Welcome • User Guide
ToS • Privacy • Canary
Donate • Bugs • License

©2024 Poal.co

1.1K

the natural nutrient cycling system involves the plants sending sugars to microbes via their roots, the microbes eventually return the favour normally after being eaten and shit out by a worm or nematode, this process can reduce the need for fertilizers

while the prairie grass might not be much use to farmers, its worth taking note of the root profile of the fodder grown in your pasture, stuff like comfrey(using bocking 14 so it does not spread like wildfire is a good idea) is a fantastic animal feed in moderation(although not all that moderate depending on the animal and the timing, it can result in kidney stones and thats not always going to be an issue) because it roots very deeply and brings up the micro nutrients that the higher layers of soil are missing, the whole process can also improve your land because a lot of it is going to then be shit out and enriches the higher levels of soil, the same is true for fruit trees and most perennial plants

the natural nutrient cycling system involves the plants sending sugars to microbes via their roots, the microbes eventually return the favour normally after being eaten and shit out by a worm or nematode, this process can reduce the need for fertilizers while the prairie grass might not be much use to farmers, its worth taking note of the root profile of the fodder grown in your pasture, stuff like comfrey(using bocking 14 so it does not spread like wildfire is a good idea) is a fantastic animal feed in moderation(although not all that moderate depending on the animal and the timing, it can result in kidney stones and thats not always going to be an issue) because it roots very deeply and brings up the micro nutrients that the higher layers of soil are missing, the whole process can also improve your land because a lot of it is going to then be shit out and enriches the higher levels of soil, the same is true for fruit trees and most perennial plants

(post is archived)

[–] • 0 pt (edited )

Are you sure it's not just the right side are annuals and left side are perennials, which tend to have much deeper roots. Edit: misprint

[–] • 1 pt

if you read the comment i do go in to that a little

certainly them being annuals does have something to do with it but i think the point is still valid, nature rarely does mono corps and monocrops and frankly most of modern day agricultural practices fight against nature, hell the whole idea of tilling the soil is to make it more fertile and prepare the soil for planting a new crop, the way it makes it more fertile is by destroying the microbes and eventually the organic matter in the soil, while this improves fertility in the short term the long term effect is a dust bowl

[–] • 0 pt (edited )

Okay, true. So, I'm not sure what you are suggesting? Rotate fields so that half are growing bromegrass and the others are growing grain? PS I'm not a farmer, but I am an arborist, which as you know is part of the field of horticulture.

[–] • 1 pt

ally cropping would be a workable alternative, what we need to do is go back to small scale integrated farms(as in they all produce a wide verity of products and have a wide range of income sources) currently we have been pushing for the maximization of the profitability of farming rather than what works best long term and what is best for the average person who does not own a mega farm

i can go in to more detail about specific forms of farming and improving productivity while sticking to modern practices but in general we really need to look at the way we produce food and consider if our modern diet is really the right way to go about it, we need to fund a lot of research in to both creating perennial based alternative staples, its would almost certainly be better for us if we started eating more hazel nuts, berries, and real fruit based product and while that seems like a limited diet thats why we need the research, the plants are out there and if they are not those plants can be made, our ancestors did some amazing things with out the access to gene editing technology, surely we can do better

we went with mono crops for ease of harvesting, we now have the technology to easily harvest many products, we can make fruit drop via vibrations for instance, the farm of the future has aquaculture, hydroponic greenhouses, agroforestry systems and animals, all feeding in to each other and making highly efficient use of waste products to be highly efferent while being productive and ideally environmentally regenerative