Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: just Warren on September 10, 2015, 05:36:53 PM
-
It involves using massive herds of animals (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI)to renew desertified areas.
Even if he's not right, but given his examples it looks like he is, it's still an excuse to raise more meat.
The more meat out there the lower the cost. That means more steak and ribs and bacon and chops for us.
-
I found this a bit more efficient at delivering the gist of his notions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Savory
Is he talking about just taking the world's beef cattle herds, and free-ranging them? ???
-
I gather that he's talking about all grazers that herd up not just cows.
And in the video they are encouraging villagers to put their herds together so I guess that's what would happen here.
And because of the way the flora renews there would be so much food that the herds would grow to sizes we can't even imagine and that's where the inexpensive meat (and hides etc) would come from.
-
I found this a bit more efficient at delivering the gist of his notions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Savory
Is he talking about just taking the world's beef cattle herds, and free-ranging them? ???
Not exactly. Putting them in movable paddocks at high density, and moving as soon as they graze it down and trash the place. I don't see how you bootstrap it; maybe it only works in places that aren't totally barren yet, and you start in the rainy season. After a while, the grassland starts encroaching on the desert instead of the other way around.
-
The criticism section has some links also.
In a 2014 article in The Guardian writer George Monbiot, citing the criticisms of Briske and others, looked into the claims made by Savory and concluded that there was no scientific evidence to support them.
There is not universal agreement at least and I am suspicious of liberals when they glom onto a solution, knowing some of the "solutions" they come up with. The belief in global warming alone makes me suspicious of his critical analytical abilities.
-
I don't care about the climate change angle. I want more beef, pork, and mutton so if it gets us more food on the hoof do we care?
As long as no one loses property rights and it's not tax funded of course.
-
I've been reading about this tonight. Some of the places that try it say the cattle are stressed and lose weight, and it requires huge amounts of supplemental feed. And then the land doesn't seem to do any better than under conventional grazing. I think there are several problems; some with his theory and some with those testing it.
The impressive before-and-after pictures in his TED talk IIRC were taken 20 or 30 years apart. That's both good and bad. (of course it is) It shows that for whatever reason desertification in that area was reversed rather than get worse as it usually does. How long were the USA tests? Were they objective?
Has anyone tried using buffalo? Or maybe Texas longhorns if you must use cattle. They also keep saying 400% increase in number of cattle. 400% increase in herd density makes a lot more sense; if the land will support 100 head of free range cattle, you don't put 500 head on it, you confine the 100 to 20% of the area at a time (that doesn't sound right; you probably want a much smaller area, at least a first.) But the 100 head should remain the same until the land starts to heal and its carrying capacity increases.
The enviroweenies have too much invested in the Global Warming Climate Change meme, and are convinced cattle are the devil. Cargill, Monsanto, ADM, the US Dept of Agriculture, the US Dept of the Interior, and other big corporate interests (see what I did there?) have a good thing going with the current system and will try to derail any disruptive technologies. Even the United Nations has a conflict of interest; the crises in Africa gives them relevance so they don't want anything actually solved.
Mr. Savory (I thought it might be Dr. but it's not) explained away a lot of questions using handwaving rather than real answers. I give him a pass on the Climate Change issue; throw the weenies a bone and then say you have a solution. Topsoil does sequester a lot of carbon, but his "people who know far more than I" line without actually naming any of those people sound like he was making up statistics.
ETA: one more important thing I forgot to mention; he ignores the part where the animals themselves eventually return the the grasslands when they die. When raised for beef, they'll be harvested and taken out completely of the system in less than 2 years.
It looks somewhat legit and way overhyped at the same time to me. Maybe you have to hype it up to get anyone to listen. Has anyone verified those pictures he showed?
-
Grass fed beef? [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf]
-
Grass fed beef? [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf] [barf]
If you don't want it, the rest of us get more.
-
If you don't want it, the rest of us get more.
I'll finish mine on corn, the way God intended them to be.
-
I'll finish mine on corn, the way God intended them to be.
Who said you couldn't? The cows my Grandpa got butchered years ago were put on feed for 6 weeks or so before the knife.
-
Who said you couldn't? The cows my Grandpa got butchered years ago were put on feed for 6 weeks or so before the knife.
I know most US consumption cattle are raised on grass/hay then finished on corn in a feed lot.
I was trying to be funny since cattle by design should only eat forage type foodstuffs. Corn is actually pretty hard on the their digestive systems.
-
How does all this tie in with the theories that were never tried to bring back the prairies after the Dust Bowl era?
And will we want prairies instead of swaths of agricultural land? As I understand it as long as we don't run out of dead dinosaur juice we can keep raping the flatlands for corn and wheat and the like at a rate that could feed most of the world. Prairies do not support that quantity of foodstuff.
Skip all the detailed responses and possible scenarios - just answer "Yes" or "No".
stay safe.
-
How does all this tie in with the theories that were never tried to bring back the prairies after the Dust Bowl era?
And will we want prairies instead of swaths of agricultural land? As I understand it as long as we don't run out of dead dinosaur juice we can keep raping the flatlands for corn and wheat and the like at a rate that could feed most of the world. Prairies do not support that quantity of foodstuff.
Skip all the detailed responses and possible scenarios - just answer "Yes" or "No".
stay safe.
In these parts, you can't swing a dead spotted owl without hitting a "prairie reclamation" site. I just found a new one yesterday. There's another one on some corner of land at the intersection of I-44 and I-270, outside of St. Louis. Some place that has long been a patch of grass is now a patch of tall grass with a sign. I don't know if it just means that someone can get away with not cutting the grass on that spot, or if it also means they get my tax money.
-
We will run out of dinosaur juice eventually. Seems to be a long way off and getting longer rather than shorter, but the supply is not unlimited.
Has anyone suggested turning all farmlands into prairie? In some places that might make sense I guess, if they're running out of groundwater.
-
How does all this tie in with the theories that were never tried to bring back the prairies after the Dust Bowl era?
And will we want prairies instead of swaths of agricultural land? As I understand it as long as we don't run out of dead dinosaur juice we can keep raping the flatlands for corn and wheat and the like at a rate that could feed most of the world. Prairies do not support that quantity of foodstuff.
Skip all the detailed responses and possible scenarios - just answer "Yes" or "No".
stay safe.
Prairies provide quality foodstuff for the animals that evolved with them. If you do rotational grazing (and weed control) you can get do pretty good with cattle on native grasses and forbs.
In regards to farming, eventually our current system of row crop agriculture will turn the Midwest into a desert, even with an inexhaustible supply of petroleum. Petroleum will more than likely run out first. That being said we have bigger problems with modern ag, such as reduced water quality.