>> I hadn't even considered that I was depleting the soil >>doing this. I guess that I struggle with that concept. Isn't this really >>how nature's system works and nutrients get recycled? > >Michelle - In nature's system the animal's carcass and all the >nutrients stockpiled therein also eventually gets deposited in the >field, but, here in real-life, I bet you ship yours off to Kansas >City by the ton. > >Although this is the major argument why grassfed is not truly >sustainable, aren't a lot of nutrients also coming from the >atmosphere so that it is possible recycle manure while harvesting >meat and still be break-even on the nutrient scale(s)? > >-Allan
Dear Michelle, To graze or not? While it is true enough that reincorporating cover crops adds back more organic matter than grazing, it does not do so much for increasing digestive factors. I can't think of anything that improves these like cows. One of the biggest questions is where do we stand with the biology of our soil? In large part I guess I'm talking about our symbiotic micro-organisms. I just came back from Oklahoma, so my truck is covered with dust--they-re losing it out there the way you lose it up in Nebraska. But farmers with a good wheat planting that they are now grazing are not the ones losing it. It's the folks using anhydrous. I tasted the wheat on one quarter that was organic, planted with compost tea as the only input/and across the road in the next quarter planted at the same time with anhydrous. Which looked the best? The tea, of course. Which tasted the best? Well, the one planted with tea was nearly twice as hard to chew to juice, so the sugars and other factors weren't as quick to flood the mouth. But the tea was clearly sweeter and richer, while the anhydrous was watery. If I was a cow I KNOW which one I'd have eaten. But the point is you, in the sand hills, cannot afford to lose dust, or anything else that blows. You could have a wind farm, for heaven's sake. With your broadcasters, as Mark says, you should have no trouble with cow dung getting back into the soil. A cover on the soil is your highest priority. If it's green, all the better, as green vegetation takes carbon dioxide out of the air and pumps it into the soil as sugars. THAT builds soil organic matter as micro-organisms, which are about the most important form of organic matter in the soil. They also are the most vulnerable to drying out and blowing away if you cultivate the crop in. What you might consider is mixing in some companions in your cover crops so you have higher density and diversity of vegetation when you graze. And compost tea, so far, is one of the best fertility input I've seen. You not only put a very light dose of nutrients out there, but more importantly, you put out high populations of symbiotic bacteria and fungi. If you do this when you plant and keep nitrogen and phosphate inputs low as possible you should see things take off and the nitrogen fixation occur around the roots like you want. And compost tea got a lot simpler to make once we realized all you have to pump is air, not liquid. A small compressor can be rigged up to aerate and circulate a very large tank. Convention wisdom is you put on the nitrogen and phosphorus for the crop. Well, if you do that as soluble N and P you will kill the azotobacters and mycorrhyzae at planting time and you will HAVE to put on enough N and P for the whole crop. But if you put on a light starter dose of N and P as compost tea with all the azotobacters and mycorrhyzae alive and kicking you will unlock sequestered P as the mycorrhyzae access the Ca and Mg, and you will fix all the nitrogen you need. And as a foliar, I suspect compost tea does something we haven't been looking at. It give the foliage a charge with all the major and minor nutrients and they aren't loathe to pump their sap back down to the roots of an evening like they generally are when they have some nutrient defeciency. This gets the soil food web going in high gear and the nutrients come back in greater abundance. But compost tea primes the pump. And considering that it would be a good idea to add a little homeopathic horn clay to the compost tea, as that will REALLY get the pumping going. With that in mind I wonder the merits of interplanting something like sorghum/sudan with cowpeas for summer graze cover crop, or rye, vetch and turnip for winter. I forget now what you were planting for cover that you graze, but my idea here is diversity will help plug the gaps in your system. Best, Hugh Visit our website at: www.unionag.org
