Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
From the chickens' perspective, they are given the chance to live in the healthiest way possible,
doing what chickens do. Their waste is quickly composted or scattered gradually throughout the
property in their moveable pen, and never has the ability to build up to such noxious levels as to
become a pollutant and damage the land.
On a diFFerent Scale
Even if you live on a smaller area than we do and can't let your chickens free-range at all, you can still
implement a system for using their waste sustainably. Keep two compost areas going and use the aged
compost from one bin in your garden area, raised beds, or container gardens, while you are filling up the
second compost bin. Keep plenty of brown matter to mix in with your chicken manure to prevent any
odors from building up. (See Chapter 6 for more information about composting.)
The benefits to the earth are even more extreme when you consider the savings in fossil fuels.
In their topic
Ready, Set, Green; Eight Weeks to Modern Eco-Living,
Graham Hill and Meaghan
O'Neill discuss how a small-scale farm utilizing entirely organic methods will use 60 percent less
fossil fuel per pound of food than its conventional industrial counterpart.
We've all heard about the growing ecological expense of modern food. Author and food writer
Michael Pollan put a heavy number on it when he stated that agricultural systems use 10 calories
of fossil fuels for each food calorie produced. In 1940, the trend was reversed, with 2.3 calories of
food for every calorie of fossil fuel used. It should be clear that this trend is unsustainable.
As you'll see when we discuss tools of the backyard farm, my husband and I have been successfully
growing a large portion of our own food for years now with a minimal ecological cost. If we run
the motorized tiller it's only once a year. No tractor. No petroleum-based fertilizers. No toxic waste
to be hauled off or contaminate the water supply. No extensive irrigation system to tax the water
supply. The smaller scope and varied crops of our backyard farm mean that we are working with a
natural cycle instead of against it.
On a diFFerent Scale
In a perfect world we would see even the major industrial agricultural complexes adopting these organic
principles. A 2007 study by the University of Michigan, “Organic Agriculture and the Global Food Supply,”
concluded that organic farming techniques could as much as triple production in developing nations.
Most (but not all) crops are equal in production when organic and conventional methods are compared,
according to a 2007 article by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations titled “Can
Organic Farming Feed Us All?” It is totally possible for sustainable and Earth-friendly methods to be
implemented on a global scale.
