We have Amish in Minn. I bought some items from one last year.
Your shotgun approach claim of Amish is bs from the ones I have dealt with.

If you are going to make a general one size fits all claim you had better be able to back it up.

I'm sorry if you took my statement to mean I was railing against the Amish. I thought it would be understood that justas you guys are attacking farmers(becuz of their ag practices) that you would also understand I am talking about the Amish farming practices.
When the Amish were here, they were noted as the ones who were not allowed to use modern fertilizer. So, the REASON the land became desolate, was becuz they were continually taking crops and had only a small amount of manure to put back.
The only logical conclusion is that manure for fertilizer is NOT sustainable. Everyone seemed pretty quick to brandish me as a Hater, and I'm definately offended by that.

Manure for fertilizer is a reasonable part of the program.

Mining land for minerals, via cropping, whether done by Amish or anyone else, isn't sustainable. On poor soils it isn't sustainable for even a few years. Destroying soil life via cropping supported by synthesized fertilizer salts, is also proving to not be sustainable over decades.

Oddly enough, Henzel Jenny, who wrote Bread From Stones didn't believe in animal manure, but believed the land needed to be manured with ground rocks. I don't agree with him with just a "one trick pony" philosophy. I believe that farming takes from the soil, if crops are sold or eaten [that covers about all farming.]

Deep growing cover crops can mine minerals and increase organic matter which both improve fertility and structure. In the long, long run you are going to need outside inputs though to keep up fertility.

Wayne,

I didn't remember that author's name offhand either - it's Julius Hensel.

Though really I think he sussed out a genius idea, leading to Hamaker's theory and the re-mineralization concept of today. Although my experiments so far indicate that fresh stone meal added in the short-term does not do the trick as a lone pony, in the long term it is bound to be the big locomotive.

pnbrown is correct that manure should be part of a program, even though it obviously can not do the trick on its own.
Another obvious source is the mineral clays, sands and stones that contain nutrients that might be used by plants if there is adequate microbial activity, such as AM Fungi.
Another thing that was common in my neck of the woods was the harvesting of rotted leaves, branches even entire trees from the lakes and streams that were causing algae blooms in the water. That practice killed 2 birds with one stone.
But I think wise management of all recourses is the best way to grow enough good food for everyone w/out polluting our ground water. Of course this is the Organic Garden forum and why are we complaining about what the millions of acres of corn, soybean and wheat that is growing out there by the agricultural world?
If we can do better growing adequate amounts of food ourselves then that is what we should be focussed on, because this is the Gardening Forum. :)

I think it's ok to discuss food-production in the larger picture on this forum.

I'm not sure what "conventional farming" is referring to. In my thirty some odd years of limited experience in agriculture, farming has changed drastically and I suspect it will to continue to evolve as time goes by.

Lloyd

Yup, farmers are only doing what they can to keep up with food needs.

I mean it to refer to the types of operations as in the link. IOW, very large monocultures.

How about this notion, crops remove minerals from soils, we take more crop off the soil long enough it becomes less fertile. Now the conundrum, we have to add back minerals to replace what the crops removed and have to get them from somewhere, in doing that to "somewhere" we degrade it, I.E. mining rock to be made into rock dust to be applied to our fields.

It would seem the essence of the argument in today's forms of growing food and fodder is where we want to derive the "amendments" from to sustain a particular mode of growing crops be they natural gas for N fertilizers, mined humates, diesel fuel to haul manure and worm castings, etc., etc.. As for growing crops, you simply can't get something for nothing and for every action there is a reaction.

Can someone please define the term, "factory farm" and please compare and contrast factory farms with 500+- acre farms be they conventional or organic.

I believe that some minerals will need to be brought in from outside to replace the ones removed from the soil. I do not have a dogmatic opposition to doing that. Some minerals for a few years could be obtained by using deep rooted plants to go deep and mine minerals from the lower subsoil horizons.

As for factory farms...I would categorize those as farms that are very large producers with a large contingent of hired help. These farms often produce only one or two products.

500+ acre farms [3,000 acres in the Midwest with the leased parcels of land] [not many 500- ones now] are family operated without much if any hired help.

Most "factory farming" is used to describe animal farming.

It's a form of warehousing and general use of animals as if it's a factory process with fast in/out production. It's a lot different than traditional animal husbandry and meat/egg/milk production.

As far as plant food production goes, the "mega farm" vs a conventional farm can practically use the same methods, but the scale of them can lead to new concerns. A "mega farm" growing 1000s of acres of cantaloupes that drags infected machinery or provides infected water to their fields can drag down an entire industry supply if they go belly-up. As far as the supply issue of what they're putting on their lands goes, though, if 1000 acres was going to be planted anyway...it doesn't matter much if it's 10 farmers doing it or 1 farmer doing it as long as they're doing it responsibly, using the least amount of resources available for the best production.

"we have to add back minerals to replace what the crops removed and have to get them from somewhere,"

Michael, I agree, and that somewhere could be as simple and direct as what results from our eating the crops. The loop could easily be closed for soils of better quality. Poorer ones will need mineralizing with mined materials.

High energy feeds to make the hens produce and egg a day. They can't walk even if they were let out of their box. Eating 'factory' eggs is where the cholesterol is. Healthy active chickens, eating bugs that are outside too, makes for real meat.
You city people could do yourself a favor by raising your own chickens, like every other part of the world.

What's up with all these parochial references, maple? How do you know what types of places the rest of us live in?

OK, I get the notion of, "factory farms", thanks.

Maplebirch: don't know who you were addressing about the chickens but we do raise our own, homing pigeons too! The wife prefers Banties because of their disposition.

Pn: not to be a snot or contrarian but: our bodies will take minerals out of the food we produce off our land so unless everything coming out of us (including the CO2 we exhale) goes back to the soil there is no closed loop. This includes, at the risk of being morose, our dead bodies.

I guess what I'm really trying to get at is we are going to negatively impact the productivity of soils where we farm unless we import to them what is required to maintain that fertility in the long run (years, decades and beyond). It obviously behooves us to use those inputs and soils in the absolute most efficient manner possible.

Wayne: good point about mining the depths with deep rooted plants.

I wasn't really addressing anyone in particular. I just thought about how over populated countries around the world have enough chicken and eggs w/out the factory farms for themselves.
The cities are full of chickens. The way we keep dogs and cats in the cities, others keep chickens. If we can critisize what farmers do, over and over, we should also offer solutions. One solution would be to increase the population of healthy chickens to lessen the need for factory chickens. :)

Michael, not to belabor the point, but doesn't urine and feces contain by far the great majority of the nutrients we consume? Getting 50 or 60 percent of the minerals taken by crops back into the crop production cycle would be an immense gain. So I don't mean to speak of a perfectly closed loop, rather of containing some of the massive waste.

Maple, I agree, the resources spent on pets could indeed be diverted to chickens, etc, just as those spent on suburban lawns could be diverted to crop production.

Posted by maplerbirch 4 (My Page) on Sun, Jan 13, 13 at 7:27

"You city people could do yourself a favor by raising your own chickens, like every other part of the world."

No, they could not, or else they would...... Farms belong in rural areas to keep production cheap. It is way more cost effective to farm in rural areas and then ship it into the cities.

The complexities of food production is overlooked.

This post was edited by TheMasterGardener1 on Mon, Jan 14, 13 at 15:03

Pn: Gotcha. sure, go ahead and belabor, thoughtful discussions are good stuff. Dealing with massive amounts of human waste is troublesome and at times maybe even wasteful itself, I.E. when many municipal sewer handling systems deal with the ,"solids" they are collected, dried and land filled. No doubt there are a lot of nutrients there in those solids. I forget what the process is for municipal systems to deal with the liquids other than dumping them to a water body and evaporating them off but, the nutrients in thhose liquids is no doubt lost.

Don't know how much of what we take in is contained in what we pass, might be interesting to know. Obviously there is N in the urine, I'd guess Na and K as well.

As a side note....let's say there were 10 million produced annually by the factories and the same amount by folks in their yards, which would be using the least resources to raise their birds, the factories or the folks? I'd guess the factories since they are focused on the bottom line and would try to keep efficiency to the max.. What's your guess?

Some large-city municipal waste systems are composting and shipping their waste quite well. Baltimore has a system that composts/ships all over the north-East. It's sold mostly to turf growers and nurseries under the names Orgro, BioCom, and Eckology.

Yes, I think it true that a lot of large cities sell their sludge to various non-food production industries. Smaller cities and towns that have municipal collection and treatment generally do not, I suspect. That stream probably is landfilled or some other unuseful end result. Then there is the immense amount of solids and liquids treated by residential septic systems. This is especially nonsensical because the population density is low enough in such areas that both solid and liquid effluent could be safely treated on-site and used as fertilizer for food crops in the immediate area.

You are wrong about smaller communities, at least those that have a municipal system.

Thirty-five years ago I was hauling, for the city, dump truck loads of human crap that has been stock piled all winter so it could be spread on fields in the fall, and my home town had less than ten thousand people.

If you ever dealt with large quatities of municipal waste you would know how--illogical-- your statement was.

If we were dealing with just human body wastes that were not contaminated with antibiotic and drugs, perhaps a useful product could be made after suitable treatment. But we are also dealing with chemical of many kinds in municipal waste.

The Milorganite model would be useful for turning useless land into hayfields for cattle and chicken feed. The anti-biotics and miscellaneous drugs wouldn't survive intact in the soils and there wouldn't be any contamination on the grasses themselves.

MG1 said: "No, they could not, or else they would...... Farms belong in rural areas to keep production cheap. It is way more cost effective to farm in rural areas and then ship it into the cities. "

People in the cities keep chickens, virtually for free. No need for garbage disposals in the sinks, no pest control sprayed around the houses, not even the need for a lawnmower. Besides we were talking about factory meat vs. real meat.

Why can't Americans keep chickens in town? The 'complexities' of food production?
That really makes us out of touch with the world. :)

If it were just human waste I could live with it but I have issues with all the other stuff people throw down their drains that would eventually be in the end product.

Lloyd

"If you ever dealt with large quatities of municipal waste you would know how--illogical-- your statement was."

Which statement of mine are you referring? I make so many, after all.

PNBrown--"Yes, I think it true that a lot of large cities sell their sludge to various non-food production industries. Smaller cities and towns that have municipal collection and treatment generally do not, I suspect. That stream probably is landfilled or some other unuseful end result"

That would be it.

there is hospital and light industrial waste that goes into sewerage, along with whatever residues come from human bodies in the medication line, plumbers use sulfuric acid a kilo at a time to try and unblock systems, there are all those toilet cleaners and deoderisers, residues from chemo therapy etc.,.

then the solids from the sewerage farm are taken out and go through some composting on site, the water is extracted to at least level 2 for irrigation use where it is returned to the city drinking stream it is cleaned to level 1.

Nd then as part of all the waste stream, gov's have to dispose of it all the super toxic as well, so medium grade liquid waste is collected in the dead of night as we sleep and taken to a collection point where all sorts of organic stuff furniture timber is dealt with and then composted, this liquid waste is added in as well as the humus from the sewerage farm.

this stuff is then either sold or given to gardeners.

it si quiet common for adjacent counties to swap and trade, like if one might generate more acceptably compostable waste than it can cope with it is quite within reason for them to deal or trade that waste to another county that could handle more.

also seen CCA treated wood go through the chipper and into that compost pile.

over here they have a train with old oil wagons that they send the most toxic waste to another adjacent state because that state has an incinerator, and the sending state does not want to build one or can't afford to.

this train travels mostly through the night near highways and byways, through townships over creeks and rivers, imagine if it derailed?

anyhow take care, oh! if i had to i would use that composty stuff from the tip site, but then i have a pretty good idea of what happens and where it comes from.

Here is a link that might be useful: lens bale garden

RPR, I'll have to check around with some local municipalities that have small sewerage plants in this area. I'd be super surprised if the sludge ends up growing any plants, at least intentionally. In regions where very large ag operations are near to a town the situation is probably different.

Several years ago the city of Muncie wanted to spread their solids on fields near me. We got that stopped. See, who wants unknown toxics?

Just a quick and nasty comment about that some people put down their sewage lines from their houses: Until very recently I was the city supt. for our very small town, it has a municipal sewer system which I was responsible for operating and maintaining. Twice, we had to pull lift station pumps and remove giant wads of those synthetic baby wipes from the pump impellers, mind you, the process of doing this is hazardous, nasty and expensive. A week or so ago I watched as the new guys pulled another lift station pump that failed because a PAIR OF PANTY HOSE was wound around the impeller. Are you frigg'n kidding me!!!

Our system diverts all the stream to 2 retention ponds where the liquid evaporates off and if operated properly, algae decompose the solids; sun, nutrients in the water and wind (for oxygen) drive the process.

At some point, our ponds will be too full with solids to function properly, not sure but I think they can be dug out after drying and put back in service. I forget what the state requires the city to do with those solids dug out but it is possible they may be able to be spread on pasture or grain fields. I'll try to remember to call my contacts at the state tomorrow to see.

PNBrown:
It is or was common around here.

They have a more sophisticated system here now, so I do not think the honey wagon is used anymore, but it still ends up in fields.

Wayne:
Unless you are going to walk around those field barefoot, what does it matter to you.
Toxics, hmm, oh yeah. I always flush five or six gallons of gasoline down my toilet every week.
Paranoia strikes deep....

I worked at a city sanitation complex one summer and the head gent said the treated water that runs into the river is drinkable if one is inclined.
Did not recommend it, said it might taste funky, but said it would not hurt one if one did.

I got to go down into the fifty year old sewers and scoop out the mineral sand that formed in the old narrow troughs to narrow to vacuum with our giant vacuum .
One could hear a toilet flush up stream, so I would wait till the parade floated by and resume scooping out the mineral gravel.
Did not wear gloves or a mask and only once got out of one when I had feeling that the feeling I had was not a good one.
The brick work down there was magnificent. You could see men once actually cared how good of a job they did and the multiple inlets, at different heights were amazing to look at.
If one could remove it hole, it would make a great garden multiple water fall display.

The mineral gravel that came out would have made a fantastic amendment to a garden except for all the razor blades in it.
I do not know who flushes a razor blade down a toilet but from what I saw, there is not shortage of morons out there.

It's common for municipal waste to end up on many fields...especially range land for grazing, wheat/grain fields, and in some areas pretty much any farmer that is willing to take it and manage any potential runoff properly.

"Toxics, hmm, oh yeah."

I wonder if anyone would snack down on some of those 'pucks' people put in their toilet tanks for sanitation? Or drink a glass of Drano? That's the kind of stuff I don't want in my fields.

Lloyd

So Milorganite is full of toxins and Drano will never breakdown into inert materials over time. Does anything break down into inert material over time.
It seems to me that if something intelligent would be done at the lift pump sites, perhaps a well placed screen to protect from pantyhose and such.
What is the purpose of bashing factory farms when we don't even have a grasp on what happens with our own sewage? :)

Drano is mostly lye. In it's non-name brand use, it conditions (breaks up) heavy clay soils.

Most plants don't care about toxins except metals, which are mostly effected by pH and exchange sites and effects plant growth more than anything you'll harvest off it.

Paint, paint thinners, Varsol, etc etc. There are a thousands of items people pour down their drains. Once again, I don't want them in my fields, others are welcome to them.

Lloyd

Paint, paint thinner, varsol really?

Water paint is harmless.
The few, if any people who poor oil paint, is irrelevant.

Paint thinner, Varso, the toxic parts are the parts one smells, not the remaining part that will not evaporate. The remaining, if there is any, decomposes just as motor oil does.
You are speaking of parts per million not thousand of gallons dumped in one area.

There is nothing there that is toxic even if it is in sludge.

This post was edited by RpR_ on Thu, Jan 17, 13 at 12:32

Maybe, but one of the guides for what can or cannot be composted is if it can be consumed by an animal it's generally okay for composting. None of that stuff would fit that criteria so I'll pass on municipal sludge.

Lloyd

"Maybe, but one of the guides for what can or cannot be composted is if it can be consumed by an animal it's generally okay for composting. None of that stuff would fit that criteria so I'll pass on municipal sludge. "

What is the rationale behind that statement?
Whether or not something can be rendered harmless in a hayfield, has nothing to do with composting and animal consumption.
It is the orange = apple thinking, that has eliminated thinking as a guideline. I feel that apples and oranges are the same, therefore I feel that we can't deal with either.
I'm not trying to be unkind, but only remind everyone that this is a real life issue, and how we feel, isn't going to change a thing. :)

I'm sorry if it was unclear. The statement was in rebuttal to the "There is nothing there that is toxic even if it is in sludge." statement.

Many people often ask about items that can be composted and one simple guideline is as I stated. If it can be consumed by an animal, it can be composted. I would not eat a toilet puck or drink a glass of paint thinner etc. ergo, I would not compost it and use it a garden. I'm not saying you can't, I'm saying I won't. As I stated previously, I have no problem with the human waste. I use a Joe Jenkins humanure system on the farm and have no problem composting this material.

Lloyd

This post was edited by pt03 on Thu, Jan 17, 13 at 17:14

Dose is the only characteristic that makes any compound either poisonous or not.

Which is why putting large amounts of glyphosate in the soil is not smart.

"Which is why putting large amounts of glyphosate in the soil is not smart.

So is a small amount ok?

Personally, I think the biggest mistake we're making with gly is using it every season in large cropping systems rather than in rotation with other crops, even a non-GMO rotation. I'm not much a fan of systemic 2,4-D GMO solutions, myself...even though this will help that problem if used in a rotation.

As far as herbicides go, it's one of the safest and most effective out there for large cropping systems...and we're running it into non-effectiveness for those large systems really quickly by forcing so much evolutionary change in weeds that frequent those fields.

Pest control evolution is a lot easier to fool, but weeds are not. You can't plant a trap crop for weeds to control evolution.

Keep in mind that I'm talking about large cropping systems here, not the home garden.

One thing I do not like around me is 2-4-D. It has been vilotile. [drifts and revaporizes during the night]. In 2000 it was sprayed in a field adjacent to one of my gardens...this is bad stuff. Roundup at least stays put pretty well.

I don't mind 2,4-D that much...but as a systemic I'm not much of a fan.

Having BT resistant strains bred into crops isn't even on the same level for me as 2,4-D resistance. In cotton, I don't have an issue, but for corn/soy and other food products this isn't something I'm a fan of. While 2,4-D (applied correctly) isn't that dangerous of a herbicide (and very effective), I have a lot more concerns about ingesting the stuff over BT...no matter how processed the end result is.

...and yeah, 2,4-D drift is some irresponsible spraying to have to deal with.

Also, I am firmly against this whole "2-4,D is agent orange" propaganda. It's enough of an argument about it being systemic in a food crop without making such an irresponsible statement. That link is being pushed by some groups currently and it doesn't help make a good argument against 2,4-D GMO when one is armed with that kind of argument against it.

Welcome all, finally got ahold of my state dept of health and environment person about how a sewer sedimentation pond in this state can be handle when it's got too much solids in it: 1) stop putting sewage in it and let it dry down completely.
2) dig the solids out
3) take a representative sample of the solids and submit to the state's lab for analysis
4) apply to the land at state recommended rates. The land can only be planted to non-food crops for a certain time period but can be planted to crops that animals will consume such as milo or field corn. Pasture is also a suitable land for solids distribution.

So what do you think, good use for all that waste?

Interestingly enough, when properly managed, the solids contained in this type of pond isn't poop, TP and the like, those are the feedstocks for the algae and bacteria in the water that break those down and die. The solids are the dead bodies of an unimaginable number of the algae and bacteria that have died over many years time.

OK, I think I've finished stinking up this thread now :)