Scott Barber sbarber@mindspring.com
SECOND MESSAGE
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Lisa
You're inquiry is rather circuitous, but these are my guesstimates
#1 About .25 acre per year for vegetable, .2 acre per year for grains
..15 acre per year fruit and nut per person and about .4 acre per person
for meats , milk and egg products. I don't know about fish. Therefore
1000 people need about 1000 acres
#2 About 2.50 acres per beef animal combined pasture, hay and grains
per year. One average market size animal can supply about 10 people for
a year with average beef consumption.
eak: My insights: A beef animal 1200 lb. animal cuts out 33% of meat or 396
lb. (And in 12 months with out grain feeding you will be lucky to get close
to 900 lbs.) If 10 people can live off of one animal per year, that amounts
to 39.6 lbs of meat a year or .76 lb a week per person. Instead of a
meatless Friday, you can have a meat Friday. We have not mentioned what
acreage it takes to produce a milk cow, a few eggs and some fat for the
beans, maybe a porker. Actually the milk cow could be producing a meat beef
animal over the course of a year while supplying the family milk products,
even something for the hens and the hog if fed right (Although a milk cow's
calf would weigh out nearer to 750 lb in 12 months if done right, down on the
farm.)
Therefore you need about 100
animals for 1000 people. 250 acres for production.
#3 100 as described in 2
#4 Few beef are pastured in this country anymore. Most are confined fed
at huge feedlots which require tremendous amounts of antibiotics to fend
off epidemic bacterial and viral infections and extensive use of
synthetic hormones to push the animal to production early to reduce
mortality because of all the diseases and stressors they encounter. The
number of acres of course depends on where you operate. Pasture is not
useful in northern temperate from Nov thru April. If I tried to raise
1000 in central Indiana I would need at least 1500 acres of productive
pasture and 1500 acres of productive hay and crop land to bring 1000
beef to market size from birth operating organically and sustainably.
Conventionally , it could probably be done on 1250 and 1250 with
resultant destruction of natural ecosystems and degradation of many of
our resources and human health. 2500 acres for 1000 beef animals same as
#3 times 10. (3000 for sustainable organic production)
eak: Feed lot beef is used for "finishing" beef and is done from 500-800 or
800-1200 lb. usually. There are millions of acres in grazing of livestock in
the US. There is no question that beef or any meat animal fed a concentrate
mixture of grains and high legume content hay taste very good and cut with
the knife very easily. However, there is also no reason a farmer can't feed
concentrates on ones own farm, recycling the manure and even letting the
stock on pasture when climatically appropriate. There are real reasons for
not expecting cattle to graze on wet land, deep snows. However, feeding out
on snow automatically spreading the manure as you follow the moving daily hay
and concentrate feed works well. The vast amount of land used as grazing in
the US is either in a rotation, usually legume, if done well, or uses land
that would or should never be row cropped. Additionally, one of the most
important economic points for any farmer is to have a cash flow over the
entire year. Grain crops, cotton crops, produce a single cash sale for the
farmer, often stretching the debt and payment cycle to the limit. Meat
livestock production provides with milk and eggs over 50% of all on farm
receipts, a very significant part of US farm sustainablility. Vegetable,
fruit and nut crops do not compete for the same land area as grazing/hay land
because of there high return per acre. And the acreage is minuscule beside
field crop crop and grazing land.
The existing chemically intensive production systems now operating as
commercial livestock operations are as much in error as chemically intensive,
no-legume based rotation grains, fiber and row crop vegetables. A real
problem in organic farming is most organic farmers still only know only one
production sector--grains or vegetables or fruit--there is very little
diversification even among organic farmers. The challenge to the future
organic farmers is diversification of production with combined livestock,
vegetative production. The earlier US farmers were very successful on
diversified, legume based rotation, commercial size farms. Overheads were
very low, rotations in place and all the healthiest food possible for the
farm family came from the farm. 8 quality, well managed acres will put you
on easy street and pay the taxes and insurance, even a little vacation once
in a while. Let alone, you will soon know the skills of bettering the soil
and diversified farm production and can expand if you want. To me this is
real sustainability.
eak: It is interesting you came up with about the same acreage, 1 acre per
person, as the gentleman in India and Maryland. I guess I would agree you
could provide a family of 5 their food on 5 acres. After you supply your
food year in and year out on 5 acres do you consider that you still need to
go to work for money to meet taxes, buy children's shoes, other needs or are
you suggesting that one can sustain a lifestyle on 5 acres continually? Kane
thought so, of course they became Garden Way, selling gardening products to
folks. I think it has gone up to 8 or10 or 15 acres depending how north you
go Kane's book 5 Acres and Independence published in 1943.
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