Good points, Steve,
When you really think about what could be inorganic on a farm or ranch,
it mostly relates to what plants tend to take in to grow and prosper.
They need the inorganic salts to bring those inorganic nutrients and
convert them to organic ones.
And I don't mean NOP certifed "organic," I mean the real organic that
goes on every farm, all the time, with an immense collage of vibrant,
even if often, invisible patterns of creation and destruction.
I am very skeptical of anyone who tries and sells books, or promote
their particular agenda as some new way of farming. If the person does
not actually have a successful farm, then it makes you wonder if they
really have that much knowledge. And what is useful knowledge in some
places may not be that useful in others, and vice versa.
One of our agriculture instructors, who I consider to be outstanding
with trying to help farmers help themselves with looking at their
numbers, both monetary and agriculturally speaking, recently went to an
NOP workshop. He came away very disillusioned because he realized that
almost all of it is based upon emotion and feel good non-science. Even
worse, he had inside information on one of the "lecturers" who sells
nearly magical biological solutions, since he grew up next to a
particular dairy farm that now is their demonstration farm to show how
well these biologics work. To paraphrase his take on the farm, it would
take an incompetent person to not have good yields considering the care
that the previous owner took for decades earlier when it was a dairy farm.
Sincerely,
Rick W.
SW Wisconsin
Steve Lucas wrote:
>Folks,
>
>I guess I may have been uninformed, but I thought most all farming was biological. After all, the plants we plant and graze or harvest use basic biological processes: photosynthesis, respiration, crebbs citric acid cycle, miosis, mitosis, etc. Likewise, the animals most of use use to harvest our forages survive based on biological processes too.
>
>If this is not true, I wish someone would tell me, since that would mean that I am not biological either.. so.. I..must be.. an inorganic.. creation of some mad scientist, or a figment of my imagination since I could not survive without biological processes.
>
>Seroiusly folks, there is not much new under the sun. It is just repackaged and recycled with a new spin. Many of us graze-l'ers who have stuck it out for lo' these many years have heard it many times before. Shucks, I've posted bunches of sound bites my self:
>
>All the processes that make up your farm's ecosystems are inter-related. When you do something to one, it has an effect on every other one.
>
>You can spend your way out of a problem with purchased inputs or you can manage your way out.
>
>Bert Smith and I walked my pastures some years ago, we looked at the amount of clover in the stand, dug up a slice of soil with a pocket knife and smelled it's earthy odor, and checked some earthworms' health. Didn't cost me anything, just fed Bert and Martha a few meals. Bert and I knew the same thing....you are your own best consultant. You just need to get out on the land and look, observe, sit for a while with your stock. EVERYDAY!!! Watch the biological processes at work on your land, in your plants and in your animals. You can sit in room and listen to an extension agent, or a consultant, or a motivational speaker with lots of charisma talk for hours and present their ideas, sell their books and their hidden agendas. Or you can sit on your horse, or your four-wheeler, or a stump on a south facing slope out of the wind on a winter day and feel the biological processes rumbling beneath your seat, getting ready to explode one warm spring day in March.
>
>I just saved a bunch of you a bunch of money.
>
>You are welcome.
>
>Kindest Regards
>
>Steve
>
>Steve Lucas
>Mountain View Farm
>Louisa, Virginia
>www.ibiblio.org/farming-connection/ruralwri/lucas/home.htm
>
>
