12. Future Thinking
Modern methods of plant and animal management are so powerful a force that modern land management methods will ultimately determine the future of all life on this planet. Our ability to manage plants and animals has fueled human evolution. For one to say “leave those eggs to grow” is one example of the process that perhaps started 2 to 10 million years ago? It is this ability to manage that has determined where people live. Pollution is a failure to manage where we live.
100,000 years ago prior to human settlement – Australia was a vast forest – a possum could have traveled from one side of the continent to the other without ever leaving a tree. “Firestick Farming” is useful to reduce tree density over time and increase available protein (via grasslands) as a readily available food source. Forest dwelling people have never suffered from overpopulation due to a lack of edible animal protein.
Burning of grassland and forest reduces soil fertility. The only way to enhance grassland fertility (to its optimum production potential) is to eliminate burning of grasslands and forests and rely upon grazing instead.
Grasslands are potentially more productive than forests because they can create humus faster than trees. The most efficient method of increasing grassland productivity is from grazing management based on pasture rest and recovery. Modern people are only now starting to realise the potential of animal grazing management. Grazing animals are so powerful a force that they may be managed to eliminate intensive animal feedlots that rely upon grain to fatten animals for slaughter -. without causing a global food shortage.
If everything we produce and consume and re-use is made from plants and animals, it is logically possible, to increase consumption, without any pollution. Methods are many. Knowledge of plant and animal management is a powerful force. Common sense has little to do with it, for common sense itself is an acquired asset as is management. Tools, skills and knowledge are the best things anyone modern person can have.
It is only possible to be a good designer, maker and modifier of lands by knowing how you will manage what you design, make or modify. Despite the best of intentions there is a multi-billion dollar waste industry based on landscaping and land design simply because those involved have employed concepts and methods without understanding how they will manage what they make.
We may logically organise people, plants and all other animals to produce no waste, whilst providing for all of our needs. Prior to the domestication of animals, all animals were solar powered. Processing of meat was limited to cooking with renewable fuels and utensils. Modern methods of production have become dependent upon fossil fuels. So, as animals have been domesticated, so has production and consumption. Yet, simply by understanding the natural processes of soil, plant and animal fertility, it is possible for people to revert exclusively to solar powered protein, fat and carbohydrate production and consumption.
People “protesting against politicians failing to act about global warming” can only be effective by changing what they consume and the method of producing what they consume. It is how people manage biological resources that will determine the future of life on this planet. Good planets are hard to find.
THIS STORY IS UNDER DEVELOPMENT – THE CORE BUSINESS OF Gardeners and Graziers is to provide Trees, Plants, Animals, Seeds and Knowledge for People to Develop Useful and Productive Plant and Animal Ecosystems. WHILE IT IS EASY to Criticise many Methods of Modern Farming – Our Objective is to Try and Offer Something that may be Better for Willing Buyers from Willing Sellers. You’re Smart – You Choose What You Eat.
There simply is no other way for modern people to become “inert components of the environment” other than to use plants and animals in a logical manner to eliminate fossil fuel dependency. Any sustainable system must produce more, or, the same amount of energy that it consumes. Everything is energy. The existing carbon reduction formula is wrong. It can not reduce emissions. Carbon emissions in Australia and the World are increasing. TO SUCCESSFULLY SEQUESTER CARBON you also NEED TO KNOW HOW TO SEQUESTER NITROGEN. JT “Lionheart” Notch. Staff Writer for Gardeners and Graziers.
The Vegans Dilemma. Many a time an omnivore has become a vegan or vegetarian or fruitarian even. The reasons are many and varied for one to change ones diet. Where grain crops now grow, there once stood a forest, a prairie, a savannah grassland, a treeless plain, a steppe, grazing herbivores, birds and reptiles. Lets Free the Slaves and Kill the Indians. Plants cannot exist without animals. Animals cannot exist without plants…..Vegans ?
The Farmers Dilemma. Good Farmers can grow magnificent food. Fossil fuel energy is part of the job. All food is ultimately dependent upon carbon commodities. However, the consumer will expend more energy simply eating that food, (than the farmer took to produce it). The farmer is feeding a plague of people that has the potential to ultimately destroy most life on earth. Reason Being: Agriculture creates 25% of Greenhouse Gas Emissions…which then leaves 75% of Emissions actually being produced by Urban People. Some politicians and farmers insist that all remaining potential arable land be cleared to grow crops to feed animals to feed people who live overseas in cities….Farmers it should be noted, are also good at producing a lot of poor quality food to feed poor people who live in towns and cities…if you think that $4.00 kg Whole Chickens from the Supermarket are good for anything or anyone…you must be off your little rocker….Farmers?
The City Folks Dilemma…..Those who consume 1 litre of petrol to go to the shop to buy a litre of milk ? Plastic bags are 1% of the plastic pollution problem. Ban the Bag? Why bother unless you fix the rest ? Town people need servants to empty their “human manure buckets”, and the same servants don’t do a very efficient or useful job of it. They tend to waste it, and town people tend to contaminate it. A country that can’t process its own waste is wasted? AND they don’t like farmers who cut down forests…..City Folks?
The Politicians Dilemma….must pander to both urban and rural voters….tragic waste example is the use of government money to pay graziers not to clear their country and to “farm carbon”. Most of these schemes are taking place in country that is not viable to clear due to the low land value verses the actual cost of clearing. If graziers were to plan ahead with realistic stocking rates and manage land with grazing to increase soil carbon content (as thousands are learning to do well all around the globe) profits increase and pollution decreases. So why pay someone not to clear country that no one would normally clear ! Yes Minister ?
The most influential land manager on the planet today is Allan Savory. Millions of hectares of grassland is being rehabilitated by grazing management. If you have an interest in Holistic Grazing Management we recommend you follow Allan Savory talking on YouTube. The bottom line of his research over the last 60 years is actually described on our Home Page of this web site.
The Omnivores Solution…herbivores eat pasture and grass…yet many are fed on grain…humans are omnivores yet some are vegan…the chicken is an omnivore…yet most are fed on grains and some meat… So if all animals ate what they were designed to eat, a natural energy efficiency advantage is an automatic advantage.
Paddock to Sewer to Paddock could replace Paddock to Plate Contests.
The most efficient use of grains is “egg production”. Yet this is a merely a simplification of a complete process. Chickens also need meat protein from insects or another source, for without they will become stunted and unproductive. They also eat green plants. The chicken is a useful gardener. The person who eats the egg is a useful fertiliser maker and manager…….potentially……….
WHERE THIS STORY is heading ? A chicken can eat all of the offal from slaughtered animals if the offal is converted into insect larvae, if you know how. All of that offal and chicken manure is also fertiliser for fruit and vegetable production. So Vegans can eat well with food produced by natural energy, as can omnivores. WE WILL FINISH THIS STORY as SOON as we have the DATA to back this up….which will be soon because we are working on it………and the results are promising…………at work in the Longyard Garden………….