Sorry, I'm no a rancher. The above is a quote from
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
p. 126
I see where he goes from pounds of beef to rabbits and turkeys, so he may be talking weight before slaughter and not weight of meat (maybe). Then you need to remember that the steers are eating the cellulose in the grass, and the chickens are eating bugs from the grass and the bovine poop, so they are each taking a separate slice of the pasture. For more information go to
If you got to and click on "Principles" there are 3 videos to watch. In the first video "Mimic Nature", Daniel Salatin mentions that the turkeys get 20% of their feed from the pasture, so it isn't a closed system.
Today on "Democracy Now" there are 2 reports on food production. One is on egg production and the other is on meat production. They both fit nicely into the discussion that we we having on the quality of food. They don't talk about increasing supply, but rather about maintaining quality.
Since the food supply has become so integrated, just on supplier can screw up the system for many others. It's like the dog food scandal, where one supplier provided the cheapest source of protein powder, which turned out to be adulterated with melamine and cyanuric acid to give the appearance of higher levels of protein.
I purchased a new toy called an iPad from apple computer. I put the phrase "Using an iPad" for my self to know which machine I was posting from. I forgot that my main computer setup puts a flower pot in the upper corner. I will remove the added catch phase because I doubt I will use the main computer for Internet use much longer in favor of the the new iPad, which is also a book reader also.
The quote is accurate. It is misleading though as Pollan points out later (p222) Salatin does not claim this level of productivity because there is
450ac of woods as well as the 100ac of pasture. The woods make a sizeable contribution to the farm, it produces much pig feed and biomass that is used for a variety of purposes and assists in other ways. So to be more accurate the above production is from 550ac.
I would be interested to know what can be done by conventional means. The comparison would be very difficult to make fair I think because the conventional system uses many external inputs and would have trouble matching that diversity of outputs. I suspect that just measured in calories per acre the intensive monoculture might win. The whole point of this is that you can only do that for a limited amount of time with many inputs and many unwanted side effects. Not to mention that man does not live by bread (or high fructose corn syrup) alone.
David, I'm surprised you didn't resp**That's equal to present gross US atmospheric releases**, not counting the net reduction from the carbon sinks of existing forests and soils ... Without expanding farm acreage or remov- ing any existing forests, and even before undertaking changes in consumer lifestyle, reduction in traffic, and increases in industrial and transport fuel efficiencies, which arc absolutely imperative, the US could become a net carbon sink by chang- ing cultivating practices and marketing on a million farms. In fact, we could create 5 million new jobs in farming if the land were used as efficiently as the Salatins use theirs.4
The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability by Lierre Keith
p. 250
With the Salatin paradigm, the US could sequester its CO2 emissions, grow healthy meat on permanent pasture, and create 5 million new jobs. It's good not just for your inner environment but your outter environment as well.
This statement bothers me because it allows one to think that the quoted rate of sequestration can go on indefinitely.. Every land use will reach a different equilibrium in the amount of carbon that it can store. Forest stores more per acre than pasture which stores more than row crops according to my local agronomist. So it makes sense to say X amount is sequestered per year at a point in time while the biomass is growing. So if you convert an acre of row crop to forest it sequesters a given amount per year which slows to zero as it reaches its maximum storage when the forest matures. After that there is no net sequestration.
I would need to know just what this bloke is talking about before commenting further.
I cannot read this site, I get a whole lot of blank rectangles, garbled text and IE complaining a script is taking too many resources.
So who is Peter Bane? What are his qualifications? Where can we see his calculations and more importantly his assumptions?
This may or may not be so. The whole issue of carbon sequestration has been greatly politicised and scrambled. I need to see all the details to have a view of whether this is reasonable. Of course carbon sequestration is but one aspect of any proposed change to land use and agricultural methods.
Well, in this case, it would be prairie grass (reflecting Salatin's pasture), creating, hypothetically, one inch of topsoil per year. That's the goal. The tree maxi-es out. The grass maxi-es out, BUT the topsoil keeps on growing (sequestration), one inch per year.
If the guy is full of pucky, I'm listening, but it makes sense. The only question is where to put the decimal.
Fascinating stuff Billy - lots of clips on You-tube where they explain how they do it. The one of killing and processing the chooks was particulalry interesting and impressive. They killed, dressed and prepared 417 birds in two hours.
Fair comment David, but then there is a much higher cost to the quality of life for the animals? I'm sure that you, like me, have seen intensive operations such a feed lots and caged chooks.
I grew up on a poultry farm and my mother refused to have any cages on the place with the exception of a row of 10 where she used to put birds that were off colour and needed to be taken away from the bullying tactics of the rest of the flock. In the 50s and 60s when other poultry farmers were moving to cages and proud of it, we were free ranging. We once had a city person come back to us and complain about the eggs they bought off us. According to them, the eggs were 'off' and had to be thrown out because they had 'very yellow yolks'.
What sort of species are you talking about when you say 'prairie grass'? The reason why I ask is that the You-tube clips of Salatin's place doesn't look like anything I'd call a 'prairie'. He looks like he's got a farm on quite rich land in a well protected area. 'Prairies' to me suggest very open and exposed locations and the grasses there would, TMWOT, be much tougher and less nutritious than in good pasture land. I might be talking through my hat 'cos I haven't got a clue about US farms, but that's what I'd expect here in Oz if we were looking at farms of differing capacities.
That was one of the side effects I had in mind. We have chook sheds for meat birds in the district. Ten thousand or twenty in a shed with a dirt floor with just enough room to move between the feed and the water. Lights on half the night to get them to eat more. The workers wear breathing apparatus to clean out the sheds and it will make you puke at 400m on a hot night. The eagles dine well on those who get trodden under. Nuff said.
In those days it meant the chooks had a varied diet not just pellet chook food. A question that you would know, is the yellow yolk still such an indicator or is it emulated these days by diet additives?
OK, you got me walkin' on thin ice here. Having escaped the housing tracts of southern California, I'm long on book learnin' and short on experience, BUT the proposition was to create a carbon sink. Quoting from "The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability" by Lierre Keith
"Salat That's equal to present gross US atmospheric releases, not counting the net reduction from the carbon sinks of existing forests and soils ... Without expanding farm acreage or remov- ing any existing forests, and even before undertaking changes in consumer lifestyle, reduction in traffic, and increases in industrial and transport fuel efficiencies, which arc absolutely imperative, the US could become a net carbon sink by chang- ing cultivating practices and marketing on a million farms. In fact, we could create 5 million new jobs in farming if the land were used as efficiently as the Salatins use theirs."6
So were not talking about using the same pasturage (grasses), but using the same practices, i.e. chooks following steers into the pastures.
Prairie grasses (grasses that supported the buffalo in the American midwest) created rich topsoil that was exploited (and consumed) by Europeans with ploughs.
See for a quick overview of prairies, and
for grasses.
Switching from the idyllic setting of Salatin's farm to American "factory farming", we find that feed is a huge issue.
DAVID KIRBY: We worry about what we eat, but we also need to worry about what we eat eats. And the quality of feed can be highly compromised in these factories, where the drive to lower costs and prices is so great, and the temptation to cut corners is there, and this is the result. And we have to remember that factory farming has produced not only salmonella, but also E. coli, also mad cow disease, also swine flu, I believe, and MRSA, the drug-resistant staph infection that now kills more Americans than AIDS.
AMY GOODMAN: You say, "Swine flu. Bird flu. Unusual concentrations of cancer and other diseases. Massive fish kills from flesh-eating parasites. Recalls of meats, vegetables, and fruits because of deadly E-coli bacterial contamination." All as a result of animal factories, as you put them.
DAVID KIRBY: Correct. Now, those diseases could conceivably emerge in any farm, even the smallest, most sustainable farm, but they¹re far more likely to emerge in these large industrial factories. And again, the scale is so much larger that when you have an outbreak, you have this massive problem that¹s going to cost millions and millions of dollars, just in terms of the lost eggs and productivity.
And just to mention the workshops that you were mentioning earlier with the federal government, the Obama administration has vowed to try to even the playing field a little bit more, so that we have greater access to smaller, independently raised farms. And one way, I think, to do that is to address the subsidy issue. This farm got very cheap grain from a farmer who got millions, perhaps, of dollars in our money to lower the price of that feed. If DeCoster (one of the 2 egg companies involved in the present egg recall) didn¹t have access to that cheap feed, he wouldn¹t be able to operate in this way, and that would provide greater access to the market for smaller producers.
AMY GOODMAN: And explain the significance of feed and what¹s in it.
DAVID KIRBY: Well, feed is a huge issue. And for example, with the chickens that we eat, so-called broiler chickens, they often add arsenic into that feed to make the birds grow faster and to prevent intestinal diseases. Another thing we do in this country?
AMY GOODMAN: Arsenic?
DAVID KIRBY: Arsenic, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Isn¹t that poison?
DAVID KIRBY: It is poison. Yes, it is poison.
AMY GOODMAN: And how does it affect humans? I mean, the chickens eat the arsenic. Why do they grow faster?
DAVID KIRBY: They don¹t know. No one knows. The theory is that when you poison a chicken, it gets sick, so it eats and drinks more, consumes more, to try to get the poison out of its body. That makes a chicken grow faster, and it prevents intestinal parasites. The risk to humans, there have been studies done, and they have found residue of arsenic in some chickens. The real threat is in the litter that comes out the other end of the chicken. When that gets spread on farmland, people breathe in that arsenic dust. And there¹s a town in Arkansas where cancer rates are just through the roof. There¹s been over twenty pediatric cases in this tiny town of Prairie Grove with just a couple of thousand people.
AMY GOODMAN: Let¹s go to Arkansas. Don¹t?let¹s not shortcut this, because you have a very interesting book, where you look at families in several different communities. Arkansas?describe what are the animal factories that are there and what happens to the people in the community.
DAVID KIRBY: Most of them are so-called broiler operations. Tyson chicken is from Arkansas. The big operators, they¹re in northwestern Arkansas. It¹s just?it¹s chicken country. And with consolidation, you¹ve had the rise of these very large factory farms. And again, up until recently, Tyson was using this arsenic product in its feed, and the other companies were, as well. And around this little town of Prairie Grove, as an example, this stuff is dry spread?the litter is dry spread on the cropland. And where the school was?
AMY GOODMAN: You mean the chicken manure.
DAVID KIRBY: The chicken manure. And the dust has been found in the air filters of homes and schools in this town, and it¹s been found with arsenic that has been traced back to the feed in the chicken. Something else we feed chickens that people don¹t realize is beef products. And when those chickens eat that beef product, some of it falls into their litter. Well, we produce so much chicken litter in this country, because of these factory farms, and it is so rich in phosphorus and nitrogen, its land application uses are limited. So you have surplus chicken litter and nothing to do with it. What do they do with it? They feed it to cattle. So we feed beef cows chicken crap. That chicken litter often contains bits and byproducts of cattle. So we are actually feeding cattle to cattle, which is a risk factor for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, better known as mad cow disease. We actually feed cattle products to cattle in three different ways: chicken litter, restaurant scraps, and blood products on dairy farms. And all the mad cow cases in this country came from mega-dairies where, when that calf is born, they remove it from its mother immediately, because that mother¹s milk is a commodity, it¹s worth money, so instead they feed that calf a formula that includes bovine blood products, and again increasing the risk of mad cow disease. "
The conversation winds on through beef, and pork production, to contamination of wild fish.
A quick aside to David, when you consider inputs to monocultures you have to figure in the expense of the fossil fuels (exploration, production, delivery, pollution), and the greater reliance on pesticides that comes from growing the same crop, in the same place, year after year. There is a reason why gardeners are supposed to rotate crops. "IF" monocultures are more productive in terms of calories, you still need to subtract the calories lost in marine life due to the "dead zones" at the mouths of the big rivers, such as the Mississippi, where the dead zone is the size of the state of New Jersey.
sorry, slow dialup, i don't watch video or youtube here...
yea, i read something the other day in the WSJ about eggs being recalled and new rules (FDA i think) that just went into effect. we'll see if they actually help. two producers and hundreds of millions of eggs.
what ever happened to monopoly enforcement?
that was outright fraud. which is a moral and ethical issue apart from sustainable agricultural practices. i didn't follow up what happened back in China but i think there were comments about, "facing possible execution."
Indeed. I've been to a feed lot and I had the same reaction although this was probably one of the better run ones. I'd turn vegetarian if our local buthcer sourced his meat at places like that but I can see his 'feed lot' (for want of a better description as it's jsut his farm) from the road and his cattle have quite a nice spot for the final finish on feed before they take the trip to the abattoir. (sp?)
That is one of those 'it depends' answers as in, it depends ont he feed.
If you feed them on kitchen scraps (not recommended as that isn't nutritious enough) then free ranging (as opposed to keeping confined) will change the colour of the yolk. Pellets contain a yellowing agent, but apparently that yellow isn't carried through so that in baked goods show up the yellowing. Yolks that are yellow as a result of the feed they find outside does hang on through the baking process so that the baked goods (like say a butter cake) will appear more yellow. I've not done these tests myself but there was a long article on it (with comparative pics) in one of the 'Australasian Poultry' mags a couple of years ago. A great little magazine and as cheap as chips.
Hmmmm. I havent' a clue about the territory you're talking about however, a one size fits all approach often doesn't work in different areas. Often the same approach wont' work withing just a few kms. I think I'll have to get the book and read it.
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