Well, if they have learned anything from Soil Food Web company, they would have learned how to manage crops better with significant less input from fertilizer....

In the other word, quit using chemical products!

Then how would we grow all of that corn and soybean meal and alfalfa used in organic fertilizing?

Put another way, if you harvest an acre of corn to be used as fertilizer to grow corn, will that be enough fertilizer to grow more than an acre of corn? If so, where did the extra nitrogen come from? If not, wouldn't that be counterproductive?

"Then how would we grow all of that corn and soybean meal and alfalfa used in organic fertilizing?"

That's funny!!!

It's called nutrient cycling! Obviously, you are stuck in chemical world. If you would read Dr Elaine Ingham's papers, you will understand how nutrient cycling works.

Conventional farms use synthetic fertlizer because the soil biology is pretty much ruined. A lot of nitrogen is leached away...

Non-conventional farms do not because of the soil biology keeping nitrogen in place because it is in the form of protein instead of nitrate so they do not get leached away. It's all about proper nutrient cycling. There is an organic cotton farm in west Texas that do not use anything but molasses spraying every few months. That's the only input they get. They rely on rainfall. That's about it.

I know this is going nowhere, but a few things:

I wish you would address my corn question.

Since sugarcane, which is needed for molasses, is largely harvested by actually setting fire to the fields where it grows just prior to harvest in order to burn everything else away first, what do you think about the sugarcane "soil web." Or, more to the point, what do you think they use to fertilize it?

There is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine, and that is true in agriculture as well.

After reading that article, I am blown away at how much civilization has benefited from fossil fuels (not to mention my lawn!!!). It is obviously the not the be-all, end-all solution for all of our problems but sure is one of the earth's grandest resources.

From the article:

Truong Thi Nha stands just four and a half feet tall. Her three grown children tower over her, just as many young people in this village outside Hanoi dwarf their parents.

The biggest reason the children are so robust: fertilizer.

This rings true to me. My other hobby has been family history.

I know all sorts of useless trivia about my ancestors. The average height of my male ancestors during the 1860s (They all fought for the Union during the civil war and I purchased a copy of their service records from the National Archive) was about 5-foot, 4-inches.

Their average weight was about 140 pounds.

I stand a bit over 6-foot 2 and weigh about 240 pounds. I'm in pretty good condition too, if I don't say so myself. lol.

I guess my point is, most people in the U.S. are significantly taller than their recent ancestors (Say the last 100 or so years). That is mostly due to better nutrition, brought to us by the "evils" of synthetic fertilizer.

Thank you gov for supporting a pointless bio-fuel program.

> Posted by lou_midlothian_tx z8 DFW, Tx

> Conventional farms use synthetic fertlizer because the soil biology is pretty much ruined.

Wake up, the coffee is ready.
The only reason farmers use synthetics is to turn a PROFIT! Right or wrong, it's all about a PROFIT on INVESTMENT ... nothing more, nothing less.

This rings true to me. My other hobby has been family history.

Ditto. Mine were shorter than yours, and we didn't get here until the 1860's. I stand five foot nine and weigh...er, a bit too much at the moment, let's just leave it at that, shall we? Oh, OK, 159 lbs. My great-grandfather stood just about five feet tall and weighed, from his photographs, perhaps 90 lbs soaking wet.

G'grandmother was closer to five six and a not inconsiderably-massed woman. Eleven children will do that to you...and g'grandpa Lewis always liked his women...heftier.

There is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine, and that is true in agriculture as well.

Quite, although solar input renders that not perpetual motion, but an inefficient solar engine. Exceedingly inefficient, actually. We did better with the first solar cells and do much better now.

However, save for what can be gathered from the air and water, if you use a resource and move it somewhere else, it's gone.

If you feel like doin' the research--there's quite a lot of it--the simple fact is that we'd starve if we went 100% organic food production. It's a really nice hobby, but ultimately "buying organic" requires more land, more natural habitat destruction, and is more an exercise in pointless feel-good ego-stroking than anything else.

By "we," I mean the 6.5 billion people on the planet, not necessarily the USA.

The only reason farmers use synthetics is to turn a PROFIT!

Yes. There's not a thing wrong, per se, with turning a profit on investment. More crop in less land equals more food grown per acre, and more people fed on less (or the same amount) of farmland.

Have petroleum resources been intelligently handled? Of course not, I'm not claiming that. On the other hand, given the technological challenges versus an exploding population, I sure couldn't see a better way. Allowing people to starve is unconscionable.

Life's an exercise in Just In Time technological enhancement. Every other peak we've passed without nicking a heel. This one, perhaps not, but I don't count human ingenuity down and out just yet.

Bring on the genetic engineering. We're going to need it.

The first "Americans" used fish, or so we're told, to fertilize their corn. That is sort of getting at the idea of how to cycle the nutrients. There are certain plants, insects, and animals (including fish, birds, mammals, and other creatures) that we consider to be inedible. Those would make perfect organic fertilizers if someone wanted to harvest them. I would use pigeon meal fertilizer in a heartbeat if I could get some. How about grasshopper meal?

Synthetic fertilizer was discovered hundreds of years ago. More recently it was discovered that ammonium nitrate made a great 2-part explosive (mix it with oil). So you can take two stable ingredients and make an explosive. After WWII the government realized that if they disbanded the ammonium nitrate production industry they would have to gear up again to make explosives for the next war. So the industry got a big push after WWII when the government encouraged the universities to study the effects of chemical fertilizers. Then the cat was out of the bag. When you have the government essentially subsidizing the industry, universities producing the studies in return for cash, and the industry advertising their new products, pretty soon a couple generations went by and we forgot all the old methods and materials used for fertilizing.

As I mentioned on another post all this is very interrelated. If you go back a couple hundred years, agriculture was done with animals involved. If you integrate crops with livestock properly, you can maintain fertility at any scale. Once you get into the huge proportions needed for the modern world, you need specialists for each aspect of the operation. I don't think mere mortals could pull off a large scale, self-sufficient, agriculture operation. I can envision a crop/livestock rotation plan in theory, but not in practice.

Regarding profit, the farmers have forgotten, or were never taught, about farming without chemicals. Typically the farmer goes to the co-op where he sees the latest GMO seeds and custom blended fertilizers "made especially for the newest seeds." A livestock producer I met once told me he spent about $2,000 per month (20 years ago) at the local feed store. After a few years he was out of business because the price of cattle was down and his costs were not dropping. He looked around and finally found a way to raise livestock that did not require the newest seed. He also stopped buying medicines, hormones, fertilizer, herbicide, and insecticide. Well, that was all the stuff he was going to the feed store for. Suddenly he was saving $24,000 per year. The result was his land went back to growing only native plants. It turns out the cattle love to eat those old plants. They even ate the "weeds" he was spraying with herbicide to kill. If you are trying to grow the latest seeds, then those old natives become weeds. Cattle eat those. He also found that when he stopped using the deworming medicine and started sending his sick cattle to market early, the cattle genetics improved and the cattle dung beetle returned to his property. The dung beetles are killed by the deworming medicine (remember I said this was complicated). The dung beetles completely clear the dung from his pastures in 24 hours after moving the animals off. They do it by burying the dung along with their eggs. They bury the dung in balls 3/4 inches across. And they bury them 6-10 feet deep. When you have insects burying fertilizer in 1,000 holes per square yard, suddenly you don't need to buy fertilizer or aerate or worry about leaching manure into the streams. You also don't have to worry about erosion because you have so many deep holes that a hurricane can't even put enough water on to wash the soil away. Every rain, no matter how hard, soaks into the soil. Suddenly he didn't need to irrigate. The last thing he did was cross-fence his property into 15 fifty-acre pastures. With small pastures he no longer needed cowboys to go find his animals. They were all right there in front of him.

The bottom line is that after 20 years of sustained cattle production like this, he raises twice as many animals per acre as his neighbors and his costs are next to nothing. The impact on the environment is that he grows so much grass and has so many aeration holes, the soil never washes away and the formerly dry streams on or adjacent to his property run clear fresh water all year long. Did I mention this is in Central Texas with 20 inches of rain in a good year? This cattle producer is not hiding anything or keeping any secrets. He has freely shared his philosophy and techniques with his neighbors. But they don't change their ways. Why? "Because daddy never did it that way."

Oh, and the reason urea is so expensive is that it only has two sources: mammalian urine and synthesized from natural gas.

"Quite, although solar input renders that not perpetual motion, but an inefficient solar engine. Exceedingly inefficient, actually. We did better with the first solar cells and do much better now.

However, save for what can be gathered from the air and water, if you use a resource and move it somewhere else, it's gone."

Great post Morpheus, I just singled out this bit. Yes, the sun is undoubtedly the engine, and yet, as you say, when you take something out, it is gone. In food crops, of course, that is called "harvest." Food crops being our most nutritionally demanding by far (since they have to feed us, of course!), this is very significant in terms of maintaining fertility.

But even when there is no harvest, like in our lawns (assuming we leave the clippings), there are inefficiencies that cause a slow decay in fertility, no matter how good the soil, and so fertilizer of some kind is required on a regular basis. I imagine you realize that, I just wanted to highlight it.

BTW, not to go too far off topic, but if you don't mind, how do you get those italics? My gardenweb-fu is apparently weak, and my [i][/i] commands go unheeded and unrespected.

But even when there is no harvest, like in our lawns (assuming we leave the clippings), there are inefficiencies that cause a slow decay in fertility, no matter how good the soil, and so fertilizer of some kind is required on a regular basis. I imagine you realize that, I just wanted to highlight it.

Excellent point, and I hadn't specifically highlighted it.

A perfect resource cycle would be a perpetual motion machine, which won't happen in a given plot of land over a measurable historic period. Eventually, perhaps, or over a wide enough areas...it doesn't violate any physical laws.

Sidenote: the Second only applies in a temporally-invariant frame in a closed system. So, for the solar system, we're stuck with it over any reasonable period of time (we're not entirely closed, but close enough). The entire history of the Universe...no. Earth alone...no.

Sorry, that's a pet peeve of mine and more important than it sounds. It's why the Inflationary Period and Big Bang were there...the system is not temporally invariant. It's why life's organization doesn't break the rules--the sun is pouring in energy, most of which is wasted as entropy.

It does actually apply here. Nitrogen is lost as it outgasses as nitrogen gas or nitrous oxide, or is leached away. That doesn't mean you'll never get it back, as there are bacteria that are perfectly happy to synthesize it for you back out of the air. Other nutrients have different cycles.

Our lawns are deeply unnatural. We demand thicker, tighter, shorter, healthier growth than you'd ever get in nature under most circumstances. That requires high nutrient availability and some fairly precise balancing. You're not going to get nitrogen-synthesizing bacteria to handle the whole thing without doing some encouraging.

Nutrient cycling certainly helps to retain what's there. David has a great point about manure, but there the energy of the plant, stored photosynthetically, is used by the bacteria in Ms. Cow's gut to release resources. Plus copious amounts of methane, which poses its own issues. Improving the genetics of one's herd (or lawn) is always an advantage, and a great example of an imposed selection filter.

Once a lawn (garden, pasture) is cycling resources well, far less input is required as far less is being lost. Some input is always required as the losses don't go to zero, and won't restore themselves within enough time for you to be worried about it.

BTW, not to go too far off topic, but if you don't mind, how do you get those italics? My gardenweb-fu is apparently weak, and my [i][/i] commands go unheeded and unrespected.

[i] and [/i] work if you use the less than symbol, then the I, then the greater than symbol (or, the one over the comma, an I, and the one over the period).

Which I can't quote here...or can I...durn these rusty HTML mad skilz...

Let's try this:

<i>tag</i>

If not, here's the page.

Our lawns are deeply unnatural. We demand thicker, tighter, shorter, healthier growth than you'd ever get in nature under most circumstances. That requires high nutrient availability and some fairly precise balancing. You're not going to get nitrogen-synthesizing bacteria to handle the whole thing without doing some encouraging.

Thanks for the tip on the itals!

I chose this quote as a test only because I think our entire agricultural industry is just as unnatural as the lawns you mention, or maybe even more so. I mean, corn didn't used to grow in tight rows over thousands of acres in ancient history, just all by itself, and, come to think of it, neither did any other modern food crop that I am aware of... And yet these marvels of modern agriculture are far more important to the people of the world than any other plants.

Food production was the focus of that article, and (presumably) the focus of a previous poster who said something to the effect that we as the human race could solve all of our agricultural problems by simply abandoning synthetic fertilizers altogether and reading up on the "soil food web." So please don't take any of this personally, I'm sure you understand it just fine: I just didn't want to lose sight of that aspect of the discussion.

There is no fertilizer shortage. There is a shortage of sustainable practices in ag and reasonable expectations in landscaping. Both have arrived at their current states only recently and both have existed just fine without the current levels of supposedly "must-have" products.

Get ready to dig in those wallets a little deeper boys and girls because the real bill for what the ad companies have been selling us is coming due.

I think you are ignoring the last hundred years of agricultural development around the world, and what would happen to the world if all of that progress were suddenly rescinded in the name of "going organic."

If you disagree, please be more specific and I will be glad to debate you.

Thanks,
Paul

There is a shortage of sustainable practices in ag and reasonable expectations in landscaping.

Absolutely agreed. However, sustainability isn't...well, realistic right now.

So please don't take any of this personally

Expansion of a point in an article (or a rescoping of a thread) is never taken personally. "You're an idiot and should read Dr. Ingham if you can understand it" would be taken personally. Well, no, it'd get written off as an ad hominem, pointed out as such, and the discussion ended. Once an ad hom gets used, the person using it just lost the argument. It's worse than pulling a violation of Godwin's Law.

solve all of our agricultural problems by simply abandoning synthetic fertilizers altogether

Well...it would. In a very Malthusian manner, mind you.

Folks, the below is a la Swift, so I'm being completely sarcastic.

Off the cuff, figure around 5.5 billion people will starve to death. Most of those will be in India and Asia and Africa, so that doesn't matter. Those that do starve in the US will probably be in the cities, so if we block the tunnels and highways in and out of them it'll solve the problem of trespassing on farmland.

Besides, the bodies can then be used as organic fertilizer, assuming they pass our pesticide detection test. We'll want to remove any lead bullets to avoid contamination of the soil. On an even brighter note, we'll have bone meal for decades.

(End Swiftian)

As another sidenote, if you really want to gripe about technology's intervention you should probably paint it with berry ink on a tree somewhere. Using the Internet makes complaints like that seem a bit hypocritical.

Morph I think it's more to the point to say that sustainability hasn't been profitable. For 60 years or so its been cheaper for growers to buy in artifical nitrogen than manage their own soil fertility and that's fueled the growth in huge monocrop factory farming but that's hardly the only way to use the land. Unless oil starts falling from the sky very soon market forces are going to force growers into less specialized production. The plants will still grow.

nless oil starts falling from the sky very soon market forces are going to force growers into less specialized production. The plants will still grow.

Yes, and I don't think that's a bad thing, either. While technological limitations forced us into a petroleum-based system in the 20th century, the 21st is featuring a lot of new ideas for energy that can take up the slack.

My mower is alternately 100% me-powered, or if I use the Robomower it's about 75% coal (this IS Pennsylvania, and we DID have a coal-deposit period named after us...), 10% natural gas/oil/nuclear, and 15% hydro/wind/solar.

We're finding that monocrops have specific pest problems and mixed ones don't--because specific pests have to find their preferred species and consequently have lower populations.

That's cool.

buy in artifical nitrogen than manage their own soil fertility

One of the major issues is that any crop is going to suck nitrogen (and other resources) from the soil, to be shipped off to market. I need those resources as without nitrogen I'm not going to be producing proteins. That's kind of the ultimate definition of dead.

Most efficient would be for 100% of my waste to be collected and shipped back to the farms where my food came from to be used as fertilizer.

Instead, my effluva goes down the Delaware river and, eventually, into the Atlantic Ocean, which sure doesn't need more nitrogen and phosphorous.

That really needs to change, everywhere, to close the nutrient cycle. Fortunately, it isn't an issue with the lawn as nobody (except bunnies, sometimes) eats it, and anything that does get eaten is eventually redeposited. There we only have the issue of replacing what leaches out, and maintaining high enough levels to keep our lawns nice.

I think you are ignoring the last hundred years of agricultural development around the world, and what would happen to the world if all of that progress were suddenly rescinded in the name of "going organic."

If you disagree, please be more specific and I will be glad to debate you.

I disagree strongly. Read my post from Wed, Apr 30, 08 at 20:34 for the details. The no-chemical method I described restores the tall grass prairie and can be done in a couple years. Once you restore the original fertile soil that was the tall grass prairie, you can rotate the animals out (to the old corn fields) and plant corn on the former cattle pasture. This rotation can be done on thousands of acres at a time. All it takes is lots of agreement among the various farmer specialists and lots of coordination. These methods can be used on any continent. Livestock have been introduced to the Sonoran desert of Arizona using the same no-chemical method.

Growing crops on unfertilized tall grass prairie has been tried and it works great. Raising livestock on depleted soil has been tried and it works great. As far as I know rotating both back and forth has not been tried.

Yep. It's all about proper nutrient cycling...

Morpheuspa and lou I agree with you guys ENTIRELY. Ag is going to lead the way in this and Im not smart enough to figure out how it'll shake out for the typical lawn. My guess is that people who can grow things without chems will have awesome lawns and other folks will have landscaping. Either way its good. BTW Im officially paying $4 a gallon for gas with no end in sight. You guys?

$3.85 and rising swiftly. I estimate $4.50 or more by Memorial Day here, holding over the summer and not appreciably dropping until well after Labor Day.

My guess is that people who can grow things without chems will have awesome lawns

Or, if those prices rise, adequate to good lawns.

Hi Dchall,

I disagree strongly. Read my post from Wed, Apr 30, 08 at 20:34 for the details. The no-chemical method I described restores the tall grass prairie and can be done in a couple years. Once you restore the original fertile soil that was the tall grass prairie, you can rotate the animals out (to the old corn fields) and plant corn on the former cattle pasture. This rotation can be done on thousands of acres at a time. All it takes is lots of agreement among the various farmer specialists and lots of coordination. These methods can be used on any continent. Livestock have been introduced to the Sonoran desert of Arizona using the same no-chemical method.

Growing crops on unfertilized tall grass prairie has been tried and it works great. Raising livestock on depleted soil has been tried and it works great. As far as I know rotating both back and forth has not been tried.

I am assuming that the yield from the crops managed in the way you describe is somewhat-to-maybe-even-drastically less than what the synthetics-using guys are achieving. In other words, something more like what was typically achieved 100 years ago.

If that's the case then I think we probably don't disagree at all, we are just emphasizing different things.

But if that system would be just as productive I would love to read more about it.

Paul

When it comes to labor and water saving, no-chemical method beats the heck out of chemical farms... Even during dry times...

Lou, if you want to return us to 19th century agriculture, and all that would mean to the people in the world today, well just go ahead and say so, please.

paulinct said: I am assuming that the yield from the crops managed in the way you describe is somewhat-to-maybe-even-drastically less than what the synthetics-using guys are achieving.

Earlier I said: The bottom line is that after 20 years of sustained cattle production like this, he raises twice as many animals per acre as his neighbors and his costs are next to nothing.

So no. I am talking about twice the yield at a fraction of the cost.

I didn't think we were talking about raising livestock, so I meant agricultural yield of course. Any thoughts on that?

Paul,

You are really not listening, are you? I think we've made our points but you just don't seem want to listen. Have a good day.

Lou the problem is that the math is wrong, as it always seems to be in these sorts of discussions. You can't reach meaningful conclusions by addressing only small sections of a larger equation.

I don't see anything wrong with the math. You cannot double the production of cattle without significantly increasing the yield of forage plants. The reason the forage plants produce better is because the animals walk/run/trample over it and leave "healthy" manure that the dung beetles can process. I'm distinguishing this healthy manure from the manure laced with hormones, medicines, and parasitides. It is the overall impact of animals at very high density on the soil that restores fertility and productivity.

The properties I'm talking about have very tall plants from fence line to fence line when the cattle are introduced. In fact the grass is so tall the cattle are hidden in it when they enter. When the animals leave for the next pasture, the pasture they were in looks more like the surface of the moon because they ate everything. To get plants to grow that tall means you have highly productive soil - soil restored to that level of productivity by cattle and proper management, not fertilizers. Down here the traditional livestock production acreage is either semi-barren (from overgrazing) or only has short grass (from improper rotation).

Once the soil is conditioned by the livestock, it is ready for a few years of "agricultural" yield. I assume you mean edible crops like corn, soy, etc. When the "agricultural" yield starts to decline, you can reintroduce the (non-agricultural??) livestock to restore the soil fertility again.

If you are farming two plots of land and want to try this, you will have to dedicate one of them to livestock all the time, immediately cutting the harvest by 50%. I understand that you are suggesting using existing ranching lands for farming, but not all land that is suitable for ranching is also suitable for farming. But even if it were, with your method there is no way around the fact that some land suitable for farming would not be available for planting at all.

Assuming for the sake of discussion that that rancher anecdote is accurate (and complete...), it appears that a big part of his success is due to the animals remaining on and improving the same plot of land year after year. Your proposal would have the animals continually shunted to the "depleted" plots, but does not address how this would affect the animals (individually and in terms of gross numbers), or their ability to further improve the soil.

If dung beetles bury manure 6 to 10 feet in the ground, it is unclear to me how that helps plants without extremely deep root systems grow.

You imply, without saying, that no additional fertilizer inputs are necessary when farming restored prairie land. Is this what you mean?

You also imply that crop yields on lands farmed this way would be comparable to those farmed in the conventional modern way. Is that right?

I ask because, if I understand what you are saying, and if it is true, then the world could double its current livestock output, maintain current food crop yields, and shut down all of the fertilizer plants, saving tons of money and reducing groundwater contamination in the process, and completely eradicating the natural process of erosion, all just by doing as you suggest.

And the only reason that this multi-billion dollar worldwide industry hasn't already done this is because these massive commercial farming and livestock operations prefer to "do it how Dad did it."

I know that sounds sarcastic but that is not how I intend it. I get the idea that rotating animals and crops in the way you describe would have some significant benefits. I just don't believe that there are no associated costs. And I suspect the largest of those costs is in yield. Which is why I asked that question.

paulct your assumption seems to be that vast stands of monocrop is an unavoidable choice. It isn't and of course its a fairly recent development in Ag production. If taking %50 of your acreage out of row crops cuts your overall yield by %50 then the bank is going to own that land verrrry soon. And rightfully so.

Well I never said that of course. If you want to debate with strawmen be my guest. If not, and that would be great, I would be more interested in your response to what I actually said.

paulinct, I think you summed it up pretty well. Just doing the animals is not a trivial exercise. Adding a full scale crop rotation has never been done.

I am not sure what the yields would be for modern corn planted in the 1840s Missouri, but the idea is to restore the soil to the condition found by the farmers of the original tall grass prairie. Bison, sheep, antelope, and dung beetles prepared that soil. The farmers plowed and depleted it.

Tall grass prairie plants have roots that extend to 10 feet.

The reason the multi billion dollar world wide food industry has not already fed the world is due to politics, not dung beetles or fertilizer. Famine is controlled by dictators. This argument does not explain why the US producers are not raising their animals this way. For that I would say it is because daddy didn't do it that way.

I don't think land is a problem. In north Texas you can easily can drive a hundred miles and not see any agriculture production.

For the sake of discussion it does take several years to restore fertility. That is the time the crops will be in production depleting the fertility in the rotated fields. But don't get the impression the livestock land is out of production. It is producing cattle, sheep, hogs, goats, and/or chickens at a rate of at least 280 pounds per acre per year. A 640-acre section of land could produce 180,000 pounds of meat, and that is using Texas rainfall amounts. At a dollar per pound of meat, the farmer with a section can make enough to live. A lot of crop farmers cannot make anywhere near that much cash and the headaches are more frequent (IMHO). But you are not cutting production, you are in full production all the time.

If you want to read more, there is a book called Holistic Resource Management that is very tedious to read. Remember that part about daddy didn't do it that way? Well, the average livestock producer is N-E-V-E-R going to follow a plan called holistic resource management. Furthermore there is no help from the universities. When they look at the HRM concept, they cannot reproduce the results. My sense is that it is hard to find a sponsor for HRM research because there are no chemicals or medicines used. Inputs are so minimal that there are no corporate sponsors. To the universities, it looks like nothing more than intensive rotation grazing. But even among the livestock producers who might see the book, most won't understand it. There is a second book called the Holistic Resource Management Workbook. That book cuts to the chase, but the title is still a huge impediment. The idea is to manage the entire ecosystem at once - the "whole" ecosystem including plants, animals, and insects. Herbicides kill plants so that's not good. Insecticide and parasitide kills insects, so that's not good. Fertilizer is simply not needed. To summarize the way this works, the sun sends energy to every inch on Earth. You can capture that energy with photosynthesis. To maximize photosynthesis you must have plants covering the property from fence to fence. Those are the tall grass prairie plants. To most people those are weeds. They don't need fertilizer other than what nature provides. The plants convert sunlight to carbohydrates and protein. The animals eat the plants and convert the carbohydrates and protein into meat. If the animals are not poisoned with deworming medicine, the insects will continue to work the soil after the livestock leave the pasture.

Here are some of the 'offbeat' websites that subscribe to at least part of this.
Holistic Resource Management
Managing Wholes
Acres USA

Check the links for still more info.

They bury the dung in balls 3/4 inches across. And they bury them 6-10 feet deep. When you have insects burying fertilizer in 1,000 holes per square yard, suddenly you don't need to buy fertilizer or aerate or worry about leaching manure into the streams.
I don't think so. I'd lov to see his operation. I wouldn't drive to Texas, but have connections that will check it out, if you care to share the location? even goggle earth address would be helpful. As far as 'That's not the way daddy did it" About the only time that's used, is in jest. Most real farmers will pass down the error's they made. King ranch is alive and well, and the original owner has been dead for years. GOD BLESS TEXAS.

The best place to see would be Mason, Texas. Drop in to the bank and ask for George. He has photographed the dung beetles in action. Or you can visit UT in Austin and ask for Dr Pat Richardson. She is the real dung beetle expert.

King Ranch is alive and well only because it has been a diversified, world wide, corporation for decades. Had they not incorporated and diversified, the succeeding generations of King and Kleberg family would likely have abandoned the place over the course of the past century. The ranch itself is almost the size of Rhode Island, so there are big challenges. Their website alludes to their tentative return to natural livestock management but only when the livestock is white tailed deer for hunting. Otherwise they are in the feed lot business. That's not what I'm talking about.

Brush is one of the problems at the King Ranch. A brief review of early Texas agriculture history reveals that the Spaniards controlled brush with goats. The Spaniards had the plan down to an art. They first brought in their Spanish goats for a full year to clear the land. Then they brought in cattle on a one-for-one basis to graze along side of the browsing goats. Of course there were no fences then so there were other differences from modern times. At the King Ranch, they use bulldozers to clear perfectly delicious goat food, because "they ain't in the goat business." Basically, "daddy didn't do it that way."

We can chat about this for a long time. The best thing to do is visit the bank in Mason and chat with George. Bring your boots and hat because there might be a horse ride involved. And don't forget your camera and a notebook.

Check out the link below and have your friends there to attend this meeting. They will explain it there.

Here is a link that might be useful: Mob Grazing Event

"If you are farming two plots of land and want to try this, you will have to dedicate one of them to livestock all the time, immediately cutting the harvest by 50%."

You didn't write the above?? Im pretty sure you did. Your name is on the post.

Its the kind of either/or statement that doesn't take into account the nuances available to growers.

decklap, you are addressing paulinct, right?

Yes obviously I wrote that. I was referring to what you "assumed" that I believed and your attack on that assumption. When you attribute beliefs to others and then go on to try to demolish those beliefs you are arguing with a straw man, not the other person. That's all I meant.

Yeah, Im pretty clear on what you meant and I think its mistaken. You're assuming that current norms in Ag production are necessary and they are not. If that's not what you mean to say then its hard to give any context to statements like:

"Then how would we grow all of that corn and soybean meal and alfalfa used in organic fertilizing?
Put another way, if you harvest an acre of corn to be used as fertilizer to grow corn, will that be enough fertilizer to grow more than an acre of corn? If so, where did the extra nitrogen come from? If not, wouldn't that be counterproductive?"

"I think you are ignoring the last hundred years of agricultural development around the world, and what would happen to the world if all of that progress were suddenly rescinded in the name of "going organic"

"Lou, if you want to return us to 19th century agriculture, and all that would mean to the people in the world today, well just go ahead and say so, please."

If you don't mean to say that you think these are zero sum options then you're doing a good job of pretending like you do.

Decklap,

I stand behind all of those quotes. If you want to take issue with any of them, well I would be very glad for that. So please do!

But if you prefer to conflate them all into yet another straw man argument, well, go ahead, and enjoy yourself, because I won't be participating.

But I do hope you'll take me up on my offer of debating my statements as they were actually made. Start anywhere! If you are honest in your critiques I promise to respond, and in great detail!

Paul

Great.

1.Nobody who knows anything anywhere has ever suggested using grain as a large scale ag fertilizer. It is strictly viable for homeowner use. You made that one up outta the clear blue. It's not a legitimate question.

You'd be MUCH better off debating the relative merits of rotations and green manures as this is how organic growing actually works.

2.What has happened previously in ag production could not be less relevant to future pricing. Chem fert used to be cheap. They aint gonna be anymore. Growers will have to move on to other viable options.

3.Another example of you trying to frame the discussion between two unreasonable options. Either farmers continue to use chem ferts as prices rise or we for some reason have to return to 19th century ag?? Please.

This coming from a guy who needs help with establishing "metrics" to take care of his own lawn. If you have an interest in taking care of your lawn organically I think that's great obviously but as is abundantly clear you're just beginning to discover what
that's all about. Much of what you're about to hopefully learn will go a long way to inform the opinions you seem to hold about the viability of organic ag production as well.