RE: Re: [biofuel] $7.5 Million Feedstock Subsidy for SSPC
Harmon If I could get out of the taxes this would generate, I would have done that a long time ago. Just a dream now. Remember that vicious circle I wrote about. Their is more than one, not only have to keep getting bigger, but the bigger I get the more it will cost to quit. Good idea though, I really like it George Harmon Seaver [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Wait, George, don't sell that land, I've got a better idea. Take maybe 250 acres of it and go to a diversified organic farm, as I said. Take the other 750 and plant it all to switchgrass, big and little bluestem, side-oats gamma, compass plant and prairie dock, coneflower, and all the other prairie plants native to your area. Then sell all that big equipment you won't need anymore, and stock that 750 acres with buffalo and prairie chickens. Set up your own little packing plant (powered by wind) and have sportsman come hunt-for-pay the buffalo and prairie chickens, you butcher and wrap and freeze for them. You'll get rich. Or at least have a fairly comfortable life, eventually you'll convert another 200 acres to prairie, and organic truck farm the last 40 or so to sell organic veggies and herbs to go with that organic buffalo and prairie chicken. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com -- __ Your favorite stores, helpful shopping tools and great gift ideas. Experience the convenience of buying online with [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://shopnow.netscape.com/ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape Mail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com/ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- FREE COLLEGE MONEY CLICK HERE to search 600,000 scholarships! http://us.click.yahoo.com/iZp8OC/4m7CAA/ySSFAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Please do NOT send unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
RE: Re: [biofuel] $7.5 Million Feedstock Subsidy for SSPC
Hello Keith I don't disagree as much as you would think. This is definitly on topic because agriculture will power the green revolution. Biofuels are our future and I hope your right about organic farming being their as well. I have one very big problem with small organic farms feeding the world. How will they acquire the land. Government take over by the people maybe. This is a free country and land is very high priced. And no, I am not a Freeman. As for large farms they are suited to large scale production. I can argue the point both ways on efficiently. Which is better, a large farm that produces a lot at a lower cost or a small farm that produces a lower volume but at a higher quality. This could be argued for years. I can't quote any studies. I can't talk about anywhere except here in KS. The people that try to do it here are not competitive with the conventionals. Anywhere but here could be different. So once again I hope your right. I do not believe conventional farming is on the right track. I don't know if organic will work and if it works can it produce enough to feed the world. Conventional agriculture could easily bury the world in grain if the government would turn us loose. But then all the farmers this year would be gone and who would do it next year. I do know their are lots of hungry people in the world and here I am setting on a large pile of corn and a pathetic low price. Their hungry and the American farmer is broke. Don't that make one hell of a pair. The reason everybody plants one crops is money. You plant what will make the most money and hope to survive. Right now that is corn. The only reason I plant wheat is so I can plant corn on the stubble next year. The only reason I plant soybeans is so I can rotate my crops to reduce my input costs. I hope everybody can see that this is not simple. Their is no quick fixes and we will always have problems. As the world population grows I can't help but feel that our problems will grow as well or be replaced by other problems. We have the ability to grow the food, conventional or organic but we need a better way to distribute it to the poorer countries. Something where they can afford to buy and the farmer can afford to sell. My Regards George Keith Addison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi George Before some list-cop starts yelling Off-topic, I believe it's on-topic enough. Is this a way to dispense with all the huge petroleum inputs in food and ag commodity production in the US (and other industrialised countries) that Dana's just been talking about, and that skew the energy equations of biofuels like biodiesel and ethanol? Short answer - Yes. You're not really talking about organic farming, you're talking about input substitution - chemical farming without the chemicals - and it's usually doomed to failure. Organics is a management system, and proactive, not just a matter of a different set of inputs to achieve the same reactive aims. It looks upstream to determine why the problem exists in the first place and then determines how the system should be managed to avoid having the problem at all. Most organic farmers in the US don't use any pesticides at all, whether approved organic ones or not - they don't need them. They don't use fertilisers either, to feed the crop, and they're not too interested in nutrients. They're interested in humus-maintenance, in building and maintaining very high levels of soil fertility, and in integration. It's an integrated system, not just an extractive one - organic in this sense doesn't really refer to the source of the inputs (whatever the standards might say), it refers to a system characterised by the coordination of the integral parts; organised. It's a different approach, not just a stepping over to business-as-usual with different ingredients. To borrow a couple of useful terms from another organic farmer, your comparisons are with organic by neglect farms - low-input low-output - rather than organic by design farms - low-input high-output. Many organic farmers equal or better their conventional neighbours' yields. There are many large organic farms that do indeed run at a healthy enough profit - but no, they tend not to grow a thousand acres in a monocrop. But I tend to agree that very large farms aren't suited to organic management. I'm not quite sure what they are suited to. Small family and part-time farms are at least as efficient as larger commercial operations. There is evidence of diseconomies of scale as farm size increases. -- Are Large Farms More Efficient? Professor Willis L. Peterson, University of Minnesota, 1997. Re your statement that organic farming cannot feed the world, there's now a lot of considered, studied, expert opinion and evidence that not only can it do just that, but it's going to have to. This isn't just a bunch of dewy-eyed idealists talking, these are scientific studies from
RE: Re: [biofuel] $7.5 Million Feedstock Subsidy for SSPC
Harmon I have always believed that studies show the politics of the payee. In my world anyways, small farmers are at a very large disadvange. Many years ago I was a dairy farmer. I started out with 20 cows. Went good for a few years, then had to buy 10 more cows, then 10 more and then 10 more. Finally said the hell with it when Reagon got to be president and sold them all. Your study was done by someone who was paid to do it. Small farmers are selling out by droves now. They simply can't do it with the prices and costs the way they are. All the studies in the world won't save all the guys in the High Plains Journal who are advertizing their farm sales. I have read them as well, I just know better from experience of living it. Regards George Harmon Seaver [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Seems like there was a post here just awhile back on a study done which showed big farms (and they weren't talking about organic) just weren't able to make it as well as smaller farms, and IIRC, it was around the 200 acre point where things started going down. So sell some land, buy some cows and pigs and chickens and diversify, get rid of the chemicals and giant (ultra-expensive) machinery. You'll make just as much money, live longer, and be happier. Don't sell the corn, feed it to the pigs, or make ethanol, or -- whatever. It's a ridiculous idea to farm corn when corn is the cheapest heating fuel on the market. Sorry, George, I just don't have much sympathy for the American farmer, for the most part. I think if we can get the gov't to stop all the crop subsidies and other forms of corporate welfare, the organic/chemical arguement would end pretty quickly. Farmers have been conned, swindled, bamboozled, by the banks, the chemical companies, ag agents, and ag schools (who all work for chemical companies essentially). Hey, I saw the same thing happening in the logging industry -- guys got conned into buying all that new fancy equipment then lost their shirt when NAFTA came along. The banker tried to talk me into it -- I didn't even ask for a loan, he approached me. I just kept logging with my old crawler, and when the crunch came I just sold it all and went back to school. I really like the way the Amish do it -- no debt. And they definitely do make money, pay cash for their farms. On Thu, Feb 28, 2002 at 04:50:56PM -0600, George Lola Wesel wrote: I would say that is a very fair question. If it was possible I would. I know several organic farmer and they don't laugh all the way to the bank. That is just an image they would like everybody to believe. In order to reach the production goals required by today financial needs, organic don't cut it. Not even close. Zero Input Sustainable Agriculture (name used by the US government) is just a dream of the extreme left wing enviromentalist. Looks good, sounds good but not feastable. You need to draw a clear line between those that do organic farming with an acre or so and those who farm on the x,000 acres plus. To grow a couple of hundred corn plants on 1/2 acre and then petal the roasting ears to people who you meet on the street is probably very profitable but your going to need a job on the side. With a 27,000 population per acre and 1000 acres of corn that's 27,000,000 roasting ears. This is but one big problem. The places that broker organic food are not capable of handling large volume. The market just isn't their yet. Do you have a clue how much manure it takes to equal 250 pounds of NH3. The average amount of nirtrogen put on an acre of irrigated corn here in KS. Or how many cows it would take to produce enough manure to fertilize 1000 acres of irrigated corn. The reason I say irrigated is that dryland corn here in KS is a iffy crop at best. This doesn't even touch on the labor required to load, haul, and spread the manure or the costs involved. To use manure would not only be labor intensely, but terribly costly as well. I would lose my butt big time to use all manure. They say rotate your crops. Yes, alfalfa does put a little nitrogen into the soil. But not nearly enough to grow 200 bu per acre corn. I do rotate my crops, especially my dryland crops but I do rotate my irrigated as well. To keep the chemical costs to a minmium. On a very small farm, an acre or so, organic is the only way to go. Their are organic farms up to 100 acres or so. But their not profitable, just diehard, stubborn Gonna do it organic types. They would do it even if they were starving. If I can't produce in the 175 and up range then I won't be here next year. Someone else will be farming my farm and he won't be organic. For chemicals their is no organic replacement. They simplely let the bugs chow down. Diease is uncontrollable except by rotation. In bad years like we had last year they don't raise a crop. If organic was suddenly required by all governments
RE: Re: [biofuel] $7.5 Million Feedstock Subsidy for SSPC
Hello again George Hello Keith I don't disagree as much as you would think. Oh, good, that makes a change! - I'm kind of used to being disagreed with about this. But I know what I'm saying, I've studied it very widely for a long time, not at all just on paper, I've done it myself in several different places, and I'll do it again. I came to this long ago through Third World rural development work - to me, organics is THE appropriate technology for rural development. The more I learn, the more convinced I am of that. This is definitly on topic because agriculture will power the green revolution. Biofuels are our future and I hope your right about organic farming being their as well. Agreed. Starting to get response at SANET to your last letter. Dunno whether to post it on to you or to cross-post it here. Hmm... I'll post some references below and cross-post from SANET in next. For now. I have one very big problem with small organic farms feeding the world. How will they acquire the land. Government take over by the people maybe. This is a free country and land is very high priced. And no, I am not a Freeman. See especially the University of Essex references below. As for large farms they are suited to large scale production. I can argue the point both ways on efficiently. Which is better, a large farm that produces a lot at a lower cost or a small farm that produces a lower volume but at a higher quality. This could be argued for years. I can't quote any studies. I can't talk about anywhere except here in KS. The people that try to do it here are not competitive with the conventionals. Anywhere but here could be different. So once again I hope your right. In Thailand, farms of two to four acres produce 60% more rice per acre than bigger farms. In Taiwan net income per acre of farms of less than 1.25 acres is nearly double that of farms over five acres. In Latin America, small farms are three to 14 times more productive per acre than the large farms. In Brazil, the productivity of a farm of up to 25 acres was measured at $34 per acre, while the productivity of 1200-acre farms was only $0.81 per acre. In India, farms of up to 5 acres had a productivity of 735 rupees per acre, while on 30-acre farms productivity levels were about half of that. Across the Third World, small farms are 2-10 times more productive per acre than larger farms. In the US, farms smaller than 27 acres have more than 10 times the dollar-per-acre output of larger farms. See also: The Multiple Functions and Benefits of Small Farm Agriculture By Peter M. Rosset, Ph.D. http://www.foodfirst.org/pubs/policybs/pb4.html The Case for Small Farms - An Interview with Peter Rosset http://www.essential.org/monitor/mm2000/00july-aug/interview.html Many studies have shown that industrialized factory farms do not outyield organic farms. One 15-year study found that organic farming is not only kinder to the environment than conventional, intensive agriculture but has comparable yields of both products and profits. The study showed that yields of organic maize are identical to yields of maize grown with fertilisers and pesticides, while soil quality in the organic fields dramatically improves. (Drinkwater, L.E., Wagoner, P. Sarrantonio, M. Legume-based cropping systems have reduced carbon and nitrogen losses. Nature 396, 262-265.) A Rodale study found that organic farm yields equal factory farm yields after four years using organic techniques. In the USA, for example, the top quarter sustainable agriculture farmers now have higher yields than conventional farmers, as well as a much lower negative impact on the environment, says Jules Pretty, Director of the Centre for Environment and Society at the University of Essex, Feeding the world?, SPLICE, August/September 1998, Volume 4 Issue 6. http://members.tripod.com/~ngin/article2.htm I do not believe conventional farming is on the right track. I don't know if organic will work and if it works can it produce enough to feed the world. The truth, so effectively suppressed that it is now almost impossible to believe, is that organic farming is the key to feeding the world. -- The Guardian, August 24, 2000 http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4054683,00.html Organic farming can 'feed the world' -- BBC Science, September 14, 1999 http://www.purefood.org/Organic/orgfeedworld.cfm The Greener Revolution, New Scientist, 3 February 2001 -- It sounds like an environmentalist's dream. Low-tech sustainable agriculture, shunning chemicals in favour of natural pest control and fertiliser, is pushing up crop yields on poor farms across the world, often by 70 per cent or more. A new science-based revolution is gaining strength built on real research into what works best on the small farms where a billion or more of the world's hungry live and work. For some, talk of sustainable agriculture sounds like a luxury the poor
