Organic farmers and gardeners try very hard to stay away from animal manures produced by Confined Animal Feeding Operations. Organic Farms will have their own animals which they care for humanely.

The Nearings were the first well-known practitioners of the vegan method. Their follower Eliot Coleman is now a popular writer on the subject. It is more or less the method I follow.

In cool damp climates it is an easy method, especially if one lives near enough to the ocean to be able to easily introduce seaweed and other forms of mineralization from the sea. Cool damp climates tend to have much more fertility in the soil, compost makes very easily, growth of grasses and other compost materials is lush and dense and so gathering from small areas is sufficient.

In hotter drier climates the situation is generally very different. Vegetative growth is far more sparse, soils are often infertile, compost piles do not make well, dry winds are a major issue. In such climates that are semi-arid for parts of the year or all year grazing animals can be by far the easiest way to convert vegetation spread over a very large area into fertilizer for a much smaller area. Even so the gathering of the manure is time and energy consuming. Also the quality of the manure in such climates is much lower as well.

My point is that intensive vegetable gardening whether organic or vegan is a system that works well in the environment it was developed in: cool damp mid and high latitude climates. The same can be said of traditional row-cropping methods also. Both perform increasingly less well as the climate gets warmer/drier and soils sandier/drier. Even where the climate is right the traditional methods must be modified if the soil is very sandy, for example.

If the Nearings had decided to homestead in florida or the tropics they would have developed a very different system.

What pnbrown said.

That stuff does not work as faithfully transcribed out here in the dry Intermountain West. We look at these eastern books and magazine articles, think it would be lovely to have that much water, then modify to fit our climate.

Dan

Thank you so much for the info on this. I see what you are saying it is all about keeping it local and substainable.

I have been growing veganically on my 3000sqft garden for almost 2 years now and have had great results. I live in Phx, where as you know, it's hot and dry. I try to make all my own compost but do buy more from a local farmer when needed. I use compost tea, organic vegetarian fertilizer, legume cover crops, liquid kelp, local woodchip and pine needle mulches. I also haven't been using any kind of pesticides or fungicides. Healthy soil is most definitely the key. The ecosystem of harmful and beneficial bugs is amazing and so far the beneficials have generally won the battles. There is a farm in Southern Arizona that supplies many businesses around town including Whole Foods that grows all of their crops veganically.

Here is a link that might be useful: Sunizona Family Farms

Arizona is an example of a very arid climate with a generally good mineral base. The addition of the major missing factor, water, works wonders.

Is water a sustainable resource in super-arid climates?

"Is water a sustainable resource in super-arid climates?"

Well, pn, I believe your question might imply more than its simple appearance, i.e. bringing to mind lush lawns in the U.S. southwest enabled by diverting rivers and depleting aquafers, generally NOT "consulting the genius of the place".

Having lived in the highveldt I would answer, yes. But as you and Dan mention, methods evolve to suit specific locales. Ruth Stout wouldn't have transplanted well at all there.

But "sustainable" would need further defining to continue rambling. The U.S. is now engaged in three wars with a large % unemployed. Apparently sustainable.

'Sustainable' has been adequately defined for two decades. Speaking of sustainable, what is to become of the byproducts of production if blood meal, fish emulsion, etc is eschewed by gardeners? Would these byproducts just be thrown away in concentrated amounts, to be absorbed by the earth?

Nonetheless, all of Homo sapiens in these numbers at this consumption rate is of course not sustainable. But that is not the way of our species. And OT for this thread.

Dan

Dan, would not those byproducts be used by conventional ag if the price were low enugh? Which it would be if eschewed by gardeners.

pn, many would have to re-tool and reinvest to adjust to the non-conventional fert, altho some NH3 in liquid applicators might be able to be adapted, provided, say, the fish emulsion is clean enuf...maybe new nozzles there.

Dan

Well Im glad to see there has been some follow-ups. The subject is changing a bit but i will continue with what you guys are going on with. I have used non-organics for a while now and would like to switch to vegan organic in my potted garden. One day I would like to compost my own but for now I must use fertilizer. I have been looking into "General Organics" products. If anyone has any other ideas about the subject please coment. These compainies continue to harvest kelp at high rates that i am sure is not good for the eviroment so I wish to swith to making my own vegan compost one day.

kingkongo- "also haven't been using any kind of pesticides or fungicides. Healthy soil is most definitely the key. The ecosystem of harmful and beneficial bugs is amazing and so far the beneficials have generally won the battles"
I could not agree more.

I'm not sure I really understand what you're saying, pnbrown. When growing in a hot and arid climate, you have no option but to irrigate regardless of which system you implement. Compost piles, whether made from manure or vegetable matter, must be watered to keep them moist. So why would a veganic method be any more difficult than a non-veganic method? In all climates and situations, all you really do is substitute manure for vegetable compost and bloodmeal/bonemeal for non-animal based fertilizers.

In order to use these animal byproducts, the animal has to be raised on grain and grass that is irrigated. If water is not a sustainable resource in arid climates then surely it is more efficient to use vegetable sources of soil amendments and fertilizer thereby cutting out the middle-man(cow).

If you are responding to my comment about Arizona, that wasn't meant as regarding veganic or not. I was simply pointing out that food-production in general in the very arid southwest is pretty much entirely dependent upon pumped fossil water or diverted river water.

I guess you would know better than me, since you are there. Based on your experience, could a family produce it's own food without animals (bringing the veganic back in now) and using only stored rain-water?

I like to see this little debate. pnbrown
"could a family produce it's own food without animals"

Animals have superior proitien than plants have. It would not be easy to live vegan.

kingkongos-I see what you are saying Although Animals do make amazing food for both plants and us. Again It would not be easy to live 100% veganic.

Both are good points here.

Sure a family of four could produce as much as MOST organic gardeners who use animal by products does.
Or are you speaking of everything that the family puts on the table, because some people have come close to that dream.
No I am not one of them. They have a green house to grow year a round.
I farm that had animals could produce more with meat,eggs,fish & dairy produces.
A 100% veganic crop would be harder then the animal farm, but one could do it as a full time job.

In fact, animal manure is only as good as the soil the feed was grown on. Which nowadays is mostly depleted soil. It all goes back to the ground. All livestock farmers now give their animals mineral supplements, because very few soils in north america are complete enough to raise grass-fed animals without any complications. To such an extent that some large operations have to monitor the manure carefully if they are spreading it on the land regularly to avoid excess of some minerals, notably copper.

That is why I was pointing out that an advantage to arid regions is that the minerals are less depleted due to the low rainfall in the past millennia. However, irrigation quickly salinizes and depletes both minerals and water reserves.

Of course it is quite possible to raise sufficient food for a family withput using animals. The Nearings fed themselves easily, and only worked four hours per day.

"The Nearings fed themselves easily, and only worked four hours per day."

They also had a coterie of college students and other hangers on.

Not most of the time, and starry-eyed unskilled hangers-on aren't worth their feed, generally.

I think though that they did often have a devoted disciple or two in residence. Also Helen was from a wealthy family so presumably inherited money and Scott had a small independent income, and without having to raise any children the task of really only feeding themselves and slowly constructing buildings was not difficult, or let us say much less difficult than for someone without any independent sources of cash and with more mouths to feed and clothe and etc, etc.

Nevertheless they certainly were exemplary in dogged determination toward a goal and exercising much restraint. The methods they developed were highly efficient and intelligent in sustainability and sufficiency.

Someone sprayed my garden with Triplet Herbicide. Can I still plant this year?

pnbrown, I agree that big business is slow to change, even with proof that said change is good for the bottom line.
I was speaking of using your on home grown manures, on a organic (non-Vegan) farm. So to be clear, manure from a far away place may not be good. But animals raised on an organic farm, with manures that will be composted, should get more from the soil & any supplements needed to complete the circle of life.

I don't think you could grow enough food to survive using solely stored rain water in PHX unless you had an absolutely enormous catchment system - we only get 7-8 inches of rain a year. I don't think you could raise animals either on stored rain water only. Even the native americans who lived in the arid southwest used irrigation so I'm not sure why it's been removed from the equation.

I've been vegetarian since birth (25 years) and vegan for 7 of those years only recently adding eggs back into my diet after finding a guy who raises backyard chickens. So the question is not whether one can live on a vegan diet, but rather can one sustain himself in a 100% "veganic" lifestyle....I believe it's possible. I have a relatively small garden (3000sqft) but I can definitely recognize the potential in the sustainability of a veganic farm even if purely as an experiment. If I was actually trying to sustain myself solely from my land though, I would raise chickens for eggs and possibly goats for cheese/milk...as well as their manure.

I don't see any problem in using manures from animals that you or someone you know have personally raised. My main issue is the source of these animal products (factory farms). The animals on these farms eat pesticide and herbicide ridden food and are pumped full of hormones and drugs. In my opinion, even using manures/blood/bonemeals from these animals may actually have a seriously negative effect on our health.

I choose to avoid all factory farmed animal products.
We don't have CAFOs here, but for your average chicken or pig, "nasty, brutish and short" about covers it.
Antibiotics and growth hormones are generally banned, but animal welfare is important to me. I eat meat, but with so many caveats attached that it's a rare treat!
I'm also pretty sure that liberal use of horse manure in previous years has pushed my phosphorus levels really high.

KK, I am also veg (lacto-vegetarian) since age 9 (47 now).

I remove irrigation from the table, as it were, because I think that sooner or later it becomes non sustainable. The native americans of the southwest created irrigation canals and as a consequence were able to carry out a system too long as it turned out (and with a population overly high for the environment). If they had been on rain-water catchment only they would have migrated out of the region right away when the climate turned to a dry couple of centuries, which ultimately could only have been better than the actual result.

No system can be more efficient than the human himself as the animal to provide power and manure. By definition one is present, why not use one's own muscle? By definition one processes food, why not use the resulting nutrients for plant growth rather than polluting ground water?

Chickens probably are the next-most efficient animal to be part of the human survival system, especially for a fragile and/or dry environment. Goats from what I have heard can be among the most damaging to that kind of system.

"Goats from what I have heard can be among the most damaging to that kind of system."
I did not know that.
This has been a good post so far.

Thanks for all the comments.