The merits of natural versus chemical fertilisers

[the_lyniezian]

[......
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.

Can't sheep do an even better job of that though? My old geography lessons suggested that cows needed good pasture, whereas sheep could manage the rough grass of the fellside.

[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.

Can't sheep do an even better job of that though? My old geography lessons suggested that cows needed good pasture, whereas sheep could manage the rough grass of the fellside.

I would imagine goats are even better.

[vtsnowedin]

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.

Can't sheep do an even better job of that though? My old geography lessons suggested that cows needed good pasture, whereas sheep could manage the rough grass of the fellside.

I would imagine goats are even better.

" Real Vermonters don't milk goats"
Sheep and goats are competative with cattle in much of the western US but sheep came and went here in Vermont. I still have remnants of woven wire and stone wall sheep fences way way back in what is now hundred year old timber. When Australia and New Zealand along with the American south west got into sheep ranching Vermont could no longer compete and farmers switched to dairy cattle. They sold Merino breeding stock for quite a while though.
And just like milking bison it takes a lot of sheep or goats to come up with the hundred pints of milk a day a good cow produces.

[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.

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

If you were given the task of permaculturing a square mile section in Iowa you would need a tractor to do the work on time. What work you do might be different from conventional agriculture but it is still going to be work.
In the Land article cited above the author devotes ten percent of the land to bio-fuels. I don't know how he arrived at that figure but even if he was off 100% and you needed 20% of your arable land to fuel the machinery you would be better off then with human or animal labor.

[biffvernon]

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.

That may be your hunch, Steve, but I don't believe it is based on a quantitative analysis of the planet's bio-budget.

Interesting comments vt Thanks, I'm learning a few things about you neck of the woods. Particularly interesting to learn that there is so much food in the world that some/ of your former farmland is reverting to forest.

[vtsnowedin]

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.

That may be your hunch, Steve, but I don't believe it is based on a quantitative analysis of the planet's bio-budget.

Interesting comments vt Thanks, I'm learning a few things about you neck of the woods. Particularly interesting to learn that there is so much food in the world that some/ of your former farmland is reverting to forest.

The hardscrabble farms of Vermont became unprofitable in the 1850s when steam trains opened up the Midwest corn belt to the east coast market. The population in Chelsea dropped from a peak of over 2000 down to about 800 as Veteran's of the civil war pulled up stakes and went to plow the land they had marched across. Tales of "A field where you can plow all day long and never hit a rock or have to turn from a straight line" sounded like heaven to a side hill farmer whose soil was already eroded, played out and yielded more rocks then grain. Those same trains made it possible to ship milk and cream to Boston in iced cars and the dairy industry took over from sheep and subsistence farming. That industry had its heyday supplying the baby boomers there baby milk. Today declining birth rates etc. have reduced demand for dairy products and the resulting low prices at the farm are steadily pushing people out. If there is a surplus of food in the world it is due to big AG and the Green revolution riding on the back of the oil industry which are still going strong today. How much longer that can be the case is the question.
Edit to add:
At the peak of deforestation Vermont still had 30% forest cover and today forest coverage is 75%. Today 80% of the forest is privately owned and there are over 80,000 private land owners. The last of the virgin softwoods was cut off my land during WW2 to make paper for the war effort.

[vtsnowedin]

As it was -5F here this morning I chose to have a second cup and reread some of this thread. One thing that I noticed was the several mentions of Permaculture as an answer to the problem. Now I know this is near and dear to several members here and I don't want to tread on any body's feelings but it is worth considering to see what help a Permaculture approach to agriculture could actually achieve if you tried to scale it up to replace conventional chemical agriculture.
Anyway I did a little googling around to see what was claimed for the practice and I have to say that I'm not impressed. I find a lot of sales pitches for courses and long wordy testimonials touting the virtues of the system but very little of actual facts and yields done to any scale or repeatable over time. It is like listening to an evangelist trying to save your soul or an Amway sales pitch.
So to not get into a flame war lets talk real practicalities. Most of the Vegan / vegetarian/ organic farming people say that we could feed the world easily if we ate the grain directly rather then feeding livestock for meat. OK if we want to do that we are going to need pretty much the same amount of grain that we are growing today. How would a permaculture farm grow grain and what is perhaps more important how would a permaculture farm harvest and store it?
Please don't tell me your going to grow it in five foot wide raised beds fifty feet long. There are some two and a half million hectares of grain grown in the UK from that Land article up thread and that is an awful lot of raised beds.
Edited to correct the amount of land in the UK growing grain.

[the_lyniezian]

As it was -5F here this morning I chose to have a second cup and reread some of this thread. One thing that I noticed was the several mentions of Permaculture as an answer to the problem. Now I know this is near and dear to several members here and I don't want to tread on any body's feelings but it is worth considering to see what help a Permaculture approach to agriculture could actually achieve if you tried to scale it up to replace conventional chemical agriculture.
Anyway I did a little googling around to see what was claimed for the practice and I have to say that I'm not impressed. I find a lot of sales pitches for courses and long wordy testimonials touting the virtues of the system but very little of actual facts and yields done to any scale or repeatable over time. It is like listening to an evangelist trying to save your soul or an Amway sales pitch.
So to not get into a flame war lets talk real practicalities. Most of the Vegan / vegetarian/ organic farming people say that we could feed the world easily if we ate the grain directly rather then feeding livestock for meat. OK if we want to do that we are going to need pretty much the same amount of grain that we are growing today. How would a permaculture farm grow grain and what is perhaps more important how would a permaculture farm harvest and store it?
Please don't tell me your going to grow it in five foot wide raised beds fifty feet long. There are some six million hectares of grain grown in the UK from that Land article up thread and that is an awful lot of raised beds.

I can only recall a certain TV documentary I saw a few years ago, but one permaculturalist being interviewed on there actually pretty much said his system wasn't all that good for growing grain/cereal rops, but good for growing a lot of other foodstuffs. I guess that makes some sense- we might be wedded to the idea that some sort of grain is necessary as a staple, but need it necessarily be so? In fact is it even healthy for us to make such a major part of our diets?

I mention permaculture personally because I want to know more about it from people who know what they're on about. (I'm basically a townie who barely even does much gardening but takes an interest in these things with a view to changing.) Like you I see the idealistic promotion of the idea but not necessarily anything concrete. What I would like to see is more large-scale experimentation to determine how well it would work on a large scale; it has to be worth trying rather than just assuming there is no alternative to the conventional ways of doing things, slightly modified.

[biffvernon]

vt, I too am not impressed with expensive permaculture courses! But look beyond all that stuff. The word comes from permanent agriculture, to distinguish it from the sort of agriculture that is not permanent because it relies on inputs of our finite supplies of fossil fuel and mineral nutrients.

In the long run, permaculture is the only agriculture possible. We just have to work out how to do it.

(I'm not a vegan or even vegetarian.)

[vtsnowedin]

As it was -5F here this morning I chose to have a second cup and reread some of this thread. One thing that I noticed was the several mentions of Permaculture as an answer to the problem. Now I know this is near and dear to several members here and I don't want to tread on any body's feelings but it is worth considering to see what help a Permaculture approach to agriculture could actually achieve if you tried to scale it up to replace conventional chemical agriculture.
Anyway I did a little googling around to see what was claimed for the practice and I have to say that I'm not impressed. I find a lot of sales pitches for courses and long wordy testimonials touting the virtues of the system but very little of actual facts and yields done to any scale or repeatable over time. It is like listening to an evangelist trying to save your soul or an Amway sales pitch.
So to not get into a flame war lets talk real practicalities. Most of the Vegan / vegetarian/ organic farming people say that we could feed the world easily if we ate the grain directly rather then feeding livestock for meat. OK if we want to do that we are going to need pretty much the same amount of grain that we are growing today. How would a permaculture farm grow grain and what is perhaps more important how would a permaculture farm harvest and store it?
Please don't tell me your going to grow it in five foot wide raised beds fifty feet long. There are some six million hectares of grain grown in the UK from that Land article up thread and that is an awful lot of raised beds.

I can only recall a certain TV documentary I saw a few years ago, but one permaculturalist being interviewed on there actually pretty much said his system wasn't all that good for growing grain/cereal rops, but good for growing a lot of other foodstuffs. I guess that makes some sense- we might be wedded to the idea that some sort of grain is necessary as a staple, but need it necessarily be so? In fact is it even healthy for us to make such a major part of our diets?

I mention permaculture personally because I want to know more about it from people who know what they're on about. (I'm basically a townie who barely even does much gardening but takes an interest in these things with a view to changing.) Like you I see the idealistic promotion of the idea but not necessarily anything concrete. What I would like to see is more large-scale experimentation to determine how well it would work on a large scale; it has to be worth trying rather than just assuming there is no alternative to the conventional ways of doing things, slightly modified.

Grain is a large part of the average diet. Everything from bread to pasta is made from wheat flour. You could eat your oatmeal everyday and get your grain direct but I prefer that a good portion of mine be fed to chickens pigs and cattle so I can enjoy the various meats, eggs and dairy products resulting. I think few would chose to move to a diet of corn meal mush and beans but we will eat that when that is all there is.

[vtsnowedin]

vt, I too am not impressed with expensive permaculture courses! But look beyond all that stuff. The word comes from permanent agriculture, to distinguish it from the sort of agriculture that is not permanent because it relies on inputs of our finite supplies of fossil fuel and mineral nutrients.

In the long run, permaculture is the only agriculture possible. We just have to work out how to do it.

(I'm not a vegan or even vegetarian.)

OK so how would you go about raising grain in a permaculture way for your own flour or your chicken feed?

[biffvernon]

We would certainly use a lot less grain if we ate less meet. Chickens, of course eat a very large range of foods and kitchen waste can be a large part of their diet.

Some grain will probably always be grown in large fields with tractors and combine harvesters doing most of the work. Cutting and threshing by hand is very hard work - I know, I've done it.

[JohnB]

Permaculture is a design system. Its roots are in the observation of how natural systems work, and the idea of working with nature and nudging it in a direction that benefits us, rather than riding roughshod over it, and sod the consequences.

It's based on three ethics, of
Earth Care - Taking care of the planet we live on, as, despite some people's dreams of conquering the universe, it's all we've got, and if we screw it up we're dead.

People Care - Because we're people, and it would be quite nice for us if we survived. If we just look after ourselves, we risk someone else coming along and taking our stuff, or hurting us, so it would make sense to take care of all people, not just ourselves.

Fair Shares - This is a rather sanitised name for something scary for most people, but that gets discussed endlessly here, setting limits to population and consumption. And something a bit more controversial here, sharing surpluses.

There are also a set of principles that help with the design process. You'll find other versions, but they all pretty much have the same end result:

1. Observe and Interact
2. Catch and Store Energy
4. Apply Self Regulation and Accept Feedback
5. Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services
6. Produce No Waste
7. Design From Patterns to Details
8. Integrate Rather Than Segregate
9. Use Small and Slow Solutions
10. Use and Value Diversity
11. Use Edges and Value the Marginal
12. Creatively use & respond to change
You need to read up on them to understand them more clearly.

There are also a number of suggested methods of designing systems, whether it's your garden, a farm, or any aspect of your life. Very little of this is original thinking, but is a combination of ideas from all sorts of traditions and cultures.

I find it very useful to compare things I want to do against a checklist of the ethics and principles, and try to do things that match as many as possible. As they are based on fairness and sustainability, it's interesting to see how they match the actions of TPTB, big business, conventional farmers, and most of the people around us. It would be unusual to tick many boxes!

Permaculture is about all aspects of life, not just growing food, and certainly not about filling the world with herb spirals and forest gardens. And you don't have to be a hippy and can even wear a suit! It's about designing a system that meets the needs of the people in a particular location, using the resources around them. It's not about going back to the land, or the middle ages, and technology is fine on an appropriate scale. Anything is possible, if the planet can support it, and it complies with the ethics and principles. The scary thing is that you can't go to the permaculture shop and buy the latest permaculture fashion. You have to think about it, and do what's appropriate for your unique situation!

[vtsnowedin]

We would certainly use a lot less grain if we ate less meet. Chickens, of course eat a very large range of foods and kitchen waste can be a large part of their diet.

Some grain will probably always be grown in large fields with tractors and combine harvesters doing most of the work. Cutting and threshing by hand is very hard work - I know, I've done it.

Yes I can't imagine a harvesting method that is more efficient then a modern grain or corn combine but that means you have to leave the land level enough for the machinery to do it's job. So no raised beds for wheat or corn.
Commercial chicken feed is often a mix of grain and recycled food waste such as the left overs from fish canneries and even chicken processing plants. Your home grown back yard chicken gets layer pellets which are all grain and what worms and insects it can free range up. Can't get them to eat orange peels though.

[vtsnowedin]

Permaculture is a design system. Its roots are in the observation of how natural systems work, and the idea of working with nature and nudging it in a direction that benefits us, rather than riding roughshod over it, and sod the consequences.

It's based on three ethics, of
Earth Care - Taking care of the planet we live on, as, despite some people's dreams of conquering the universe, it's all we've got, and if we screw it up we're dead.

People Care - Because we're people, and it would be quite nice for us if we survived. If we just look after ourselves, we risk someone else coming along and taking our stuff, or hurting us, so it would make sense to take care of all people, not just ourselves.

Fair Shares - This is a rather sanitised name for something scary for most people, but that gets discussed endlessly here, setting limits to population and consumption. And something a bit more controversial here, sharing surpluses.

There are also a set of principles that help with the design process. You'll find other versions, but they all pretty much have the same end result:

1. Observe and Interact
2. Catch and Store Energy
4. Apply Self Regulation and Accept Feedback
5. Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services
6. Produce No Waste
7. Design From Patterns to Details
8. Integrate Rather Than Segregate
9. Use Small and Slow Solutions
10. Use and Value Diversity
11. Use Edges and Value the Marginal
12. Creatively use & respond to change
You need to read up on them to understand them more clearly.

There are also a number of suggested methods of designing systems, whether it's your garden, a farm, or any aspect of your life. Very little of this is original thinking, but is a combination of ideas from all sorts of traditions and cultures.

I find it very useful to compare things I want to do against a checklist of the ethics and principles, and try to do things that match as many as possible. As they are based on fairness and sustainability, it's interesting to see how they match the actions of TPTB, big business, conventional farmers, and most of the people around us. It would be unusual to tick many boxes!

Permaculture is about all aspects of life, not just growing food, and certainly not about filling the world with herb spirals and forest gardens. And you don't have to be a hippy and can even wear a suit! It's about designing a system that meets the needs of the people in a particular location, using the resources around them. It's not about going back to the land, or the middle ages, and technology is fine on an appropriate scale. Anything is possible, if the planet can support it, and it complies with the ethics and principles. The scary thing is that you can't go to the permaculture shop and buy the latest permaculture fashion. You have to think about it, and do what's appropriate for your unique situation!

I am thinking about the world's situation, is that ethical enough for you?
That's a nice list you have there but reading it I still can't picture a permaculture wheat field being any different then a chem Ag field except that there would be a lower yield.
Leaving the politics and morals aside draw me a picture of what a real farmer would do to grow a crop of wheat using Permaculture principles.