Make your own fertilizer...

Photosynthesis is not sustainable. The sun will burn out in 4 billion years and then where will you be???

All commercial farming is not sustainable if you use a strict definition of zero fertility imports to the farm. No matter how well you manage the farm/ranch, you are exporting nutrients in the form of animal or plant products. Those nutrients need to be replenished in some manner. If you are using sustainable sources of fertility, and not using more petrol than the fertility is worth, then you are being sustainable.

Depends. If those resources were going into a land fill then making use of them is better stewardship of the land and better use of those materials. Ideally, everything would be returned returned from whence it came but lets not underestimate the earth and the fact that things are constantly being regenerated without our input.

Using your definition, nothing is totally sustainable. Life as we know it is not sustainable. I can return manure to the fields but some is still taken away, lost to the field. However, energy can neither be created nor destroyed so we can only try to put it where it benefits us most.

This!!! Its the nutrient cycle! Nothing is ever really lost as long as it stays on this planet. Nutrients are constantly moving from one place to another. Water erodes and takes them to the ocean. Wind blows them around. Animals eat then move to another location and leave manure. Our Earth is alive.

It's ok to take nutrients from one place to another. We are just doing the same thing that nature does. We bring nutrients to the farm as manure, ash, wood & bone and send it back out as food. Don't worry, once the farm we accumulated the nutrients on is abandoned and forgotten, those nutrients will wander off and spread out again.

DOn't get me wrong, I'm all for sustainability in farming practices. Like you, it seems, I just can't figure out why Rambler has a problem with moving nutrients. I figure building good soil, where you aren't hurting other soil or environs, has to be good for the planet.

Sustainability has in some circles become almost a religious thing and anything not part of the religion is bad. You've got to believe in what they believe, for the same reasons they believe, in the same way they believe, or you're a heretic.

Kissing my wife is not sustainable, sooner or later I've got to move on to other productive activities. I guess everything that is not sustainable doesn't have to be bad.

Negative people abound. I currently get 6-9 yrds of material a week from someone that does not want it. I will start hauling free compost this week same volume per load and cost. Only thing that keeps me from getting a 1000 yards a year is money (dump truck). This summer I will collect grass that goes to the dump to mix with my other material for compost.

Yeah I am not sending back to Kansas what blew in from the 30's. Texas can't have theirs back either.

Ok, you asked, so I'll try another round.

We all move nutrients to our land to improve or replace nutrients.

I'm all for that, and I'm all for the ash, fish, manure, bone, kelp useage one can find.

I don't understand what the difference is between importing those items, or importing for example rock phosphate?

I don't believe any sort of farming is 'sustainable' if you look into it, and you all are saying right here you need to import fertilizers onto your fields....

So why are you good people, and some how 'sustainable' for your actions?

And other farmers that are importing fertilizer to their farms are somehow rotten, awful wasters, and not 'sustainable'?

That seems like a terrible contradiction to me, one that can't be defended. It is just throwing sticks and stones and making up stuff.

Because in both cases, that farm is not sustainable, some sort of fertilizer needs to be brought in.

I don't mean to be mad about it, black and white text in the short message of an Internet form forces me to leave all the smile and irony and so forth out of it.

We wil all go on just fine whether we agree or not, and we will all keep our old biases, and no one will change their view. That is fine.

But to me, it looks darn foolish to talk about sustainable farming like it is something special, when its all just made up.

Farming is farming, you haul crops off the land, and you haul nutrients back onto the ground from -someplace else-.

Which means - you aren't any more sustainable at it than the corn and soybean farmer is who uses commercial fertilizer.

Yet some folk like to pretend their way is better or somehow purer, and put down other farming ways. When what they do is exactly the same - haul in fertilizers from somewhere else.

You don't see the humor and irony of that....

So, that's why I didn't want to follow up on this.

Not a big deal if we don't understand each other on this. The world will go on, and we can discuss things we agree on, rather than this.

Now, the ground under my feet is 130 feet of various clays that was scraped off of Canada 10,000 years ago. Well diggers will hit the old topsoil and bits of grass right at about 130 feet around here, our 'natural' topsoil layer. And no, I ain't giving that back to Canada either.

Paul

Thought I misses something when I read this post...went back and reread all the posts. I don't think 'sustainability' was the point of this thread. I will say that I much prefer to use natural organic sources of fertilizer on my farm. Chemical fertilizers carry inorganic byproducts that may or may not be sustainable to use in the long run but they are certainly not as useable as most organic substances. There are micronutrients in organic composted materials, whose roll is not even fully understood. Science does not have it all figured out yet, until they do, I'd rather let the earth do what it does as naturally as possible.

Thanks for responding because I was confused on what your angle was. i thought you were of a religio-sustainable sect, but i guess you are from closer to the opposite end of the spectrum. Agreed, commercial (no matter the scale, where ANY products and nutrients leave the farm and don't come back) farming is not sustainable - at least within the current technologies.

But what makes what i and other composters/recyclers do superior to mining rock phosphate (I'm not against mining rock phosphate, it provides jobs and grows stuff we need) is that I'm not using up a natural resource but rather keeping a waste product out of a landfill. Heck, I'm not even against landfills, but I do recognize a need to minimize them. So what I'm doing is more sustainable, even if not fully sustainable because I need petroleum to power my nutrient movement. And I'm willing to bet I use a lot less petroleum to move sludge than industry does to move rock phosphate.

Another angle that makes homemade fertilizers superior is they are generally more, if not fully, complete. Also, even though you can find some examples of bad compost due to wormers and herbicides, the negative side effects are generally much less than petroleum based fertilizers.

I've tried for 5 years to find some manure to spread on my fields. I agree it supplies a much better wealth of micro nutrients, organic matter, and orginisms to the soil. Despite the many 1000s of hogs and 100s of dairy cattle raised within 5 miles of me, other farmers close to the barns are buying up the manure and using it on their fields. None left for me.

I raise 25 or so cattle, but I feed them very little grain any more, and let them graze out in the cornstalks in winter, pasture in summer, so I end up with about 5 spreader loads of manure to apply per year. This covers a couple acres, a drop in the bucket.... And soil tests tell me the fields the cattle graze are terribly low in P especially, so they are not depositing enough manure themselves on the fields they graze....

The concept of landfill waste is just far removed for me. Farmers out here on the plains of Minnesota use everything they can for fertilizer, and recycling what is available. I see ads on Craigslist for free horse manure, and see the thread in this forum on that... Wow. Always 30 or 100 miles away, but - wow. The idea of having more maure than one can use is just odd around 'here' in the farm lands.We pay good money, couple $100 an acre, to get manure on our fields.

I do some cover crops, clovers, alfalfa, turnips. Those are difficult to use in my cold short seasons up here, but I try. And they can't generate P or K or micros, tho they certainly help build the soil.

Therefore, it seems odd to be able to find anything free, or going to a landfill, or considered 'waste' that could be used to fertilize a field. That's already been done for decades where I am, and you have to pay for it, it is valuable product, not 'waste'.

My soils are kinda poor and run down, even tho I'm getting 165 bu corn from them. I need to build my soils up a bit. Having my soil tested every 2.5 acres, it shows up in the red and orange for P levels, far from the green, or at least yellow it should be. (I'm glad I don't have blue, which means too much of these which can create environmental issues....)

So, I've been putting 400 lbs (average) of fert a year on, to try to build it back up a bit. That would be 6000 lbs or so of manure per acre. Or about that many lbs of wood ash, or fish guts, or what have you.

I just cant imaging finding 1.4 million lbs of wood ash, or fish guts, or kelp, and hauling it onto my farm, and considering that 'sustainable'.

It just isn't?

Yet. that is what my farm needs, to try to get it back up to a good normal fertility level. I feel I would be strip mining some forest, or sea bed, or such, if I brought that much stuff onto my small farm?

I would love to find those 1.5 million lbs of manure and use that, I would _much_ prefer it, but alas I am in line several years out before I get some. And even so, if I do get the manure, it is coming from someplace, it is not, to me, a waste product, it is nutrients that came from some one else's fields, and so is not a sustainable thing?

Instead, I use about 92,000 lbs of commrcial fertilizer, with N, P, K, Sulfur, and perhaps another micro. These fertilizers are mined from someplace, or created by gathering the N from the air. Not sustainable perhaps, but I use a lot less fuel getting 92,000 lbs delivered and spread, vs the 1.4 million lbs of manure or composte would need! But no, commercial fertilizer is not sustainable.

But, I just don't see hauling in 1.4 million lbs of tree leaves, lawn clippings, and so forth as bing any sort of 'sustainable' either? Do you?

The only difference beween you and I is size of farm.

I need to haul in 1.4 million lbs of manure/leaves/fish.

Or 92,000 lbs of commercial fertilizer.

Either way will keep my farm productive and growing average crops.

Do you see either one of those as truely sustainable?

I see them as equal....

Sorry for the long messages.

I prefer - much prefer - manures or composts for fertilizing my farm. As you do? We can agree one product is better than the other.

For the environment, I don't see importing 1.4 million lbs of compost as any better or worse than importing 92,000 lbs of commercial fertilizer tho?

Where I live the 92,000 lbs of commercial fertilizer is much cheaper to deliver, much more available. There is no 'waste' I can find to apply to my fields. Manures and compostes are valuable and cost big bucks, they are not, I assure you, called 'waste' her in the corn belt.

Thanks again for the conversation.

Paul

Some folks are opposed to using sludge. I feel it is one of the very few real sustainable practices. Both the towns I drive through daily haul their sludge out to farm fields every spring. The small town pumps it through mile long hoses. That is more ecconomical, but you do get limited to hose length. The bigger town hauls it out in tankers, perhaps a third comes out very near me to a farmer that has a contract with the city, perhaps 4 miles out of town.

Both towns collect money from the farmers for the fertilizer value. There is nothing free, or 'waste' about it.

I would have to go bid up the price on the sludge, and take the contract away from my neighbor to get the contract.

Another neighbor has a lawn service in town. He lives on 10 acres out in thre country. he brings all his lawn trimmings, leaves, home and compostes them, fertilizes his plot with them for his horse pasture. He brings the trees home and feeds his wood furnace. I would have to pay him to get any of that material, it is already being used. There is no waste.

The close town has a composte yard, leaves trees lawn clippings are brought and piled (on top of the old land fill!) and composted, the compost is sold to farmers and gardeners. There is no extra waste, these items do not go to a landfill.


I guess we live in very different worlds.

If I want to grow a crop, I need 1.4 million lbs of manure/ compost/ ashes/ etc.

Or I need 92,000 lbs of commercial fertilizer.

I'd take your bet on which requires less fuel to gather, transport, and apply...... I think my way treats the environment equally as well as your way, factoring in the whole picture.

None the less, I would much prefer, and continue to seek out, manures and composts, which I agree offer better soil health. Personally I think a base application of manure, with commercial fertilizer to balance the soil is the best of both worlds.

But alas, there is not enough manure available, and commercial fertilizer is much cheaper to transport and apply because it is more concentrated - saving fuel and road wear.

Think we are more equal in how we treat the environment in the big picture, just how I look at things? You might not have noticed it, but there were some negative - unintended I'm sure - overtones in a couple of the comments in this thread, and I was just trying to get to the bottom of those comments is all. I'm not at all opposed to small gardens, compost, manure, homesteading - I like those things. I was just confused by the negative comments made towards what I do. It would appear perhaps you don't really understand what I do, so perhaps it is difficult for you to judge if your way or my way is 'better'? If you understand what I do, and what is available to me, then you can judge.

--->Paul

Hmph.

I'm holding out for 5 billion.

That extra billion ought to allow for me to accomplish what's left on my agenda.

__________________
“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Barry Goldwater.
III

Makes total sense. If I were in your shoes I would, of course, have to use chemical fertilizers, and of course I would try to use as much organic stuff as I could get my hands on too. The size of the operation makes all the difference, as you said. I put up an acre of corn one year and bought the manure from a local farmer. The cost of that , corn was enormous. I compared it to corn I grew using some bag fertilizer, for a fraction of the cost. Now I keep sheep, chickens, rabbits, and horses so no shortage of manure but if I were cultivating large acreage it is unlikely that I could afford that much manure unless I could sell my corn for $5 dollars an ear.

Rambler, I see your point and were I in your shoes, I too would buy fertilizer. I still say mine is better because I slow the filling of a landfill, and I'm recycling the stuff folks like you have to purchase.

I tried to think of an analogy...how about this. You smelt aluminum from bauxite. Nothing wrong with that. People need aluminum. I recycle aluminum cans I intercept at the landfill, using much less energy in the process. I think that is better. I think the analogy would hold for collecting manure, wood chips, and what ever other wasted food could be found as long as a certain level of efficiency was had.

The question of energy used to collect and spread my sludge? BTW - it is dried sludge I haul in a dumper trailer, not a liquid product. I time my collection of sludge with my visits otherwise required visits to Daytona. It adds less than a mile to my trip. My biggest cost is a get about 10% less in diesel mileage.

Why do I call it waste? Because it leaves homes via the waste stack. It travels in the waste water sewer. It goes to the waste water treatment plant. Where it is treated and trucked to the solid waste authority dump. At that point it is mixed with ash, a waste product of the electric plants. It is dried, composted, and sifted, then except for what local farmers take, it is treated as a waste product and spread on the town's garbage. Which I believe to be a huge waste of a perfectly good but smelly resource.

I did not mean to knock what you do. I did mean to knock what I mistakenly thought was a hyper sustainable sentimentality. Regardless, I gave offense and apologize. I recognize the need for less than perfect solutions (not being sustainable) and think my solution fails on the perfection standard as well.

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Forerunner: with all due respect, the .pdf at the beginning of this dissertation has me convinced I need to start burning those deer bones again. . . and the cow bones, and the goat bones . . . and if I root around enough, I'll find the hog bones from last summer!

Besides, the dang dogs kept digging them up and bringing them home. Good thing my wife didn't see the skull from our winter-killed calf in the driveway

All joking aside, I always thought that burning the bones would burn off the phosphorous and leave the calcium. Turns out, the phosphorous remains!

As far as sustainability, it may not be sustainable for me to be continually robbing the landfill of various nutrients, but I've found that NOT having to pay to have quality fertilizer trucked to the landfill is economically sustainable

I do understand many are making use of waste products here, and that is also what many farmers do.

A good thing. You are recycling a product. There just isn't enough of that product to go around, I guess. 95% of farmers would prefer to do so as well and do so when they can.

I'm not worried about being offended. I wouldn't be in an Internet forum if I were. So thanks, not what I am fishing for.

Understanding each other, that is what I'm trying for. And we seemed to get there.

It was difficult for me to find the right words, as we look at 'waste' or 'fertilizer' so differently (and yet the same....), and I wanted the discussion we got, not bickering.

Thanks all for traveling down the discussion path.

You are doing a good job, I like to think I am doing a good job too, using what we can and what is available, to produce what is needed as sustainably as is possible.

Paul

If it hasn't already been added, I think the word "sustainable" and its many derivatives will soon be added to those year end lists of the "most overworked word of the year".......Today's media, with its relentless competition for eyeballs, has once again latched on to an already hard to define word and created a polarization effect whenever it is used. I'm sure I'll see it on tee shirts and flags this year at summer "green festivals" and such.....

To take the word as an absolute, is to cause a lot of controversy. Personally I have never seen anything that is really sustainable; as another poster said, even the sun will burn out. And when someone wants to exclaim, "That's unsustainable", I have to think that this person has something to sell of which he hasn't revealed the backside to the audience, and certainly not to his customer......that's just how much the word has gotten attached to a lot of value systems--some of which are mine, some of which are yours--but they compete with each other because of our own personal view.( And, obviously, my personal view is the only right one).

My own experience as a kid on a small diversified farm in Indiana, while not nearly as extensive as Rambler's, makes me agree with him that there isn't any way that we ever had enough "homemade, right there on the farm" materials or manures or resources to consider ourselves sustainable. A lot of it was bat guano from Peru, and later on chemical fertilizers from US manufacturers. We had cows, pigs, chickens, and rabbits, and strange as it seems, Mom (unless she carted up wheelbarrow loads during the daytime while Dad was at work in the factory) never saw the manure spreader come her way into the garden. It always got taken out to the fields and spread on the raw clay hillsides that had lost the topsoil from erosion. We also rotated crops in the typical rotation that saw corn grown after turning under the last year's clover field--that could grow pretty good corn, but it still seemed to deplete the soil for the next year's crop--and really, our yields weren't all that good as the neighbors, who poured on the bagged Nitrogen. In effect, it seemed a downhill spiral towards "unsustainability". We were always fighting an uphill battle to get the crop yields up to a point of just being profitable, never mind sustainable. In the end, I have to say thank God for cheaper nitrogen and for 2,4, D, that at least allowed us to cut our costs and make more on those ever depleting acres and yields. All I know is that, if I tried to farm as Rambler farms, I wouldn't get too many nights of good sleep.

On the other hand, today's trend ala "Successful Farming" methods of high equipment capitalization, upward spiraling land costs, and nearly all purchased inputs of fertilizers and chemicals, worries me more....... I can't really think that will be very sustainable for an uncertain future, in a heavily competitive world market. I think that the newly discovered fracked gas supplies may have saved our butts, at least for awhile. Problem with that system, though, is that only the BTO's will be able to play the game, and us peons and apartment dwellers will be very dependent on them and many, many, governments for our rations of food........(including our own government).....

I definitely agree with Rambler that taking a resource from one place and importing it to another(mine, of course) is really stealing--which is okay if nobody else wants it and if I scavenge it........but if the world gets to the point where that resource gets scarce and a dollar value gets put on it, then we're all up the creek without a paddle. That is happening to wood products today--it's getting hard to find wood chips, especially from the forest, that aren't being processed into valuable consumer products(OSB, for instance). But in Alaska, I think that would be pretty smart.. But I would have to ask if the crab and fish processing boats are really, really dumping their offal into the ocean? No, rather, I'll bet there is a pretty lively market for that, too......Sooner or later, in a world with an increasing population of consumers, there is a demand for everything.

So, to end this sermon, I think that, while we wrestle with the word "homesteading" too, there is some hope in striving to be more and more self-sufficient (or sustainable) on our own homestead. But I think we should try to have acreage enough to grow much of our own raw materials and fertilizers so that we can steal and rearrange our own acres to do that while using active fallowing methods--that means that a beginning homesteader should try to buy at least half to two thirds more than he really needs to allow for that kind of method. That means finding and creating new compact, homestead designed equipment, finding new grains that can exist on lower nitrogen needs, especially corn, and new home processing methods that cut our labor and time needs.
It also includes some ways of guaranteeing our water supplies....


End of sermon, before I get started on combines and grain threshing again....

geo

Nicely said, Geo. wish I coulda said it that way from the beginning.

In the end we live on a finite world, and won't be able to sustain an infinite population. Nonetheless I want to try to get us farther down the path, just as many here want to do in different ways. I don't know that any of us are comfortable with options that slash the population, and so we are left with hopes to slow human growth demands - something beyond my control; and ways to prepare for ourselves and provide for others - which many of us are able to do in very small ways.

Paul