106 Comments
тна Return to thread
Comment deleted
Jul 22
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

Simply price it at what it truly cost. All conventional agrabusiness commodity producers are completely based on fossil fuels from the diesel to the chemicals to the fertilizer. All killing the soil and complex lifeforms on earth. Including us. Can you put a price tag on healthy and clean food, water, and soil?

Expand full comment

Also me and many others I know are slowing building the organic matter of our soil, according to periodic soil analysis. which increases water and nutrient holding capacity and productivity. We do this with crop residue, livestock manure, and dried human feces We also do this by keeping erosion to a minimum by not disturbing the soil with tillage. Very slow process.

Expand full comment

Building soil is not slow. If you know how to do it. Erosion is best controlled with strip cropping. Nine times on average more efficient than seven-figure terraces.

You mean you are slowly building the organic matter of the soil?

I find you not credible.

Expand full comment

I do know that organic farming takes more diesel per acre and more per unit of the much lower production than my no-tll corn/SB production. As growing up as a young child we were organic producers and didn't know it. Back then, before crop protection inputs of today, we rotated to oats, a yr of hay with part of the seeded ground fenced for hogs to be fed in the field, then a year or 2 of corn. The corn and hay fields were usually moldboard plowed in spring. Then tilled at least twice, then cultivated up to 4 times. The carbon was being cooked out of the bare soil and way more tons of soil washed away than today and the areas of top soil being gone got bigger

If u grab a handful of my soil u will see healthy soil. My soils are alive with fish worms and live soil bacteria.

Expand full comment

Not if youтАЩre using anhydrous ammonia, glide phosphate, die, Camba, and Notal with simple too late cover cropping systems. Just not. Nine out of 10 conventional, farmers soil, edition, tilth challenged, between compassion, and the molecular Efecto by 40 8 PM to crops is not a rotation. The NPK model is nothing more than a fertilizer sales gimmick. You are literally killing the soil. If you are growing, conventional, GMO, corn and soy beans. You are killing the soil. I donтАЩt care if you live in Iowa and have the richest soil on earth. YouтАЩre just taking longer to kill it.

Expand full comment

The tiny bit of diesel per acre that I use compared to my conventional counterparts is statistically insignificant. Your claim about yields is blatant ignorance. I consistently out yield all of my neighbors and every single crop but corn. Which, certainly doesnтАЩt need to be part of the fuel equation and definitely not human food for the 10 to 15% less that I grow is all fed to animals.

Also, by circumstance, I make half of my diesel from organic soy. A definite negative in the balance sheet. But hey, is it all about money?

Expand full comment

I like the idea u make part of your diesel fuel needs.

Expand full comment

Sorry, I was referring to the organic farmers I observe, whether the English or Amish. What crops out yield your neighbors. What part of the country are u located in?

Expand full comment