A huge pile of Woo.

[Red Baron Farms]

Here is a chance to CRUSH a lot of the woo I have found on this forum.

Everything from the doubters of Organic being science based, to Holistic management being woo, to countless posts claiming we can't feed the world without haber process nitrogen, to AGW not being able to be mitigated simply by sequestering carbon in the soil, to the need of CAFOs to produce our animal products, to the profitability of organic system, nutrient rich food, to the incompatibility of agriculture and wildlife, biomimicry etc......... ALL crushed by a working farmer who dared to actually break all the "rules" of industrial/green revolution agriculture. It's a one hour vid, and don't watch it if you are uncomfortable with a paradigm changing world view.

Merry Christmas!

 

[Sideroxylon]

I had my fill in the raw milk death thread, but thanks and merry Christmas.

 

[marplots]

Well, not even a minute in and I'm objecting to the term "healthy soil."

I'll stick with it, but my "loaded rhetoric" alarm is already ringing.

 

[Orphia Nay]

The intro:

"No tilling in Organic farming." ... "Oh, OK, just a bit."

This guy really knows his ****.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

Well, not even a minute in and I'm objecting to the term "healthy soil."

I'll stick with it, but my "loaded rhetoric" alarm is already ringing.

"When farmers view soil health not as an abstract virtue, but as a real asset, it revolutionizes the way they farm and radically reduces their dependence on inputs to produce food and fiber."-USDA NRCS East National Technology Support Center

 

[marplots]

Perhaps you could explain something about yields from the piece. I gather he is getting more bushels of corn per acre than the county average. But I think he was saying he doesn't grow corn continuously on the same acreage? That is, when he does grow corn on a parcel, he gets higher yields, but on a yearly average for that parcel, the yields would be much lower?

I think I understand the rationale for doing so - building topsoil - but if the objective is to produce corn, and as much as possible on a per-acre basis, then doesn't his method fail to deliver?

 

[marplots]

"When farmers view soil health not as an abstract virtue, but as a real asset, it revolutionizes the way they farm and radically reduces their dependence on inputs to produce food and fiber."-USDA NRCS East National Technology Support Center

I don't understand your quote. It seems to be saying that "soil health" as an abstract concept is bogus - which is what I meant. Would someone describe the Sahara Desert as "unhealthy soil?" The growing medium in a hydroponics operation? The Okefenokee swamp?

He spends a lot of time discussing "resource input" - the very considerations someone applying fertilizer might have, it's just that the inputs he's talking about are things like "armoring" or "adding legumes to build nitrogen" or other soil remediation to improve the soil. I don't have a time stamp, but wasn't there a list of ten or so things one could direct efforts towards? I think the list was supposed to then tell a farmer what he should plant.

I would be curious to know some of the overall statistics - how much land he has and what it produces, with the assumption that a great deal would be considered unwanted/unprofitable/less than optimal.

I chuckled when he related the anecdote about selling a steak for $20 a pound to someone grateful to get the meat. Well, duh. If your business is going to rely on those kinds of prices, go ahead and squander your resources.

 

[Dancing David]

Here is a chance to CRUSH a lot of the woo I have found on this forum.

Everything from the doubters of Organic being science based, to Holistic management being woo, to countless posts claiming we can't feed the world without haber process nitrogen, to AGW not being able to be mitigated simply by sequestering carbon in the soil, to the need of CAFOs to produce our animal products, to the profitability of organic system, nutrient rich food, to the incompatibility of agriculture and wildlife, biomimicry etc......... ALL crushed by a working farmer who dared to actually break all the "rules" of industrial/green revolution agriculture. It's a one hour vid, and don't watch it if you are uncomfortable with a paradigm changing world view.

Merry Christmas!

Sorry argument by YouTube is not my style, do you have some points you wish to make?

 

[ectoplasm]

Sorry argument by YouTube is not my style, do you have some points you wish to make?

Don't you know, with all the problems with pay for play journals, bogus peer review, etc., You Tube is the new Science or Nature!

An hour is a bit too long for me, here's hoping that somebody with more patience can summarize it.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

Perhaps you could explain something about yields from the piece. I gather he is getting more bushels of corn per acre than the county average. But I think he was saying he doesn't grow corn continuously on the same acreage? That is, when he does grow corn on a parcel, he gets higher yields, but on a yearly average for that parcel, the yields would be much lower?

I think I understand the rationale for doing so - building topsoil - but if the objective is to produce corn, and as much as possible on a per-acre basis, then doesn't his method fail to deliver?

The objective for most corn in the US is to raise livestock. So basically even when there is not time to grow a cash crop (corn, barley wheat etc...) and a cover crop, he still is able to use the cover to grow livestock. So most years he gets a cash crop or two and livestock, and rare years just livestock on certain acres, but all years he produces more calories of food for humans than a monocrop system under the same conditions.

I don't understand your quote.

I guess you would if you were a farmer. We are discussing this in the context of agriculture after all.

He spends a lot of time discussing "resource input" - the very considerations someone applying fertilizer might have, it's just that the inputs he's talking about are things like "armoring" or "adding legumes to build nitrogen" or other soil remediation to improve the soil. I don't have a time stamp, but wasn't there a list of ten or so things one could direct efforts towards? I think the list was supposed to then tell a farmer what he should plant.

Yes that's pretty spot on. In other words planting and management instead of costly outside chemical or organic inputs either one.

I would be curious to know some of the overall statistics - how much land he has and what it produces, with the assumption that a great deal would be considered unwanted/unprofitable/less than optimal.

Yes the % of land and in what type is in a much shorter preamble to this vid. But all of his land is profitable, even the non-arable land, because he grazes that.[1]

I chuckled when he related the anecdote about selling a steak for $20 a pound to someone grateful to get the meat. Well, duh. If your business is going to rely on those kinds of prices, go ahead and squander your resources.

Oh he was still more profitable than a conventional industrial farmer even before he used the profits from his system to buy his own processing facility. And that was just selling market price wholesale. As far as retail price, he manages a higher retail price simply because of supply and demand. There is almost no supply and there is a huge demand for food produced this way. That will balance out as more farmers convert from a chemical based system to a biological based system. The input costs are still significantly less in a biological based system like what he uses. Remember, he went 20 years simply selling the same way most farmers do, to a wholesaler.

For a more detailed rigorous description of that and a better definition of some of the terminology that seems strange, there is a webinar put out by the USDA. It's pretty dry, but for those who like detailed science and cost analysis it breaks down the principles stated above in the OP. Remember his farm was also a case study farm for the USDA-NRCS NCAT-ATTRA. So an explanation of the data for his farm and the other farms in the case study can be found here: Innovative No-Till: Using Multi-Species Cover Crops to Improve Soil Health The individual case studies are also available in PDF form from the USDA. I can't link those though, you'd have to go to the USDA and download the data yourself. It is free though.

 

[catsmate]

Here is a chance to CRUSH a lot of the woo I have found on this forum.

Everything from the doubters of Organic being science based, to Holistic management being woo, to countless posts claiming we can't feed the world without haber process nitrogen, to AGW not being able to be mitigated simply by sequestering carbon in the soil, to the need of CAFOs to produce our animal products, to the profitability of organic system, nutrient rich food, to the incompatibility of agriculture and wildlife, biomimicry etc......... ALL crushed by a working farmer who dared to actually break all the "rules" of industrial/green revolution agriculture. It's a one hour vid, and don't watch it if you are uncomfortable with a paradigm changing world view.

Merry Christmas!

Sigh. If you want to demonstrate your nonsensical claims are true then use the methods of science, actual research with proper peer-review, repeatable experiments et cetera. Not silly YT videos,.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

Sigh. If you want to demonstrate your nonsensical claims are true then use the methods of science, actual research with proper peer-review, repeatable experiments et cetera. Not silly YT videos,.

See post 10. You can dig as deep as you want. But diving straight in the deep end is kinda difficult to explain to a novice. I have tried now for over a year with very limited success. One has to see the bigger picture first before they can possibly hope to understand the details. If you think you at least understand the basics, try step 2 and see a more detailed explanation in the above post #10. Once you have that understood, try downloading the case study information available from the USDA.

But the main thing I wanted to emphasize with this thread is that agricultural science really means nothing in practical terms unless it can be turned into technology that is usable for the farmer and that works in real world applications. That's the ultimate proof. Real world is a bitch, especially for a farmer. Until we all consider these real world elements the science will never be more than academic and will go nowhere. (I learned that from debating Reality Check) This is a science AND technology forum.

 

[Myriad]

Well, not even a minute in and I'm objecting to the term "healthy soil."

I'll stick with it, but my "loaded rhetoric" alarm is already ringing.

"Healthy soil" is a reasonable enough concept, as long as it's understood that "healthy" is meant not in the same sense as a "healthy" organism (e.g. competitively fit and free of disease), nor in the same sense as a "healthy" food (nutritious and good to eat), but in a sense similar to how one might speak of a healthy ecosystem. Most of the basis of that health is balanced flows. If over time more water is going into your body than goes out, or vice versa, or more or less energy, or more or less iron, or more or less oxygen, you won't be healthy for long. Similar for soil. Healthy soil is a complex ecosystem of metabolically active biota, that tend to maintain conditions that are neither too wet nor too dry, too loose nor too compact, too acidic nor too alkaline, too hot nor too cold, in the face of variations in weather conditions and other immediate inputs. "Healthy" corresponds to complex, diverse, and resilient.

A hydroponic growing medium might be well suited to nourish a particular plant or crop, but cannot be "healthy" in the same sense (nor "unhealthy" either) because it's a designed structure, not an active system.

 

[marplots]

A hydroponic growing medium might be well suited to nourish a particular plant or crop, but cannot be "healthy" in the same sense (nor "unhealthy" either) because it's a designed structure, not an active system.

Are you saying that the healthiest soil for an area would then be whatever happened to be in that area over time? Because I got the impression that "healthy" as they are using it, means a combination of "exploitable," diverse, and "has properties appealing to me."

To look at it another way, would it make sense to say a soil was "sick?" Or that it needed to be cured?

 

[Red Baron Farms]

Are you saying that the healthiest soil for an area would then be whatever happened to be in that area over time? Because I got the impression that "healthy" as they are using it, means a combination of "exploitable," diverse, and "has properties appealing to me."

To look at it another way, would it make sense to say a soil was "sick?" Or that it needed to be cured?

You seem to be stuck on viewing soil health as an abstract virtue instead of a real asset.

It is quite possible to view it in the form of real assets. For example in the vid he talked about quantifiable water holding capacity and the effects that has on yield and profit. Infiltration rate too. IIRC he also put a dollar amount on usable nutrients at 3700 dollars already in the soil and increasing each year, as opposed to needing to pay 750 dollars yearly for those same plant nutrients. There are quantifiable real assets related to the ecosystem services that are provided by healthy soil. That is the meaning of this quote:

"When farmers view soil health not as an abstract virtue, but as a real asset, it revolutionizes the way they farm and radically reduces their dependence on inputs to produce food and fiber."-USDA NRCS East National Technology Support Center

 

[SezMe]

Everything from the doubters of Organic being science based, to Holistic management being woo, to countless posts claiming we can't feed the world without haber process nitrogen, to AGW not being able to be mitigated simply by sequestering carbon in the soil, to the need of CAFOs to produce our animal products, to the profitability of organic system, nutrient rich food, to the incompatibility of agriculture and wildlife, biomimicry etc......... ALL crushed by a working farmer who dared to actually break all the "rules" of industrial/green revolution agriculture.

I infer you had no qualms about overselling your video.

 

[ectoplasm]

I infer you had no qualms about overselling your video.

But he is just CRUSHING the woo on this forum.

 

[fuelair]

The intro:

"No tilling in Organic farming." ... "Oh, OK, just a bit."

This guy really knows his ****.

He has to if he is going to eat his fill of it!!!

 

[John Jones]

Don't you know, with all the problems with pay for play journals, bogus peer review, etc., You Tube is the new Science or Nature

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

 

[Red Baron Farms]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Of course you think it is funny. But I was really hoping for a higher level of skepticism. For example you could challenge the relationship discovered between agricultural practises and the newly discovered glomalin talked about in Gabe's farm. See I could post a educational vid that explains what it all means to the farmer and anyone who eats from agriculture world wide. As I did.

OR I could I could make a chain of posts that start with case studies of farmers like Gabe. [1] Then I could post peer reviewed science from those researchers like this: Aggregate stability and glomalin in alternative crop rotations for the central Great Plains And then of course I could Post about the quality and importance of that research being in the 99% in a ranking system that has no 100% [2] And then of course to show it's importance I could list those 76 citing and the many 100's of those further cited in even more new research in a huge chain of raw new knowledge. And after all that time you spent making a career out of one tiny thing like glomalin, you still wouldn't have the basic hands on real practical knowledge to put all that science to work in the field and actually grow food, the most fundamental requirement of all civilisation. We haven't even started talking humus yet. Or the new Haney soil test, or countless other factors. I have been trying that for about a year with limited results.

So I gave you the holistic context first, no reason to make a joke about it. In the USA we have about ~60 years +/- to solve this problem before it destroys our civilization.[3][4] This is not something to laugh about.

So what do you think? Woo? Or you just don't like me starting where it all began, innovative farmers like Gabe Brown who dared to try and improve a fail agricultural model that absolutely will take civilisation with it unless fixed? AND were confident enough to challenge the scientists to come to their farms and prove it.