Sustainable Farming

I have ground and mixed feed for 60 cows for the last four years with a 37 uc with rear steel. Can operate all controls from the ground without climbing in and out of a cab. Has always started on 3 or 4 pull without being plugged in like newer tractors. Have not bought tires, battery. starter or ect. Usually takes about 40 to 50 gal fuel per year, stays hooked up except to go to local show to pull threasher. These old tractors still have their places on the  farm you just have to find it.

Chalmersbob wrote: I just read an ad for a "green Machine " that burns 11 gallons of desiel and hour. I can run for hours with the D-15 on half that amount. Bob

Natural gas is mostly methane. The demand for natural gas has been rising rapidly because it burns fairly clean and is used for power plants as well as for home and industrial heating. Its a pain to compress it to liquid to get a decent range from a vehicle though there is much NG compressed to liquid and shipped by tanker from Australia to China.

Methane can be created by decomposing crop residue mixed with manure and is. It takes a large scale facility to make it totally practical (e.g. cheaper than buying fuel), and is being done on some of the larger diary farms. Its also a product of covered land fills, again it takes larger scale to make it useful but some landfills in the Chicago area have been collecting methane for years and using it to run engines turning generators to produce the power needed to process garbage into the land fill and to have a little left over to sell.

Remember organic farming was defined by Robert Rodale, without benefit of input from science, regulators, or engineers. The principles of organic farming ignore the facts that things coming from the ground (like directly mined phosphate rock) require acids or acidic soil to show a crop benefit and the factory acid processing is quite effective at cleaning out things like heavy metals that are not a benefit when added to the soil.

There is much use of manure anywhere there are confinement facilities for turkeys, chickens, pigs, and cattle. I can see piles of composted turkey manure around here in the spring and see the honey wagons delivering hog manure liquid spring and fall. There is some compaction in the fields from those 125,000 pound tractor and honey wagon assemblies and there is much more water than nutrient.

There is much discussion over on New AG Talk (the best farm page) about cover crops, strip till, and no till all of which save on fuel use and often lead to better crop production on any scale. One of the participants, Steve Groff, is known around the world for use of cover crops.

Commercial agriculture is not static, it is changing all the time driven by demands (its demand and some speculation that is driving high commodity prices this year), and high input costs. No farmer that I know is blindly doing the same as last year because the costs of seed, herbicides, insecticides, fuel, and fertilizer are going up like crop prices, sometimes much faster than crop prices. And no one sells the whole crop at the highest price we spread out those sales because the only way to know a peak has occurred is after the fall from that peak. I have 3/4 my anticipated 2011 crop sold, for a peak price of $6.10 for corn but an average price of 5.10. I'll make out fine.

There has been a discussion on New AG Talk about sustainability but the first step has not been resolved, that of defining what sustainability is. Then events like spring floods come along and destroy big chunks of needed prime farm land (as well as urban sprawl) making it harder to keep up the total crop production the world wants.

In the past, solutions for overpopulation of territories have been major wars, with the most overpopulated countries attacking their neighbors to get control of more land. Its been a longer period of major war since WW2 than ever before in history. Maybe its because of the devistation that could be caused by a nuclear blast that keeps those desiring more land in check, maybe its the relative prosperity much of the world is enjoying even with the recent market collapses.

If wars don't cut population growth, and population growth overtakes technology for better crops and overruns crop lands, then starvation can control population growth.

I'm not so sure the under developed lands of Africa are rich, I suspect they have been farmed over the millenia without putting back fertilizer until they need a couple tons of N, P, and K per acre to grow significant crops yet the politicians are rejecting outside knowledge, finances, and materials (like fertilizer and modern seed). To say nothing of the need for organic material in the soil.

Gerald J.

wow a nonsensical statement that lacks any sort of fact, reference or bearing on anything.
Thanks for adding.
Jonathan
Ps I do agree with you on horses... :)

Jonathan-  I don't think Gerald was saying that one couldn't preserve summertime harvest for wintertime consumption-  My ancestory founded a town a hundred miles northwest of Gerald, and survived just fine doing the same sort of canning and preservation I do, and I'm sure Gerald does it too.

I think what he's saying, is that it's asking a bit too much to expect sensible production capacity of cash crops from land that's frozen down 48".  My greenhouse can grow quite a bit, but some things just won't produce well when the seasonal extremes (sunlight hours included here) are that far out.  There's good reason why the California farms, even with miserable produce taste, are still profitable... because tasteless sliced tomatoes are better than no sliced tomatoes.

But I'll echo the request for clarification on the definition of 'sustainable'.  The term is so vaguely applied to many things, that the definition needs not only to be drawn out, but also identified as to where, how, and to what extent, 'unsustainable' is occuring.  Clearly,  the California gardens are a good example of how incredibly beaten soil can continue to 'produce'... and they just keep doing it... much to the detriment of taste and nutrient level, as well as drawing down the Colorado River.  Seems to me, the whole reference to 'unsustainable' comes from people who focus on one part of the world, and little, if any, of the rest.

If a purist formula for 'sustainable' is necessary, I can hack it down to a very simple level:  ALL the energy that the earth has... regardless of it's form, is the result of solar radiation.  To be purely 'sustainable', one must establish a DAILY budget based on the maximum amount of SOLAR ENERGY that they can 'capture' PER DAY.  Anything beyond that, by definition, would be 'unsustainable'.  I think that's a bit extreme, but SOMEBODY has to play the Devil's Advocate here.

I agree that Sustainable as a term means different things to different people, as opposed to Organic.  The fascinating thing to me about farming is how deeply complex an operation it really is.  Around us, too many farm the same way I saw growing up as a kid, which is essentially to sterlize the soil and rely almost totally on synthetic fertilizer and herbicides for production.  On the hilly land upstate here, that production method can be a disaster in terms of erosion.  Also, costs are totally dependent on the costs of petroleum and the profits of the large agro companies supplying the input materials.  The result is a loss of independence, both individually as a farmer and nationally.  It is sustainable only as long as the world has cheap petroleum or other energy sources, and the soil isn't totally washed away. 

My eyes have been opened over the past 10 years or so as I have read all the books I could find, and finally start to understand how soils and plants truly work, as an incredibly complex living synergism between fungi, bacteria and the the plants.  To me, understanding how that natural system works would allow me to harness that energy to build a farm that would continue to thrive despite the price of oil.  Granted, operating the farm machinery requires oil - which eventually we should be able to provide using biomass and perhaps direct solar conversion to liquid fuels - but the real energy hogs on a farm are not the tractors, but the synthetic fertilizers and chemicals.  So sustainable to me at least, means trying to better understand the natural systems, so that I can reduce energy inputs from off the farm, and improve the soil health and reduce erosion, such that I could imagine the farm becoming more productive and independent each generation, rather than less.  It doesn't have to mean a purist definition of Organic, but it does mean bending the curve away from Monsanto and Sysco, and more towards understanding and harnessing the natural systems on the farm.  For me at least, Sustainability is almost synonymous with Independence.    

Our beloved Allis tractors and equipment relate to this thread, as really well-designed equipment, that can be restored and continue to provide the same service as their original design, almost indefinitely with proper care.  They represent recognizing excellent design and build and utilizing it, rather than throwing something away just because newer, more expensive technology is out there. 

I see a lot of news and talk on organic production.  If we can work it out so the Billions that live in NY and Chicago and LA and many others can have stored organic foods year round then it might work.  Of course the manure needed will have to come from organic livestock farms or we may not have the manure since we will no longer be eating meat (what many want us to do).  That would take another total cultural change.  I have a daughter in Seattle and went with her to the open market (very Large) and saw only one organic produce booth.  Not a pretty sight compared to the others.  I know they are not all that way but it turned us off at least that day.  There is a lot to work out before this is the only way we farm.  It's a lot easier to  at at the local level than world wide.  Good luck !! (and  I mean that seriously)