Environmental impact from a loaf of bread

Very funny McGentrix! It took me a second to remember where that is from.

A "healthy" soil contains a host of micro-organisms and fungi which help plants absorb nutrients efficiently. It's not that controversial.

Food produced in regular, cultivated soil has the same nutrients in this so-called "healthy soil". And the regular soil is produces more food per acre.

If the food is the same, and can be produced more efficiently over a long period of time, then why does the amount of micro-organisms and fungi in the soil matter? I am interested in the food, not the dirt.

This sounds like pseudo-science to me.

Isn't that what fertilizer does?

Well yeah, in a way — to make up for the lack of biological activity in fields which have been plowed repeatedly and continuously mono-cropped. A healthy soil with lots of organic matter has better tilth, water retention, and much less need for petrochemical fertilizers.

BMP's are the best way to keep soil "healthy". We practice "no till" farming wherein last seasons cuttings remain as "duff" on the soil cap. No plowing down and over-fertilizing.
(90% of maintaining healthy soil is keeping it from eroding into streams making "legacy sediments").

We do crop rotation, contour growing, all with limited use of chemicals on field. We do NOT, however, use full organic methods because organic farming still requires plowing down and fertilizing with the highest Nitrogen loading (minimal manures) . Our manures are dropped in the field qnd , immediately after lambing, they are spread on fields farthest from water courses.
Organic practices, especially composting, unless waterway controlled, are some of the biggest sources of pollution in our east coastwaterways.
ORGANIC farming is just behind confinement (segmented ) farming of livestock.
Confinement farming has stock raising (like hogs), raised in 3 separate sequences
1Mama hogs are bred and deliver hoglets , at 25 lb the piglets are taken to a semi confined rearing farm where they are raised to about 75 lb.
Then they are sent to confined finishing farms where they are grown to about 250 lbs and sent to the butcher. This results in huge mounts of pollution in the Chesapeake (chicken raising also works that way).
Organic means is just about as pollution -rich (at least around here where we enjoy lots of streams.

I'm interested in both

We have A LOT of dairy farms and corn fields in my area. Every spring the smell of liquid manure being spread over the fields intrudes upon my delicate sensibilities. They do tend to rotate some fields, but often it's the same crops in the same fields year after year.

Now, I am no farmer nor have I been a farmer in any commercials and I've not slept in a hotel recently. But, it seems to me that most farmers have X amount of acreage to do their thing.It is in their best interest to keep X acreage viable for the crops they grow. They also need their crops to be successful in the area in which they live.

That means they have to keep the soil healthy, keep the bugs away and make allowance for droughts and/or floods. I love the fresh sweet corn we get after harvest. It soooooooo good. Ugh, I am rambling and forgot my point.

Organic isn't viable in some places and Farmers take care of their land and do what is best for them, their land and the crops they sell.

Sheeesh I am depressed enough by thinking this stuff on my own...Now you bring actual data...Geee thanks !

as long as they sont do a lot of tilling when they spread liquid manure. BUT, the problem is that the ruburb folks, who want to live near the country but cant stand the smell that occurs a few times a year, start to dictate to the farmers who then say, **** you, and sell their properties for multimillions to developers and the ruburb people are now back in a suburb surrounded by traffic, strip malls , and that garbage.

PS, if they dont keep a rotation schedule, they arent good farmers. Im a small farmer, I own 157 acres and rent-farm another 100.We keep alfalfa or other lgumes in field for about 5 years, then rotate to a strong nitrogen user (like grains). Its a hunt for protein and energy for our stock .

Grains are (2 out of 3 years) a waste of time for me because its a "finishing food", and we trade/buy most of ours(We send the corn to the mill, and supplement the mix with oats , molasses and cobmeal, along with our own mineral mix crumbles (sheep dont hqve upper teeth so they cannot lick or chew a salt block)

Amen !

The inconvenient (and unpopular) truth behind all this is that the impact of having one additional child in a first world country produces more of a negative impact on the environment than everything else combined.

By all means have a child, or children, if you want them. Just not as many.

Or adopt or foster the ones already here

An English Sheep Farmer's View of Rural America

That is nonsense! Farming has never been part of the natural world. Farming is a technology. It was developed by humans, from the very beginning of the practice, to produce more food with less effort.

When humans derive food from nature, it is called "hunting and gathering". Hunter gatherer societies never developed the technology to decrease the amount of time spent satisfying basic needs. This makes it very difficult for people in these societies to develop literature, and art, and philosophy and science.

The sheep farmer in this article is using slightly older technology, compared to the more efficient more recent technology. But he is using technology nonetheless. The sheep that he raises aren't natural. They were bred over thousands of year, by humans through a process of artificial selection, to develop a species suited to human needs. I hope he uses feed from bags when helpful for the sheep, and modern medicine and electric shears. There is a certain point where eschewing modern technology is silly.

For someone using 100 year old technology to show scorn for people using slightly more modern technology (out of thousands of years of human agricultural development) is foolish.

People in first world countries aren't the ones having babies. The fertility rate is below 2 live births per woman in every first world country (meaning that the natural born populartion is decreasing).

Not having enough children to replace the existing population is a problem. Several countries are now having trouble supporting an aging population without enough people of working age.

The problem is that first world people use an exponontially large portion of natural resources. You know that.


The elderly in 1st world countries have also not done enough to prepare financially for their later years, because they were busy using an obscene part of resources, which were not available to much of the world.

The elderly will be taken care of. They already had their children, who are middle aged or younger. You ask an older person why they had kids, more than likely part of the reason was so that these very people would care for them at this point. So let them.

The fact is, many of these children of the now elderly don't take care of their parents, so that dream was just a fantasy. Many are currently cared for by strangers primarily, and as the poplulation decreases, less of these people will be needed to care for someone else's parents. For those elderly who have no resources, and are frail, there is Medicaid. Not a life of luxury, but 3 squares, a bed to sleep in, a cleaner environment then they could keep for themselves, and others to monitor their health. The people caring for them would have chosen this career to care for the elderly, not born for the purpose of being the caretaker of someone who may or may not have been good to them.

The solution is not having more people born, but less, in particular in first world countries. The same amount, or more work can be done by fewer people in many sectors, and areas that produce consumables would be able to produce less.


We don't need a bigger boat. We need a smaller, more maneuverable one.

Try to explain that to lamb-loving tourists who think stock farmers run "pet farms"

I remember lambs when we drove threw a chianti road.

By now, I don't know.

I hope you are not making fun of me.