RE: Real farms?

From: Lion Kuntz (lionkuntz@email.com)
Date: Tue Apr 11 2000 - 16:34:31 EDT

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I enjoy beef, and milk. I buy it at the store. That is the most cost-effective thing most of us to
do. I recommend small livestock for a number of reasons:
1) high feed-to-weight ratio, typically 4 pounds of feed produces 1 pound of meat at slaughter.
2) short cycle time from birth to slaughter, typically 8 to 12 weeks.
3) smaller space requirements. One beef cattle typically needs two acres of pasture for two years.
About the same pasture is needed for one milk cow. People who have large acreages should do these
things. Many other people should support those beef and dairy farmers, including micro-farmers.

Hay can be bought-in at lower prices than land-acquisition and equipment costs to grow your own. My
definition of micro-farming always included alfalfa hay inputs for the rabbits, who could eat some
grass, although as the ruminent with the shortest digestive system they do not live on grass as
their principle diet. Hayfields can be grown on surplus acreage, hiring a neighbor to harvest and
bale it. Equipment sharing is more efficient than equipment duplications. Small livestock need much
less hay.

Straw is another bought-in item, in areas where it is locally available and cheap. Again, it is most
cost effective to buy it rather than produce it for the quantities consumed.

I suggest that you hesitate when you see yourself using words like "nonsense" and "hopelessly
inadequate". You have a thesis which you assert, which is in clear competition with the thesis I
have published on scores of webpages on my website. I am wiling to engage in fair competition for
the public consideration of how to think about sustainable farming. You have been warned once that
unfair competition by using prohibited forms of speech is punishable by libel tort action, and that
a pattern of maliciousness or reckless disregard of the truth is perceived by my complaints to you.

You and I do not agree. In my opinion, cattle, dairy, pigs, goats and large pastures are for rich
farmers who can afford the luxury of all that expensive land, taxes and equipment. You describe
feeling that luxury is worth the reduction in your net productivity as measured by cash income. I
forgo the desire for that luxury, and I will buy your milk at the store, but I am sorry that your
addiction to luxury limits you to the small income you seem to think is the limit imposed on
EVERYBODY. You created your limitations, and I have reminded you that others do not feel bound by
them. We both have the same freedom of speech to limit our statements to true things which do not
infringe upon the rights of others to enjoy their freedoms. We have prisons because some people do
not feel obligated to live by the rules, and we have civil courts so that we learn to be civil, like
it or not.

You have said that people cannot learn from books or other people's experience, but there can be no
other purpose for SANET to exist except learning from others experience through their words. I can
go to the SANET archives of two years ago and produce records of verbal abuse from persons who could
not argue against my message, so they tried to discredit the messenger.

Argue my points: I will acknowledge error if you prove it to me, and I expect similar from you. Keep
away from insults because I have made it clear that I will not permit that tactic of discrediting
the ideas by attacks on the messenger. In a courtroom if I prove that one person anywhere is making
a net median income from micro-farming as I asserted it, you have bet your farm and lost it for the
passing luxury of public slurs. Police your mouth and typing fingers to what you are capable of
proving in court is true.

The archives show that unpunished spontanious juntas can harassingly suppress discussion about the
options of micro-farming. Apparently, only enforcement of civil laws to keep conduct civil, is the
route to free discourse. I maintain the scores of pages on my website (and various mirror sites) so
that people have an option available to them free from the intimidation of hostilities which used to
be present here.

Attached below your message segment I am responding to, is the alphabetical list of website pages I
have published. I am here to speak for myself, but if you choose to "speak for me" or "interpret"
what I stand for or believe or am asserting, you ought to read what I have said myself before you
translate (or mistranslate).

Signed, Lion Kuntz

------Original Message------
From: "Andy Lee & Pat Foreman" <goodearth@rockbridge.net>
To: sanet-mg@cals.ncsu.edu
Sent: April 10, 2000 2:35:41 PM GMT
Subject: Real farms?

[large section snipped, see archives for full-text original message]
This is in no way meant to dampen Lion's enthusiasm, quite the opposite.
I've already adopted some of his suggestions, knowing that he is right about
some of these things. However, his thesis also has points that I feel are
hopelessly inadequate.

One point he makes is that large livestock shouldn't
be on a micro-farm. Nonsense. If you have chickens on range you
will get good grass, no doubt about it. You can't feed grass to your CSA
members until you run it
through a ruminant. You either have to make hay, which requires huge
investment in equipment, or you graze it with beef, pigs, sheep or meat
goats.
Ideally, you would graze that excess grass with milk cows, which I believe
would provide the highest possible return on grass. Even then, the per acre
income from
multi-cropping poultry, market gardens and milk, assuming you have an
of-farm processing facility
and direct market, would be less than $10,000 per acre range.

However, that's still a lot better than the few hundred dollars (or less)
per acre that most farms make now.

Regards,

Andy Lee
==============================
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Next message: edie dasher: "Anyone planted beets into hairy vetch and rye no till?"
Previous message: Bluestem Associates: "BOLIVIA -- water"
Maybe in reply to: Andy Lee & Pat Foreman: "Real farms?"
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