Separating grazing animals physically from grain production and sequestering them in feed lots to fatten them up on grain byproducts isn’t as efficient as it is made out to be. New research is showing that desertification can be stopped, and reversed even, managing grazing. The invention of chemical fertilizers is hailed as revolutionary…
Separating grazing animals physically from grain production and sequestering them in feed lots to fatten them up on grain byproducts isn’t as efficient as it is made out to be. New research is showing that desertification can be stopped, and reversed even, managing grazing. The invention of chemical fertilizers is hailed as revolutionary, in a good way, but it has led to lazy agricultural practices that degrade soil and fill our waterways with toxic runoff that chokes everything with algae blooms and invasive plants. Bill Gates in encouraging a plant based diet supplemented with bugs seems to want to exacerbate this trend into turning everything into a wasteland (soil has been lost at an incredible rate).
There were huge numbers of buffalo here on unfenced pastures and the soil in the prairie was meters deep. How many dustbowls must we create before we recognize that grazing herds are vital? Fencing everything, from Africa to the midwest of the US and chopping down every ecosystem, cuts off migration routes of animals whose hooves and manure keep soils healthy and productive.
Droughts in the west are getting worse and worse as we pump water out of aquifers to use not in watering trees or other perennial plants, but to frack? Trees are a huge part of the water cycle. Cutting them down to replace them with tract homes and lawns, which are also watered with what should be drinking water, does not support a healthy water cycle and we are watching that happen, without recognizing that it’s not just carbon that influences climate change.
Separating grazing animals physically from grain production and sequestering them in feed lots to fatten them up on grain byproducts isn’t as efficient as it is made out to be. New research is showing that desertification can be stopped, and reversed even, managing grazing. The invention of chemical fertilizers is hailed as revolutionary, in a good way, but it has led to lazy agricultural practices that degrade soil and fill our waterways with toxic runoff that chokes everything with algae blooms and invasive plants. Bill Gates in encouraging a plant based diet supplemented with bugs seems to want to exacerbate this trend into turning everything into a wasteland (soil has been lost at an incredible rate).
There were huge numbers of buffalo here on unfenced pastures and the soil in the prairie was meters deep. How many dustbowls must we create before we recognize that grazing herds are vital? Fencing everything, from Africa to the midwest of the US and chopping down every ecosystem, cuts off migration routes of animals whose hooves and manure keep soils healthy and productive.
Droughts in the west are getting worse and worse as we pump water out of aquifers to use not in watering trees or other perennial plants, but to frack? Trees are a huge part of the water cycle. Cutting them down to replace them with tract homes and lawns, which are also watered with what should be drinking water, does not support a healthy water cycle and we are watching that happen, without recognizing that it’s not just carbon that influences climate change.