curious

It is curious that those who are advancing veganism as a one size cure all for everything from obesity to climate change have not seen fit to talk to any farmers.  Now by "farmers" I do not mean commodity groups or political pressure groups or traditional farm groups.  I mean rather some of those farmers who would respond favorably to being called biodynamic or organic or grass farmers.  If an emissary from the intellectual capital of the world-New York and environs-were to make it into the great middle part of the country, she may find a satisfying number of people involved with the land who know that the Middle East is an area desertified by civilizations that fed the overwhelming majority of their people plant based diets. 
She might also find farmers that could tell her that in this time of complete compendiums of knowledge-ask Google-we know fewer than a tenth of the species that we think live in the soil, and even less what they do.  These farmers would know that most of what they know of the soil, they have learned from observation, not academic study.  They would be able to say that perennial agriculture such as pasture and hay crops is most beneficial to the soil, that some of this benefit could be mimicked by using cover crops in and between annual cash crops, that the soil needs animal impact.  Most of these farmers keep steadily in mind that bison, wolves and Indians built the hugely productive grasslands in the country's midsection. 
These farmers know that the best measure of soil health we have today is the percentage of organic matter, that this percentage drops with regular tillage and compaction but is built with perennial plants and grazing animals.  And they are beginning to understand that good grazing practice can build it faster than we previously thought.  People who understand increasing organic matter and its function know that it reduces erosion on land in use and it sequesters carbon. 

grazing land

I spent the morning and much of the afternoon tromping across 120 acres of possible rental land coming out of CRP.  I was trying to investigate the possibilities for a cow calf herd being maintained there.The whole experience was difficult in the snow melt and through the volunteer trees and brush, but there are some things to be happy about.  One of these, though, was not when I happened upon the southwest perimeter, a high steep knoll sloping down toward an occasional creek behind me.  We had already told the owner we would rent the land for grazing only, that it was not suitable for row cropping and to do so would be wrong.  Looking down from my perch on the knoll, across the property line, I could see the effect of corn cropping on inappropriate land.  There was a six foot drop off from the perimeter to the tilled corn field and the soil on the corn field was completely yellow in that location.  The topsoil that should have been there, and was there on my side, due to the CRP use, was gone on the other side, run to the bottom and the creek that drains it.  Perhaps five feet deep on the near side to a foot down to the yellow on the far side and a width of seventy five feet and more.  Tons and tons of valuable black soil, gone forever.  As a farmer, I was sick looking at it

This is on us, both us farmers who have forgotten how to be farmers and the politicians who aid and abet our view of ourselves as economic animals only, with no agriCULTURE anywhere to be found.  

Sunrise at Pastures A Plenty

We made an important change in our farrowing pens to compensate for sow behavior.  As you can see in the top photo, which shows two empty pens, sows are able to come up toward the black gate and visit with each other across our center alley.   This results in manure and urine being deposited too high in the pen and the slope toward the gutter-on the near side of the photos, but not visible-causes the entire pen, bedding and all to be constantly wet.  We found we needed to blind the pen so that the sow could not see the animals across the center alley, but would need to stand down in the gutter end of the pen in order to visit through the fence.  (This grate in the pen partition is partially visible in the lower photo) 
The materials used for blinding the pen were medium weight sheet steel welded on to the pipes of the pig creep gate and primed and painted.  We invested perhaps three hundred dollars plus time spent to make this changeover on all of our thirty strawed pens.
You will notice that the sow in the lower picture has given up on seeing her mate across the center alley and is concentrating her attention on the animals next to her.  To encourage this behavior, we do all our feeding from the outside alley, on the floor, as well as cleaning the pen, which of course must happen there.  We do distribute bedding from the center.
It is important to add that this is a good layout for farrowing as well, for the sow at farrowing wants to back into a cave like surrounding so that she may birth her pigs while keeping a watchful eye on the open area from which danger might approach, which is us, in this case, from her instinctive point of view.  That deposits her piglets up into the warm well strawed area.  This kind of understanding of pig behavior is important in layout of any new farrowing construction.  It is easier not to fight Mother Nature.