Interesting. I have skimmed across no-till before in looking at permaculture things but no personal experience with it.
Tangent here. Iām looking heavily lately at the benefits of a carnivore diet. I donāt know that I would want to maintain it indefinitely, but the health benefits do look to be excellent, even if only doing it temporarily. I know someone who has been on it for a couple of years (pharmacist), and he thinks it has done wonders for his health. He says that he is never going back. He landed into it after going through a rough period in his life, getting too stressed out for too long, drinking too much, not eating healthy, gaining weight and having general health issues. When he initially told me about it I thought he was nuts. But it worked out well for him. He arrived through that experience at the opinion of the pharmaceutical industry and health industry being mostly bullshit, and that if people addressed their diet in the right way, both industries would mostly disappear. And Iām seeing too many other people saying similar things about the benefits for their health.
Yeah, Big Pharm is scavenger for Big Food victims.
The society we live in is full of these patterns that we donāt really question because itās is the way things have always seemed to have been. The doomsdayers talking about us running out of topsoil these days are talking about with modern farming techniques that are descended from the trial and error of our ancestors 10,000 years ago.
The climate warriors talking on behalf of those who want complete control of the food chain talk about how wasteful meat production is by using worst case scenarios of raising cattle in dust bowls where water and feed needs driven to them. How about not doing those things and refining instead of demonising everything and suggesting entirely new solutions that have completely unknown side effects?
I did the meat diet maybe three years ago for a month or so. Strictly meat after going mostly paleo. It was extremely boring and I ended up doing black slimy lion poops, I donāt know how people do it but best of luck to you!
Definitely, and that seems to apply to the medical industry in general. I used to talk to a couple of pharmacists who had no issue saying that they really wish they would have went into a different field and that shitty diet was the only thing holding the medical industry together. One was very outspoken about it because she was about to retire. Another would mostly talk about it away from everyone else, but he would bring it up in front of others on occasion. And from what I saw in 5 years, what they said was absolutely true. All manners of surgeries, drugs, and other treatments for patients wall to wall, mostly due to bad diet. Very few of those patients were, for example, accident victims, mostly having issues with diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and mental health.
On carnivore diet, I could definitely see it getting boring. If I do it, it very likely will roll back into including some veggies. I like cooking, and I would miss the variety after too long. But I can definitely kick sugar, grains, and dairy long term, having been there before. And I felt a ton better than I do now. I could see carnivore being beneficial intermittently though, similar to intermittent fasting.
On a related note to the original post, this little film on a couple starting and maintaining a food forest is pretty interesting. Edit: Also linking to the first part.
Biodiversity is covered in this documentary as well
Thatās so cool!!
Just watched this and really enjoyed it, thanks! Those industrial scale monoculture farms really need to reform sooner rather than later.
Glad you liked it Snooks!
I have a bee in me bonnet about regenerative farming and wish it was common knowledge.
The movie director James Cameroon was hauled over the coals for having cattle on his farm when he was also vegan. They didnāt know he was practicing regenerative agriculture by having the cattle improve soil health and cabon capture.
Thatās really interesting. And I get it, have a bunch of cattle or other livestock crapping and pissing on your land and use that to condition the soil for vegetation rather than spraying chemicals all over the place. I assume thatās what theyāre getting at here.
I think itās a good idea, but my question is, what do you do when all that organic matter from the livestock is gone?
Eventually itās going to leech through the soil and be consumed by the vegetation, right? Or does a few years of grazing livestock on some land provide enough organic matter to last for many years?
Iām no expert Toleolu. I donāt think the cattle component is crucial as organic matter can also be dying plants, worms, insectsā¦ etc
Loess Plateau in China
Iāll be lazy and let this fella doing the talking
Thatās a beautiful transformation, also featured in Kiss the Ground! It does make you think about another point made in it about this being a major issue that civilisations have faced in the past. With all of our internets and test tubes we are still getting it massively wrong for the most part, so what hope did they have?
Yep, Iāve posted before about a flatmate who in the 80s mulched a backyard garden plot using kitchen scraps for months. The soil was really poor, sand basically [Southern Sydney near the coast] but the yield of potatoes, carrots etc. that kept coming out of those few square metres of soil was really impressive.
Also, isnāt it curious how promotion of environmental awareness issues by big business/govt rarely if ever seem to involve the phasing out of harmful agricultural chemicals in a move toward organic.
We [my household] buys organic mostly, itās a bit more expensive but not prohibitively so given that vegetable produce is relatively cheap anyway.
Yeah, Kiss the ground is quite a hopeful film but Iām not sure big business got the memo.
It makes a case for it making business sense for farmers to not pay for herbicide, pesticide, synthetic fertiliser, petrol to apply it all.
But the people who sell petrol, herbicide, pesticides etcā¦ donāt see it that way
I think big business got the memo and tore it up, if it doesnāt sell more stuff then itās not a viable solution! Thereās also no way āeet ze bugzā grown in horrific factories of cockroach doom can be sold when regeneration genuinely involves spring lambs skipping over summer meadows, making friends with happy chickens along the way.
I watched the video, very good stuff.
I think sticking with nature as much as possible is always the best way to go. We wouldnāt have all our fancy gadgets, do dads, and material crap, but I think weād still be doing OK.
I think, like energy, food is something thatās going to require all options being on the table. With all of itās downsides, youād have to admit that the corporate food production and distribution apparatus that we have does a pretty good job of providing a reliable, safe, food supply. Gotta give em some credit for that.
Going the natural way, you do put yourself at natureās whims. If the sun donāt shine and the rain donāt fall, people donāt eat.
If people are going to live together in large groups, you have to come up with some industrialized methods in order to feed them.
Yeh I should have qualified that last post about ag chemicals i.e an issue bypassed almost exclusively by big business/govt policy. Have now fixed that post.
Itās not nearly that drastic ime. Thereās seriously plausible studies that show only a 15% yield reduction in organic produce. Whoās not willing to pay an extra 15c on the dollar to avoid being slowly poisoned? when such produce is already very cheap. Look at modern cancer rates, [pesticides are proven carcinogens] -thatās a tragedy and a huge financial cost to society.
Aww mate i got your gist. I like hearing stories like your friendās.
The authoritarian āfactā has pretty much always been that some given part per million is safe, just the same as chemical toxins in treated water and vaccines. The FDA, etc. says so, so itās true.
Even if the yield reduction was more than 15%, I think getting rid of a lot of that stuff thatās being used now would make it a wash.
Letās hope the adults are able to sit down together and discuss this issue in a calm rational manner. After all, we are talking about food here.