Thanks Keith, for clarifying. In many ways, my
farming methods are intensive but sustainable - more
output than inputs, soil becoming richer with each
passing year rather than being depleted, etc. But on
the whole, I am not hopeful all said and done. In my
country we have some of the oldest rainforests in the
world and recently 2000 acres was cleared by a friend
of mine to start an organic sustainable farm to
produce vegetables, fruits, meat for export.
Regards
HS
--- Keith Addison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> But there are many kinds of intensive farming that
> are fully
> sustainable and not at all inhumane. Eg, the French
> Intensive methods
> used by John Jeavons, or the traditional Chinese
> farming system still
> used all over Southeast Asia and elsewhere, top name
> but two. Factory
> farming is not described by saying it is intensive.
>
> >In Asia, even small farms are generally intensive.
>
> The smaller they are the more intensive they tend to
> be, and the
> bigger they are (as with farms everywhere) the less
> productive they
> are.
>
> >I
> >have seen some small free-range poultry farms where
> >chickens and ducks are given about 2 to 3 sq ft of
> >space per bird, in an enclosed yard. That's
> >intensive.
>
> If that's all they do, just raise poultry by itself,
> a specialised
> operation not in association with other types of
> crop production, ie
> a monocrop, then this does approach factory farming.
>
> >Off the ground, in sheds, the birds
> >generally have 1.2 sq ft of space per bird. Put in
> >ventilation, the space is reduced to 0.75sq ft.
> >Farms like this are purpose-build for viral
> mutation
> >and clearly non-sustainable in all sense of the
> word.
>
> I fully agree.
>
> >What is non-intensive? I have grown pastured
> chickens
> >on the same piece of land for 7 years now and have
> no
> >disease outbreak in that time. I give each bird 20
> sq
> >ft of land, and move them every couple of weeks.
> >
> >Of cos, the other issue we have to address is that
> if
> >we all start non-intensive farms, we will soon run
> out
> >of land, which will bring up a new set of problems
> >altogether.
>
> That's not so. There's no room for industrialised
> agriculture of any
> kind, for any reason: take it away, along with the
> so-called "crops"
> it produces (commodities meant for trade, not food
> meant to be eaten
> by people), and there's plenty of room.
>
Regards,
HS Wong
Visit my farm: www.dqcleanchicken.com
Find out about the most important chicken: www.junglefowl.org
You can contribute to sustainability: www.sustainablelivingcentre.com
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