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Good Farming Was More Advanced 100 Years Ago

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Quote:

Good Farming Was More Advanced A Hundred Years Ago
by Gene Logsdon

From Gene Logsdon

Garden Farm Skills

Working from the premise that we will eventually run out of plentiful supplies of manufactured fertilizers, I have been reading old farming books written before artificial fertilizers became easily available. I am amazed at the sophistication with which science approached the subject of soil fertility once it become evident in the mid-1800s that farmers were rapidly depleting the native richness of their soils and had to find ways to restore it using livestock manure and green manure crops. In some ways, what science advocated then was more advanced than farming practices are today.

If we have to produce food for growing populations without large supplies of manufactured fertilizers, the science of a hundred years ago is going to be back in vogue. Even if we don�t run out of fertilizers, advanced manure science will be very useful for anyone wanting to avoid the high costs of commercial fertilizer. (Don�t laugh at the term, �manure science�� agricultural colleges are now conducting what they called Manure Science Review days.)

�Backward� farmers like myself may not look so backward after all in the future. Ralph Rice, who farms in northeastern Ohio, just emailed me a photo of his unbelievably lush corn, unbelievable because it is an open-pollinated variety and has no chemical fertilizers on it at all. The reason I believe Ralph�s photo is because I have similar corn and it is just beautiful. I hate to tempt fate by bragging� we could get a wind storm tomorrow and blow it all over. But the case just must be made. Granted that this is, so far, a very good year for corn, no one with an open mind can look at Ralph�s or mine and not wonder if maybe we backward guys are really going forward.

All the literature from about 1870 to 1910 states that four-fifths of the plant nutrients in animal feed is still in the manure when it hits the ground. With careful handling and application of the manure, most of those nutrients can go back to the soil. Careful handling means using bedding and manure packs in the barn, not flushing the manure out with water as if the confinement building were one giant toilet bowl, which is what it really is. The other one fifth of the nutrients needed� and more� can come from green manuring with clovers, say the old books, and as both Ralph and I are convinced is true from actual experience.

So what�s the big deal about chemical fertilizers and juiced up hybrid corns? I wonder how many people know that commercial corn growers are spending on average of over $150 an acre for fertilizer. (Over $200 an acre sometimes, depending on the price of nitrogen.) And they are spending $100 an acre for hybrid GMO seed corn. That is just ridiculous when even the agribusiness suppliers admit that so far GMO varieties have not meant any general increases in yield. The corn farmer who puts out 4000 acres of corn, and quite a few of them do now, could have a fertilizer and seed bill of one million, two hundred thousand dollars before he gets his planter to the field. I am sorry but I think that is insane. And at least two big farmers I know agree but of course don�t want to be quoted. One of them told me he is thinking about starting a beef feedlot. He doesn�t care if the cattle make any money, he says. It�s the manure he�s after. I know this man well. Never in a million years did I think he would ever say that.

To be continued after my corn and Ralph�s throw ears and develop, to see if I have to eat crow or can brag some more.

~~

Gene and Carol Logsdon have a small-scale experimental farm in Wyandot County, Ohio.

Gene is author of The Mother of All Arts: Agrarianism and the Creative Impulse (Culture of the Land), The Last of the Husbandmen: A Novel of Farming Life, and just released: Small-Scale Grain Raising, Second Edition: An Organic Guide to Growing, Processing, and Using Nutritious Whole Grains, for Home Gardeners and Local Farmers.

Re: Good Farming Was More Advanced 100 Years Ago

Related Free eBook:

Quote:

Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and Japan

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5350

Re: Good Farming Was More Advanced 100 Years Ago

A lot of those older ideas can be found in this book and I highly recommend it:

Amazon

Gregg

Re: Good Farming Was More Advanced 100 Years Ago

Thanks Saoirse. Logsdon rocks. Have read all his books.

Re: Good Farming Was More Advanced 100 Years Ago

Another good sustainable ag resource: http://www.soilandhealth.org

Re: Good Farming Was More Advanced 100 Years Ago

Early pesticides, organophosphates in particular, were originally developed as neurotoxins and poisons during WWII. When the war was over, chemical companies needed another venue to make money, so much of the crap that was used to poison humans, became ingredients of common household and agricultural pesticides.

There is a reason why so many pesticides or pesticide ingredients have been taken off the market in the last 20-30 years - they're dangerous. Now our soil and groundwater is full of a toxic cocktail from decades of overuse.

List of banned pesticides: wsprod.colostate.edu/cwis79/Factsheets/.../141BannedPesticides.pdf

Some pesticides that have been banned here are still being used by farmers in other countries on food that might be shipped to the US.

Yes, farming was indeed better before the chemical companies and "Big Agra" got involved.

Re: Good Farming Was More Advanced 100 Years Ago

You people dont have a clue.

Re: Good Farming Was More Advanced 100 Years Ago

canuckfarmer -

I have lived on both sides of this fence.

Please present your opinion, because I think it is important.

scyth

Re: Good Farming Was More Advanced 100 Years Ago

Quote:

Originally Posted by CANUCKFARMER (Post 1852559)

You people dont have a clue.

Oh please, bless we the unworthy with your words of gardening wisdom, CF.

Re: Good Farming Was More Advanced 100 Years Ago

Canuckfarmer -

I'll repeat, most people don't have clue as

To how dependent they are on mechanized farming.

Agribiz is another issue.

Sounds to me like you are one

Of the dying breed of family farmers.

Again, I think this could be a pretty

Instructive dialogue.

scyth

Re: Good Farming Was More Advanced 100 Years Ago

I understand that I'm clueless, CF. Please, enlighten me.

You have too many posts to be a troll.

Re: Good Farming Was More Advanced 100 Years Ago

This thread is full of fair calls.

Except, that is, for Old farmer Canuck's.

The entire world is waking up to the detriments of the Big Pharma, chemical and Agri enterprises.

If chemicals are indeed that good. Can old Canuck please explain the price ravine between organic and mass-prods?

SH

Re: Good Farming Was More Advanced 100 Years Ago

My wife's family grows half of the food we eat.

They would never dream of using anything but manure to fertilize. Every spring we are out there with buckets, spreading it manually. Then, spend all summer picking any bugs off.

Their loved ones eat the food, this is why they don't use the poison.

Just like the Romans, they use manure and crop rotation.

If it works in an agricultural risk zone like central Russia, it should work damn near anywhere, I would think.

I'm negotiating to buy an old home in the village right now, and if I can get it I'll have access to as much land as I can cultivate.

Outside the community gardens, there are huge hills of manure the public can get for free.

My relatives here call it "the klondike".

Re: Good Farming Was More Advanced 100 Years Ago

Scared of nitrogen fertilizer?
The air you breath is 87% nitrogen.

Think organic is the way to go?
Kiss half the worlds population good-bye.
That is an absolute FACT!
Would you say good bye to half of your family-just so you could eat food that may or may not be bad for you?

Re: Good Farming Was More Advanced 100 Years Ago

Hey Canuck farmer...do you personally eat anything that you grow on your farm?

Re: Good Farming Was More Advanced 100 Years Ago

Quote:

Originally Posted by CANUCKFARMER (Post 1856710)

Really? You want to back that up with some research? I can provide plenty that states otherwise.

Big Agribiz has only been operating the way it has been for less than a century. It's not just the fertilizers that are the issue, but the chemicals in general are ruining farmland by not adding anything back to the soil and continually stripping it of its nutrients. Pesticides and herbicides are now creating "superweeds" and bugs that are resistant to the very chemicals that were supposed to eradicate them.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/arti...icle_17602.cfm

Quote:

In late 2004, "superweeds" that resisted Monsanto's iconic "Roundup" herbicide, popped up in GM crops in the county of Macon, Georgia. Monsanto, the US multinational biotech corporation, is the world's leading producer of Roundup, as well as genetically engineered seeds. Company figures show that nine out of 10 US farmers produce Roundup Ready seeds for their soybean crops.

Superweeds have since alarmingly appeared in other parts of Georgia, as well as South Carolina, North Carolina, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri, according to media reports. Roundup contains the active ingredient glyphosate, which is the most used herbicide in the USA.

GM protesters demonstrate near the French town of Toulouse in March 2008. How has this happened? Farmers over-relied on Monsanto's revolutionary and controversial combination of a single "round up" herbicide and a high-tech seed with a built-in resistance to glyphosate, scientists say.

Today, 100,000 acres in Georgia are severely infested with pigweed and 29 counties have now confirmed resistance to glyphosate, according to weed specialist Stanley Culpepper from the University of Georgia. http://mulch.cropsoil.uga.edu/weedsci/

That report comes from one of the largest agricultural schools in the US.

The nitrogen in the air we breathe is natural.

The idea of the mega farm as a solution to our food needs is becoming less and less popular. We're subsidizing farmers to grow crops to be turned into products like high fructose corn syrup, but hfcs is crap and people are starting to demand food without it.

More and more smaller local organic farms & farmer's markets are popping up all over. The world is changing... slowly, but nonetheless, it's changing.

Re: Good Farming Was More Advanced 100 Years Ago

Quote:

Originally Posted by CANUCKFARMER (Post 1856710)

Scared of Ammonia? The air you breathe is 87% nitrogen! So drink your Ammonia! And cyanide is just nitrogen and carbon! Yum!

Of course I'm being silly to illustrate a point. Farmer goes out and puts treated sewage sludge on his field. But he flushes his own sewage down the toilet to a septic, breaking the nutrient cycle. This is the best case scenario. Worst case, he is using petroleum products. As soon as he can't get petroleum products the whole system collapses. These old guys could fertilize their fields with their own beef's manure and cover crops.

We could produce a lot more food than we do now, through intensive small-scale biodynamic production. We could preserve a lot of the nitrogen we excrete through simple composting. Half of the world's population would not die. But a lot of them might need to become farmers.

Re: Good Farming Was More Advanced 100 Years Ago

Quote:

Originally Posted by CANUCKFARMER (Post 1856710)

Scared of nitrogen fertilizer?
The air you breath is 87% nitrogen.

Well that's a pretty silly argument don't you think really?
Besides, far as i know it's 78 not 87, and since you got the digits backwards it's probably safe to assume you have other stuff backwards as well.
Show me where a man gets his bread buttered before I go listening to his 'expert' opinion.
Aren't you the guy that claimed that modern chemical farming is actually improving the soil ?:thumpdown

Re: Good Farming Was More Advanced 100 Years Ago

Tell me what you do for a living,and i'll tell YOU how its so wrong.

You want everyone farming?Brillant.

Ever heard of division of labour.

Know how many times you have to plough dirt without chemicals?

Ever heard of summerfallow?

Do you know how long it takes to build up topsoil?

Do you understand the importance of soybeans,corn,wheat,rice and how many calories they provide the worlds populas?

Do you know if ferts and herbicides where eliminated there would be a 70% drop in the yields of these crops?

Re: Good Farming Was More Advanced 100 Years Ago

Canuck as I recall you were the one in another thread who didn't know how cover cropping worked. Cover cropping is one of the most basic organic methods.

Your brain is so poisoned with chemical herbicides and ferts that you don't even remember what real farming is.

I bet you drive around in an air conditioned tractor. That ain't real farming buddy.

Re: Good Farming Was More Advanced 100 Years Ago

Quote:

Originally Posted by CANUCKFARMER (Post 1857514)

Tell me what you do for a living,and i'll tell YOU how its so wrong.

You want everyone farming?Brillant.

Ever heard of division of labour.

Know how many times you have to plough dirt without chemicals?

Ever heard of summerfallow?

Do you know how long it takes to build up topsoil?

Do you understand the importance of soybeans,corn,wheat,rice and how many calories they provide the worlds populas?

Do you know if ferts and herbicides where eliminated there would be a 70% drop in the yields of these crops?

There wasn't an increase of 70% in product when farmers started using chemicals.... and Yes, actually, a lot of us DO want more people farming in more locations so we're not growing single crops on mega farms and shipping as much.

A lot of us in this forum farm/garden for ourselves. Yes, we know how many times it takes to plow a field for what we do and some of us also grow organically. Yes, we do know how long it takes to build good soil. We know what fallow is, too.

Sounds to me you're worried about job security.

Re: Good Farming Was More Advanced 100 Years Ago

Real Farming?
My grandaddy still lives a few hundred yards away from me and he started behind a horse.
Not only do i here his stories,but he tells me his grandaddys stories.
I was ringing chickens necks,castrating steers and picking beans in gardens that dwarf anything ever posted here-for as far back as my memory goes.

Maybe i'm the only real farmer here?

100% of my income comes from a farm,so maybe my opinion matters.

And i'm not really worried about job security-i might pick up another thousand acres next year.

Re: Good Farming Was More Advanced 100 Years Ago

Quote:

Originally Posted by CANUCKFARMER (Post 1858203)

Let me spell it out for you.....

Most of us are not interested in sitting in a combine 5 days a week. We aren't going to grow thousands of acres of GMO Frankenfoods using Monsanto's chemical collection, and we're not looking for that kind of advice.

You're not the only "real" farmer. You just have decided that nobody else is.

You might be the only INDUSTRIAL farmer, but again, this isn't a board rife with people looking for info on that.