varied diet that the buffalo was capable of consuming. Hydrocarbons have basically skewed all of our food calculations. Even the calculations of many in the green movement, sad to say.

[vtsnowedin]

[......
amounts of energy from outside.

When the hydrocarbons get too expensive, mass produced beef is going to be one of the first things to go.

A cow is a wonderful invention that goes out and harvests grass and leaves that you could not eat and converts them into milk, butter, cheese, yogurt and beef. It will do it on land ill suited for any other purpose and no matter what happens they will still be the best use of quite a bit of the worlds land.

Ah, well now, if you are talking about land that is unfit for other purposes, then maybe e so. However, you know as well as I do that far more land is used for beef farming than is warranted by the condition of the land and this state of affairs is only possible via the massive inputs of hydrocarbon based energy, both directly and indirectly. Secondly, I remember reading that the great plains could actually support more tonnage of buffalo than it can beef (in the absence of hydrocarbon inputs). This is due to the more varied diet that the buffalo was capable of consuming. Hydrocarbons have basically skewed all of our food calculations. Even the calculations of many in the green movement, sad to say.

An Ayrshire cow will eat anything a buffalo will, climb up one and a half to one slopes to get it and make milk on it. I can't imagine trying to get a ton of milk a day out of a herd of American bison.

[woodburner]

Even if all the fuel was grown on the farm and converted to biodiesel they will be superior to human or animal labor as they don't require off season feeding and the speed that they can get the job done greatly improves yields by having planting and harvesting done at the most opportune time.

The problem is the amount of inputs needed to produce the crop that provides the bio-fuel. There is only a small benefit in fuel produced given the amount of fertiliser needed to grow it.

[JohnB]

Ayup pretty sure, There are only 885 parcels in town and 480 year round houses. The eighty or so houses in the main village front on the state highway/main street with many lots less then a half acre. There are a few that mow a couple of acres, mostly transplants from the Boston suburbs but people here as a rule have better things to do then waste every summer weekend mowing lawns and we don't have Mexicans come around to do it for us. The Mexicans we do have living here milk cows.
If you pull up Goggle earth and zip code 05038 you can take a look and see. My homestead is up in the northwest corner of town.

Less than half an acre . The thing than immediately hits me is the amount of green around most of those houses. Space to grow loads of food. Most gardeners in Britain would kill for a huge garden like that.

Take a look at Newcastle Emlyn, Carmarthenshire SA38, my local town. Look at how close together the houses are, and what tiny gardens most of them have. All the big green areas around the town are farms or other land not available for residents to dig up.

[vtsnowedin]

Less than half an acre . The thing than immediately hits me is the amount of green around most of those houses. Space to grow loads of food. Most gardeners in Britain would kill for a huge garden like that.

Take a look at Newcastle Emlyn, Carmarthenshire SA38, my local town. Look at how close together the houses are, and what tiny gardens most of them have. All the big green areas around the town are farms or other land not available for residents to dig up.

Most of the open spaces you see are hay fields or at least used to be. Any ground here that is not mowed at least once a year quickly reverts to forest so people have it cut with rotary cutters like the one mounted behind my tractor in the picture above. We certainly have more land available here with just forty people to the square mile and about forty cows and forty deer per SM also. Now if we just had more growing degree days and a longer season between killing frosts.
Edited to add:
That little corner between Porth st. and Water st. is rather tightly shoehorned in isn't it. A tight little village with lots of working farm land around. Looks pretty efficient to me actually. How would you change it if you had the power.

[the_lyniezian]

[Yes of course those tractors need to be fuelled somehow and may end up being too uneconomical to run.

Grist for another thread but the short answer is that they will always be the most economical way to grow the bulk of our food. Even if all the fuel was grown on the farm and converted to biodiesel they will be superior to human or animal labor as they don't require off season feeding and the speed that they can get the job done greatly improves yields by having planting and harvesting done at the most opportune time.

Is this even when permaculture is taken into account, or are you just assuming some modified version of conventional agriculture?