This video was recorded on Nov. 18th 2014 at the Sustainable Agriculture Symposium sponsored by the Idaho Center for Sustainable Agriculture. This is segment 2 of 3 of a lecture by Joel Salatin.
- Big Concept #1: 'Animals move.' Isn't that one of the characteristics that distinguishes animals from plants?! - Another thought: Animals were meant to be OUTSIDE. Appropriate shelter is sometimes called for, and can often be provided outside: trees in a hedgerow to create a shelterbelt. Or trees dotted across meadows & fields for shade. Or the sunny side of a hill in winter. Etc. Animals were not made to live in barns. The practice of confining animals began in large part to concentrate the manure for use on gardens and grain fields - rather like the bio-digester. (The residue from bio-digesters as it comes out of the process is toxic to plants.)
'Bio-char' - a fancy new name for charcoal - can be useful in the soil. Apparently, especially in hot, humid climates dominated by trees that therefore do not tend to sequester carbon. (Grasses are much more efficient at pumping carbon into the soil, which feeds the microbes and fungi, which leads to increased soil fertility, improved soil structure, and stabilization of soil carbon.) However, soil scientist Dr. Elaine Ingham recommends caution when attempting to use it. Search RU-vid, the Internet, or visit her SoilFoodWeb site for more information.
To me it seems like a good method for introducing new life to dead soils. If you charge it with good compost it can be a safe place for life to grow from. But nothing beats having live plant roots in the soil year round. Root exudates are what ends up being stable soil carbon, crop residue is eventually consumed, but is of course also important.
Grasslands are fire climax environments and the soils are black in large part because of the charcoal in them. If you see black after a grass fire, that is charcoal, not ash.
Bio char isnt charcoal - it's charged charcoal. You think it would have helped if it had the exact same name when charged as when it isnt charged..? And if you dont know what charged mean you really shouldnt express an opinion as you havent spent 5 minutes educating yourself on it.
People need to understand that a certain percentage of livestock - no matter how coddled - will die each year. Often, this simply runs up expenses, and increases illness: animals in confinement, in barns or lots, have higher incidences of illness. Treatment often simply prolongs the animal's suffering. This may be hard for many who have no experience with livestock to understand, but it is true. Of course, farmers looking for functional genetics usually get rid of an animal as soon as it is obvious the animal is not thriving in that setting. Or, if it looks like reasonable care will help that animal to recover well enough to be harvested or sold, that is what happens. Or, the animal is put down. Regardless, sometimes animals will go down to far too fast to be helped, or found dead. Confinement poultry houses expect a certain percentage of birds to die each day, for instance. The universities tell them not to bother with necropsy or other efforts to find out what killed the bird until the % of deaths exceedes what is considered normal. Several vets have said that they expect a pretty high % of calves that come through auctions to get sick or die (% vary from one vet to another, but I have heard them say as high as 40% to get ill, and as many as 10% or more to die).
Jefferdaughter This is why it is so important to use a breed that is appropriate for your context, climate, access to feed, available breeding material, and much more. Many get hung up on some idea, and never reflect on the constraints they are working within. And yes, don't pamper animals. There are for example far less complications with sheep that lamb outside.
I was with the second dude up to the point of discussing food desserts and solving poverty by getting poor people to grow and sell food in vacant lots. The problem with this is that poor people 1.) don’t have the time it would take to grow and sell food due to capitalistic demands for wage labor to survive and 2.) due to private property, don’t have the rights to the lot.
