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I'm not a big fan of the organic food movement because it's not based on sound science. For example, all fertilizers, whether inorganic or organic, contain 3 main chemical elements: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K). Arguing that these chemicals coming from cow/chicken/horse poop are somehow "better" than coming from mined/synthetic versions of these same chemicals is downright silly. It's cheaper if you have the critters to produce it, but organic fertilizer is not somehow "better" chemically. In fact, depending upon your soil requirements for trace minerals and what you are raising, it may be less than satisfactory since inorganic fertilizers can be created with the elements adjusted for specific purposes.
I couldn't care less about some movement. Your post reveals you to be scientifically challenged about ecosystems. Sustainable practices are sound.
Composted manure is not the only way to maintain soil health.*Permaculture is another way and is*practically maintenance free.* Soil health is the most important thing which is not commonly understood.* When this is understood, little effort is required to grow food.* Local native edibles are even easier to cultivate because they are naturally adapted to the local environmental conditions and resistant to disease pests.* Pesticides, for example, create a mess because they kill off the predator insects that eat the pests.**
Chemical-dependent farming is more efficient for large-scale but it's not sustainable.* The soil is stripped and natural filtering of ground water is eliminated so high levels of nitrogen can, and do, end up in drinking water.* One must have the ability to grasp biological ecosystems to fully understand it. Chemically-driven methods deplete the soil which result in increased crop disease and pests.* This is one of the reasons the industrial crop industry genetically modifies seeds*to be more resistant because of the unsustainability of the soil using chemical-driven methods.* The soil depletion that has been going on for decades is also one of the reasons ag is clearing out and moving on a large scale to third world countries.* We're all tapped out.* They can have a field day with unsustainable practices and such over there.* But it will raise the standard of living for those people...
*
That last part is satirical
eta, don't know where the phantom asterisks came from
If you want to grow your own fruits, vegetables, and grains and raise your own livestock for meat, dairy, and eggs because you think it's "better", you and Scarlet and anybody else who are true believers in "organic is better" are welcome to do it. Cut your own firewood for cooking and eating from your own land, too, while you're at it. Invest all your $$$ in solar panels or wind turbines if that's your thing. If you want to work 16 hour days doing all this stuff by hand for bragging rights to being "self sufficient", knock yourself out. Just understand that nobody is preventing you from doing that. Nobody is "resisting" anything but your spreading your own propaganda around this thread.
I never accused you of resisting and scarlet is someone I don't even know . I am not spreading any propaganda, we are simply discussing facts. You claim that modern conventional agricultural practices are as good as old, tried and true, chemical free organic practices. I am disputing that and that's no propaganda
I couldn't care less about some movement. Your post reveals you to be scientifically challenged about ecosystems. Sustainable practices are sound.
Composted manure is not the only way to maintain soil health.*Permaculture is another way and is*practically maintenance free.* Soil health is the most important thing which is not commonly understood.* When this is understood, little effort is required to grow food.* Local native edibles are even easier to cultivate because they are naturally adapted to the local environmental conditions and resistant to disease pests.* Pesticides, for example, create a mess because they kill off the predator insects that eat the pests.**
Chemical-dependent farming is more efficient for large-scale but it's not sustainable.* The soil is stripped and natural filtering of ground water is eliminated so high levels of nitrogen can, and do, end up in drinking water.* One must have the ability to grasp biological ecosystems to fully understand it. Chemically-driven methods deplete the soil which result in increased crop disease and pests.* This is one of the reasons the industrial crop industry genetically modifies seeds*to be more resistant because of the unsustainability of the soil using chemical-driven methods.* The soil depletion that has been going on for decades is also one of the reasons ag is clearing out and moving on a large scale to third world countries.* We're all tapped out.* They can have a field day with unsustainable practices and such over there.* But it will raise the standard of living for those people...
*
That last part is satirical
eta, don't know where the phantom asterisks came from
At the risk of being accused of colluding with you, I will say thank you for the post, at least maybe someone will learn something from this thread
But, you are leaving out a part of the equation: you are giving something up in return for the 40 hr week, no?
Very true. Specializing for my 40 hour (or whatever) work week, I fail to experience many of the elemental aspects of survival. It's the proverbial failure to "smell the roses". I don't have the time. And from lack of effort or interest, my sense of smell has atrophied. Driving to work every morning, I don't observe the various trees or attempt to identify their species. Neither do I wonder about the various grasses or the soil or species of birds or types of clouds in the sky, or whether rain is incipient. I don't have any familiarity with the names of the constellations, and can't couldn't distinguish the North Star from Venus.
Is this trade worthwhile? For me, very much so. I'm a pretty decent aeronautical engineer, an OK writer, photographer and chess player. I'm a lousy farmer, shepherd, cowherd, lumberjack, or gardener. I respect other people's interest in those pursuits, just as I respect interest in ancient Chinese pottery or Talmudic exegesis. Civilization would be the poorer if those things became lost, though personally I don't much care about them.
Food comes from big rectangular buildings situated on land zoned for commerce. They are called "supermarkets", or "restaurants". Various people work in those buildings, coming and going, stocking shelves, pushing carts, slicing meat. I don't know any of them. It's impolite not to greet them, to desist from eye contact. I prefer to remain polite. But what they do, or how they are supervised, concerns me very little.
Meanwhile, I do my thing, in my rectangular building. I don't slice meat or stock shelves, but I have other instruments to move around and to handle, and other people whom I kindly ask to do likewise.
Occupants of one rectangular building interact with occupants of another, exchanging goods and services, through a medium called money. "Money" is little rectangular snips of paper, or their electronic equivalent, that has a floating but largely accepted value. It is because of those snips of paper that I can't tell apart a cedar from a maple, and am barely able to distinguish a llama from a sheep. I've become ignorant of those things; maybe even complacent. Is this brainwashing? Have we heaped our fortunes and expectations on some artificial pile, growing ever more unstable as it grows taller, until some great and ineluctable catastrophe rudely disabuses us of our childish illusions? Maybe. But I don't worry about that. I'm too busy accumulating those rectangular snips of paper, handing some of them to people who know something about nature that I don't, and handing others of them to people who know something about investments that I don't, for a future that I can't possibly fathom, let alone know.
On a thread about 'Self-Sufficiency and Preparedness' you say that 'nobody is preventing', 'Nobody is resisting'; while at the same time you are openly spreading propaganda against it.
Which is preventing / resisting.
That is funny
I was going to mention that. And, more generally, beyond your point, this forum is supposed to be about self-sufficiency and/or preparedness. I don't see the point of bothering to come here if one is not interested in self-sufficiency and/or preparedness. I don't haunt the Sports or Technology forums because I have zero interest in either and I would have only negative things to say about both. And, in my opinion, me going there and doing that would be unfair to those who are genuinely interested in those things. But, then again, it's a free country. Some folks like to talk about things they have zero interest in... I guess.
Some folks like to talk about things they have zero interest in... I guess.
They have plenty of interest in us; they want the government to suppress us. They want us to obey and conform. De Toqueville predicted this when he opined that Americans' demand for equality, really sameness, would overcome any love of liberty in these United States.
They have plenty of interest in us; they want the government to suppress us. They want us to obey and conform. De Toqueville predicted this when he opined that Americans' demand for equality, really sameness, would overcome any love of liberty in these United States.
It's too bad more people haven't been exposed to his writings of the United States at that time, and too bad as well, that those same people cannot critically assess the differences between the America he critiques and our Amerika. And of course, his general writings.
... which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom ...
Occupants of one rectangular building interact with occupants of another, exchanging goods and services, through a medium called money. "Money" is little rectangular snips of paper, or their electronic equivalent, that has a floating but largely accepted value. It is because of those snips of paper that I can't tell apart a cedar from a maple, and am barely able to distinguish a llama from a sheep. I've become ignorant of those things; maybe even complacent.
The problem is that those "little snips of paper" are not money, but Federal Reserve Notes, and as a controlled currency (which all but those truly asleep, know is being heavily printed to keep this economy from collapsing), we do not have any input into maintaining its purchasing power. We are not the ones who control that. We are just the ones required to use it, according to legal tender laws.
When that currency floats its way down the River of History (and it's on the riverbank now), we will all be forced to scramble for the fruits of life that "specialization" has robbed us of, and the "little snips of paper" will no longer serve as a medium of exchange to procure them. It is this scenario that gives one pause, that pokes us in the gut and says, "Are you able to subsist without it?". That scenario - or one similar to it - is what drives those of us on this forum. We are not content to live under the thumb of 'the man'.
I humbly suggest that you learn to tell a cedar from a maple.
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. I am not spreading any propaganda, we are simply discussing facts. You claim that modern conventional agricultural practices are as good as old, tried and true, chemical free organic practices. I am disputing that and that's no propaganda 
