Compare / Contrast: Organic -vs- Sustainable

No, that isn't relying on someone else's nutrients. I said:
This isn't relying on something, it's using something available. If you already have all you need you're not relying on something else. How is this unsustainable? I can see where someone would think this now makes a farm open to outside inputs but I don't understand why the farm would no longer be sustainable even though it provides what it needs.

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Robin

They are ordinary homesteaders who were interviewed for an online article.
I think they are called "crofters". There was a thread here that linked to it not too long ago.

I sympathize with your poison ivy struggle. They say it is going to become more and more rampant as the CO2 in our atmosphere increases. Maybe
folks here can give you some alternative ideas to try.
Some less noxious plant that is rampant and can out-compete it is my first thought - Halls honeysuckle maybe?

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Hut on the Hill Farm
http://www.hutonthehill.org

Organic on the other hand "is matter which has come from a recently living organism; is capable of decay, or the product of decay; or is composed of organic compounds." If it isn't organic then it isn't food. It's that simple....

I'm pretty sure "sustainable" just means your farm will still be here next year. When a farm is not "sustainable" that means you went broke and had to sell it!

I like to use the word "natural" when discussing my farming method. Sheep would "naturally" graze grass. They for sure would not "naturally" stand in a crowded feed lot eating corn/soybeans mix. Same with poultry, my poultry runs around loose in the yard eating weeds/grass and bugs. They would never "naturally" stay inside the coop eating commercial feed when given the choice to go outside. They "naturally" drink rain water from my catch basins. They would never expect me to scrub the water bowl daily with bleach....

So I try to raise organic plants and animals in a natural way to keep my life style sustainable.

Commercial fertilizers are "available" too and many would argue that their use is not sustainable.

If you already have "all you need," why would you use someone else's manure and leaves to make compost? Some would argue that the use of someone else's organic nutrients (manure, leaves, etc) is just shifting nutrients from soil at one location to soil at another location. One soil is "mined" of its nutrients the other soil is "enriched."

Many farms provide all that is needed, using a variety of nutrient inputs, ranging from commerical fertilizers, someone else's manure and leaves, and/or recycled nutrient inputs that origninated on thier farm or from people/animals that consumed products from that farm. IMHO, only the last scenario is sustainable.

In other words, if you grew hay and sold the hay to Rancher Bob to feed his cattle. You've exported your soil's nutrients to Rancher Bob's property. Now, if you recieved from Rancher Bob his animal's manures and your return those nutrients to your hay fields to grow another crop....that's sustainable.

Sustainability, IMHO invlolves a "nutrient recycling loop." Shifting nutrients from one piece of land to another, whether organic or not, is not in the true sense "sustainability" in a broad sense. You may be doing something good for your land and you may be "sustaining" (or improving) the fertility of your land, but your land is improving at the detriment of someone else's land which is proving you with the orgainc nutrients.

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This is the government the Founding Fathers warned us about.....

So what about the rain constantly leeching nutrients from the soil? Does your water have to come from rain on the property too?

Sustainable is alot like homesteading...there are levels with total sustainability being rather elusive. That shovel, fencing, and clippers came from somewhere else what happens when they break?

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Give Blood it saves lives.

I could use the manure from a friend's farm for compost. She doesn't do anything with it. The pile has been sitting untouched for two years now. She started a new pile closer to the barn. Leaves are a similar situation. I can, and do, pick up bags of leaves that people are sending to the transfer station. We don't have OM recycling in this area so once they're bagged and picked up on trash day they're going to the land fill. In other cases, the leaves are burned and contribute to air pollution.

I'm at the point of understanding your point of view but not agreeing. My farm isn't unsustainable because I use Karen's horse manure for compost or someone else's leaves. If it were unsustainable it would collapse. It's not a closed farm because I've already brought in seaweed, wood chips when they cleared the power lines on our road, and I don't know how many hundreds of bags of maple and oak leaves and pine needles that would have gone to the landfill. When I plant broccoli and cabbage this afternoon the soil will be amended with leaf mold from leaves picked up three years ago. If I didn't have the leaf mulch I could go to the compost pile made with hay, straw, shavings, duck, chicken, turkey, cow, goat and rabbit manures, and plant matter I've pulled as weeds and spent plants. I assume that would not be sustainable from your point of view though, because all of the livestock and poultry get some kind of commercial feed from late fall to early spring when we can't keep them on good pasture.

What if he fed hay from someone else's farm?

I think that's too broad. Better to use what's available to keep it from going to waste. If I'm keeping someone from using their resources, yes, that's detrimental to their soil. If it's not going to be used there and I do use it here I don't think that makes my farm unsustainable. Does that makes sense?

The black flies are using me to stay sustainable today. It's finally sunny and warm and the soil is ready to be planted but the black flies are swarming so bad it makes it hard to work.

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Robin

Robin, you are doing everything right. I admire your stewardship. Please do not get impression that I disagree with any of your methods. If I were in your shoes, I would be doing the same as you. I agree whole-heartedly with your ethics, use what is available, and keep resources like organic matter and nutrients from being lost by disposal in a landfill, or by being burned, or by being flushed into a lake or river! You continue what you are doing and convince others to do the same! We’re on the same bandwagon.

The only point that I am trying to make is what I believe the term “sustainable” should mean. How it appears to me is that you are “maintaining” and “improving” the fertility and organic matter status of your soils by reclaiming organic materials that would otherwise be unutilized. What you are doing may or may not be “sustainable.”

Let me try one more time to describe my idea of sustainability. I will say right now that my example is very simplified. Nutrients can be either used in a one-way fashion (open-loop) or in a continuous, recycled fashion (closed loop). An example of an open-loop scenario is one where Farmer John grows hay. Farmer John fertilizes his hay with commercial fertilizer. Farmer John sells his hay (which now contains the commercial fertilizer) to Rancher Bob. Rancher Bob feeds the hay to his cattle. Organic grower Robin collects some of Rancher Bob’s manure for her garden. Rancher Bob sells his beef to people in the City. Organic grower Robin sells her vegetables to the people in the City. The people in the City consume these products and produce waste. The waste goes to the City’s sewage plant. The sewage plant sends its “humanure” to the landfill. So, eventually the fertilizer that Farmer John used to fertilize his hay is now lost to the landfill. This is a one-way, open-loop route of nutrients. The nutrients were used more than once, but eventually they were lost. This relatively broad-brush picture of nutrient use is non-sustainable, even though Organic grower Robin did reuse the nutrients from the manure (which originally came from a commercial source). Next year, the scenario repeats it self when Farmer John buys more commercial fertilizer for his hay.

The above scenario could easily be converted into a sustainable system if Farmer John used the humanure to fertilize his hay. By doing this, the same nutrients are used over and over again. Theoretically, there is no need for commercial fertilizers.

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This is the government the Founding Fathers warned us about.....

The April 2007 issue of Acres USA features an article called
Terra Preta Soils: Enduring Fertility

"Recent discoveries have revealed an ancient soil management technique in the Amazon Basin. For thousands of years before the first Europeans arrived, civilization there had buried charcoal and pottery shards in tropical soils to make them productive. Those terra preta, or "black earth" soils still remain bountiful 500 years later. The charcoal acts like a coral reef for soil organisms and fungi, creating a rich micro-ecosystem where organic carbon is bound to minerals to form rich soil. "

The article goes on to say that these soils are remarkably stable and do not lose fertility readily.
They understand 3 components of this soil so far -
The charcoal is created by burning off the ground cover using a special
cool burn fire. Nutrients are not lost in the smoke but remain in the charcoal.
Second is to increase circulation with the unglazed pottery shards.
The third component they are studying hard are the microorganisms in this soil.
They believe that the folks who made this stuff actually took a batch from an old site to a new site, like a sourdough starter, because the organisms in it were so valuable to soil fertility.

The point to bringing this up is that our knowledge is still really lacking.
Using the above metaphor, we are trying to make bread without the yeast.

More good info on terra preta and sustainability here:
http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/l...ochar_home.htm

The moving of resources from place to place is a complex system that we can't possibly grasp in its entirety. There are some who even believe that
we may be constantly gaining fertility from space particles that fall to the earth all the time...

At least I know that the molecules on this planet, and all the life forms, were in place long before my birth and mother nature has used them, shifted them around and done a fine job up to now.

But here comes Monsanto making new molecules and mixing life forms, all
without a clue about how these changes will impact the cycle of life as we know it.
All so some small group of individuals can make huge profits and live their short, insignificant little lives in ultimate comfort.

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Hut on the Hill Farm
http://www.hutonthehill.org

amen.

Oh no worry! I don't take anything personally even when using myself as an example. I'm in over my head with a long list of things to do thanks to an unexpected trip later this morning. If I don't get back to this in a day or two I will soon. We have a three day weekend, an 8th grade class trip to Boston for four days, and graduation on June 6. Between now and then I need to get more transplants in the ground.

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Robin

I have been busy making a living from the farm and haven't visited here for a while but here goes...
We consider our farm to be a good example of sustainable agriculture. All of our animals can be produced on site year-round from eggs supplied by our own broodstock. We raise a large number of animals in a small area (1/4 acre) with a relatively small unput of feed and water. We use no electricity on the farm. All of our feed is made to our specifications by a local mill. We use no herbicides, pesticides, or commercial fertilizers. We use a small fuel efficient pickup truck for transportation and daily chores. The effluent discharge from our farm is certified organic by the Idaho State Dept. of Agriculture and is used for irrigation. Our farm can be operated from a wheelchair. We purchase our supplies and services locally. Our farm has no debt and no public funds or government assistance have been used for research or production.

I think there can be a lot of definitions for Sustainable Agriculture.

Phrogfarmer, did I miss something? Where does your feed come from?

I like the idea of a sliding scale of sustainability, like 1 through 10.

Score of 1 would be your American home which produces nothing and throws away everything. Buy food, send the nutrients down the toilet or into the garbage. Fertilize the lawn and throw the clippings in the garbage.

Score of 10 would be those who export and import little/nothing, and use their land to support themselves only. Truly live off the land, and recycle their wastes.

Besides recycling nutrients, I would think sustainability would include energy. To give up Roundup only to rely on a tractor for weed control using fuel from the Middle East doesn’t sound super sustainable. So, do we support ‘evil’ Monsanto, or ‘evil’ Texaco? A high score for sustainability would be using horses who eat hay grown on your property, or cultivating by hand. Few are interested in this, as it is a lot of work.

The average American probably scores about a 2. My goal is to do better than average, hopefully around a 5. I buy chicken feed and hay for a few cows, but reuse their wastes (though you never get it all back) with some fertilizer added. I fertilize a lawn, but feed it to the cows. While I burn fuel, I use it more to grow my own food rather than pulling boats, or driving fast cars.

If everyone tried doing a little better than average, the average would change. Just 30 minutes a day of growing your own and reusing nutrients would make a big difference. Seems those who try to go all-out often get burned out, like the hippies in our valley in the 70's.

I like the sliding scale plan also. We spent yesterday making two "test" plots. In one we used roundup and in the other we used the vinegar/salt mix. Will let you know what happens!

This has been an interesting thread, and an informative one. As I get nearer to retirement, I have been trying to learn all I can about these topics before taking the plunge and trying to fulfill a life long dream of having my own homestead.

I have a concern, however. As I read the standards for Organic Livestock production, I came accross this claus:

(c) The producer of an organic livestock operation must not:

(1) Sell, label, or represent as organic any animal or edible product derived from any animal treated with antibiotics, any substance that contains a synthetic substance not allowed under §205.603, or any substance that contains a nonsynthetic substance prohibited in §205.604.

Does this mean you can not treat an animal with antibiotics ever in it's lifetime? If an animal gets a cut and it becomes infected, you can't treat the infection with antibiotics? Or if you do, you can never sell that animal or it's milk etc. as organic, even years later?

This seems extreme to me. I can understand not selling it or any edible products from it during treatment, and for some reasonable time afterwards, but this seems to indicate that it is banned from being labled organic permanently. Is that true?

Thanks for your help.

Yes, it's true. If you give antibiotics to an organic animal, it loses it's certification forever.

Many people are opting out of the organic program since the government took over, because the meaning of organic is becoming increasingly corrupt.

The sustainable and buy local movements are growing very, very fast. Sensible small farmers will use antibiotics when absolutely necessary. But when used, the animal should be removed from the herd, treated, and after a withdrawal time, returned to the herd. You can't do that if you're certified organic.

If you don't subscribe to Mother Earth News, try to find a copy of this month's issue. Almost the entire issue is devoted to food safety, sustainability, and the buy local movement. It's extremely educational and may help you understand your choices better.

As for me, I have NO desire to become certified organic. Organic is rapidly losing it's original meaning. Big Brother is ruining the program.

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Around here, you try to be as organic as possible. And the local certifying agency will inspect you, each year. After three years of good inspections and no dis-allowed chemicals, only then can you be 'organic'. Plus of course the fees.

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http://www.mofga.org/

http://www.mofga.org/Programs/FarmAp...2/Default.aspx

[QUOTE=Cabin Fever]
You can recover the nitrogen that you have exported by growing legumes, but how do you recover the P, K and other nutrients that have left your soil in the form of produce that you have sold? [QUOTE]

K can be recovered by ash (in small areas I realize). In fact, I believe that farmers used to burn their crop residue, not only to get rid of the trash, but help improve the potassium. I think though bigger than p and k is that in order for a decent yields, the ph of the soil has to be right. Unfortunately, I know of no way to maintain this without bringing in lime from outside.

I forgot who said it, but I agree that absolute sustainability is unattainable.

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Brad Bachelor
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"Loving an old bachelor is always a no-win situation, and you come to terms with that early on, or you go away.”
-- Jean Harris

I agree, Brad, but the potassium in the ash was already there. It could have also been recovered (or recycled) by plowing the crop residue into the soil. In other words, the "net" amount of K on the farm had not changed...had not increased or decreased...by the act of burning or plowing down crop residues.

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This is the government the Founding Fathers warned us about.....

[QUOTE=bachelorb] Depends on where you live. Where I am, the soil is naturally very alkaline. You do NOT put ashes or lime on your soil here. You try to find ways to make it acid enough.

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[QUOTE=ladycat]You would think that here too in Limestone County, but I had to put 2 tons/acre on this year.

I was reading about local food the other day. Pretty interesting stuff about the number of barrels of oil go into transporting food for the US. When this country finally gets serious about this oil thing. Local Food may be a good option.

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Brad Bachelor
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"Loving an old bachelor is always a no-win situation, and you come to terms with that early on, or you go away.”
-- Jean Harris