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Related: About this forumRancher grows healthy, nutrient packed soil while running a profitable ranch/farm without chemicals
What a "Luddite" this guy is. He runs a profitable operation without spraying his fields with chemical poisons and artificial fertilizers and without buying patented GM seeds. Doesn't he know he is rejecting the "scientific" approach to modern agriculture? How dare he have the gall to succeed by simply mimicking the processes of nature on his farm and then have the nerve to tell other farmers they too can use the same methods to get themselves off the chemical agriculture treadmill, improve their own soils and still have a profitable farm. Why, if his methods work, it would mean Monsanto and its big-ag partners are mostly full of bovine excrement. Hard to believe I know.
KT2000
(20,568 posts)where two brothers had divided their inherited land. One went organic and the other stayed with chemicals. The organic farmer dug into his land and showed the reporter the worms and other critters moving around in the soil. He then went across the road and dug into his brother's land - dead - not a living thing that was visible.
We never had a problem with mosquitoes until a new person moved in and doused his yard with various yard chemicals including malathion. He killed off the tree frogs that ate the mosquitoes so now we have a mosquito problem The chemicals he uses to kill the mosquitoes are not doing a very good job. It is his right though to poison the environment and the people and critters who live in it.
Homeowners on average use 8 times the amount of yard chemicals as instructed on the packaging. It is up to every individual, whether they can read or not, whether they are intellectually capable of discerning the risks or not, to determine how much of these poisons their neighborhood will be exposed to.
drokhole
(1,230 posts)baldguy
(36,649 posts)ret5hd
(20,482 posts)...or don't and kill 9 billion people...your choice.
1monster
(11,012 posts)that a modified version of his plan would work well in gardens too.
Thanks for posting.
passiveporcupine
(8,175 posts)to refill my raised bed gardens yearly and also to mulch them. The plants that grow in this mixture do so well and they break down the mulch into super rich soil in one season.
You have to be careful with chicken manure because it's hot, but goat manure is not.
I don't ever use chemical fertilizer. It's not necessary when you have your own critters creating it for you.
I've never tried planting cover crops, but I want to try that, turn it under is spring and plant my seeds.
felix_numinous
(5,198 posts)cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)eom
MrMickeysMom
(20,453 posts)I'm a small time gardener in the back yard, but just based on the observation of among the soil and diversity, I'm betting I can improve my own produce. Meanwhile, I'm passing this on to some local folks.
If I could be sitting in the audience and asking Mr. Brown a question, it would be how humanly they treated the boilers and other live stock to slaughter. I've been severely freaked out after seeing how it's done on the corporate level. That's why I'm mostly not a meat eater.
Thanks for the video!
JohnyCanuck
(9,922 posts)Text of 2011 Albrecht Lecture
By John Ikerd Professor Emeritus, University of Missouri
William Albrecht was still Chairman of the Soils Department and a familiar name in the College of Agriculture when I first arrived on the MU campus in the fall of 1957. I recall a friend who was a bit offended because Albrecht seemed to be questioning the intelligence of people, like him, who been raised on food from the worn out soils of South Georgia. We students werent aware of the larger controversy surrounding Albrechts work linking the health of soils to the health of people. While President of the Soil Science Society in 1938, he had written in the Yearbook of Agriculture A declining soil fertility, due to a lack of organic material, major elements, and trace minerals, is responsible for poor crops and in turn for pathological conditions in animals fed deficient foods from such soils, and mankind is no exception."[1] My soils instructor, Prof. E. R. Graham, stuck pretty close to the physics, chemistry, and biology of soils. I dont recall him ever mentioning Albrechts work linking soil health and human health. Perhaps he didnt want to endure the professional criticism Albrecht received for venturing beyond the narrow bounds of his disciple. The University of Missouri had plant and animal scientists to worry about the health of plants and animals and an entire medical school to deal with the health of people. Professor Albrecht was admonished to restrict his observations to the health of soils.
Perhaps his most controversial, most important, study was a review of World War II era dental records of 70,000 U.S. sailors. He linked the health of sailors teeth to the health of soils in their native regions of the U.S. In those days, people mostly ate foods grown on local farms or at least grown in their respective regions of the country. He concluded, If all other body irregularities as well as those of the teeth were so viewed, it is highly probable that many of our diseases would be interpreted as degenerative troubles originating in nutritional deficiencies going back to insufficient fertility of the soil.[2] With the end of World War II, Albrecht called for a major national initiative to restore the health and fertility of Americas worn out soils.
Instead, the nations agricultural priorities shifted to producing more and cheaper food. Albrecht anticipated that reliance on commercial fertilizers to increase production would degrade both soil health and human health. He was particularly concerned with an overemphasis on nitrogen, prosperous, and potash (N, P, & K), would lead to depletion of trace minerals, such as manganese, copper, boron, zinc, iodine, and chlorine, and degrade basic soil health. He wrote "N P K formulas, as legislated and enforced by State Departments of Agriculture mean malnutrition, attack by insects, bacteria and fungi, weed takeover, crop loss in dry weather, and general loss of mental acuity in the population, leading to degenerative metabolic disease and early death."[3]
Continued
https://sites.google.com/site/albrechtlecture/home/text-of-2011-albrecht-lecture
libodem
(19,288 posts)libodem
(19,288 posts)Nice to get my mind off politics and onto something productive like bovine excrement.
Seriously.