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Re: The Limits To Growth



l.mcfadden@mail.utexas.edu (Loretta McFadden) wrote:

>Harold - "natural regeneration?" And how many conventional farmers add
>anything but petroleum-derived fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides to
>their soil? Tell me, what do you know about farming and the pressures
>conventional farmers are under to strip-mine the soil? "Fallow years?"
>You're sticking your head in that denatured soil and closing your eyes to
>reality. 
 
Betsy,
 
When you chop the head off corn, you still leave some stalk above
ground, and a root system comparable in size to the entire
above-ground plant.  All of this has been grown out of nitrogen and
carbon in the air, plus water, plus fertilizer, since the previous
spring.  All of it will rot into humus, together with the bodies of
dead bacteria, over the forthcoming winter.  
 
This is the regeneration of the soild which goes on every year.
 
In North American agriculture, fallow years are the planting of an
alternate crop, typically alfalfa, but often soybeans or peanuts, to
fix nitrogen in the soil, hence cutting down on the ammonia bill.  In
southern Ontario the alfalfa cycle is typically one year on four, but
people with more cattle in their mix may grow alfalfa every other
year, with winter wheat, oats or barley in between.  The nitrogen from
the alfalfa feeds the grain; the stalk and root from the grain feed
the alfalfa.
 
                                      -dlj.



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