Growing Season

Okay... so vegetables take ten times the amount of compost as fertilizer than the yield of the plants. Hmm.

So... animal waste is an efficient fertilizer?

Won't letting fields go fallow help? Let a year's sunlight get plowed in?

Crop rotation, of course, as well...

Til in the plants, aside from the fruits themselves?

Make sure the soil is living soil, with bacteria and the like.... in fact, aren't bacteria eating plants doing the same thing as animals? So why are domesticated large animals neccesary?

Hmm.

Just thoughts,

Ok, vegetables taking ten times the amount of it's self to feed it's self is not entirely accurate. It would take ten times the plants nutrients and THEN some to feed a plant. You still need rock minerals.

As far as crop rotation, green manure, and fallowing fields are concerned, these are ALL good things to do, and many organics farmers do just that, but that's not all they do. Growing things takes nutrients out of the soil, and even doing all the things I just mentioned and more, you are going to need to put that back in to sustain healthy living soil, optimally manure. If your not adding that you have to add some extraneous nutrients such as "Rock Minerals". It's not imposable to grow a field organically and without anything animal added, but it's not easy and it's not sustainable.

If we're talking little back yard gardens, it's a bit different. You can whip up some nice compost using just rotting greens but it's going to take A LOT longer to decompose, I can't give any exact ratios cus frankly I don't know any, and I image it would depend on what types of greens they are. Anyhow you could use green compost, green manure, rock minerals, crop rotation, fallowing etc, and make it work with out manure or chemicals. But not on a large scale; mass agriculture, where most of us get our food from, is never going to agree to fallow fields; their too money oriented, anything that's not raking in a profit might as well not be their. For another thing it couldn't work for long, even if they did do things like crop rotation and field fallowing, because they need those rock minerals and there simply aren't enough rock minerals in the world to sustain a world of vegetarians who's diet is not grown using animal nutrients.

Yes, I do believe that animal "waste" is not only efficient, but the ideal fertilizer for plant growth. It adds everything to the soil that would otherwise have to be added individually and then some. Animals don't just pass plants through there systems, they add in perfectly balanced amounts of enzymes, trace minerals and everything else that is necessary for plants to grow (this is especially true for ruminants such as Cows, sheep or goats)

Some may argue that seaweed is the other natural alternative to animal nutrients. I believe personally that there has been enough bastardizing of the worlds delicate seabeds. There are precious few places left of untouched, unpolluted kelp and that is carefully managed and harvested. If we were to turn it in to a massive scale marketable product like a staple fertilizer, I don't even want to think about what havoc humans would reek on the eco system.

Even butchers don’t enjoy the process of actually killing animals, I certainly don’t, but I don’t separate my self from the reality that it is animals I’m eating. I consider it a necessary part of the cycle and I have yet to find an earth sustaining mass alternative that would be healthy for the animals, the planet and me. So I do what I believe in, I raise veggies in the summer, freezing as much as I can for the winter season, and raise organic, free range animals that for all the time they are on this earth live happy healthy natural lives. We work together in a beautiful cycle and I'm proud to be part of it. Thanks for starting this guys, I'm enjoying it a lot

Some types of vegetables (corn, for example) take up ten times the amount of compost fertilizer as the yield of the plants. Other plants (legumes) actually put nitrogen back into the soil.

Yes, animal waste is an efficient fertilizer, after it composts for a year or two. We also add all our vegetable waste (from the garden), and some rotting hay if we don't cut it at the right time. This would include your 'tilling in the plants.'

Letting fields go fallow doesn't put more nutrients in. It just lets the bacteria in the soil break down what's there. Growing a 'green manure' cover crop, like oats, and plowing it in before it goes to seed helps. Crop rotation is also important, as some types of vegetables take more out of the soil than others.

Bacteria in the soil are doing the same thing as large animals, as far as fertilizer. But the large animals also provide me with a lot of my food for the winter. That's why they're necessary.

If I lived in a climate where I could grow vegetables year-round, I would consider being mostly/totally vegetarian. But we don't grow grain, and we don't have a long enough growing season to depend on dried beans (sometimes we get them, sometimes we don't), so meat is our most reliable source of protein and iron for the winter. Yes, we freeze vegetables. But it would take more freezers than we have to store enough of them to survive on. Vegetables also degrade more in the freezer than meat does. Canning or drying them is even worse. - Nikki