Watch this video,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfTQergr29M

I have nothing against organic food production. I myself use some of the organic method, but without the standard food production method, the world would starve to death. - Millet (348 ABo-)

That's because the world is over populated.

cristofre, from what you wrote in your post, I doubt that you have ever been a commercial farmer. I am a commercial farmer, and your ideas of commercial farming are certainly far distant then mine. If a farmer treated his land as you claim, he would not be in farming very long. - Millet (347 ABo-)

cristofre, the answer to your question is that I have used standard fertilizers once, perhaps 20 years ago. Otherwise, I do not use standard fertilizers, mainly because of cost, certainly not out of any health or environmental concerns. I think we need to get real here. I fail to see anything wrong with using standard fertilizers. They are used by 99 percent of the world. Chemical and or organic fertilizers provide the identical forum of nutrients---nitrogen is nitrogen, is nitrogen, is nitrogen. ....the exact forum. A plant cannot tell the difference, whether it is fertilized with a standard fertilizer or organic, that's because the plant absorbs the same exact forum of nutrients from either method. It would be ridiculous for a producer farming even as little as 1000 acres, to attempt farming with organic fertilizers. It would require 18,000 TONS of manure. My neighbor farms 200,000 acres, he would need 3,600,000 tons of manure. Further, if he grew a green manure crop every other year, and plowed it under to enrich his ground, he would certainly go broke. I can understand that some people have an objection to pesticides, but chemical fertilizers? Even in the little back yard garden, personally I would prefer to eat the produce that I'm growing, to be fertilized using clean standard fertilizers, then to have them fertilized by spreading some animal's excrement all around the food that I'm going to be putting into my mouth. In the real world, the actual real world we live in, we always have give and takes in everything we do, we need to choose the course that provides the greatest benefit. If the world of commercial farming was forced to go only organic, (which would be totally impossible), the price of food would rise astronomically, and tens of thousands of people would starve to death. - Millet -( 345 ABo-)

Ok, so if the government requires all US commercial farming to switch to organic we save the earth from the coming ice age. In order to produce this much manure we need cows, lots of cows, when you have cows you have methane and methane, which, in terms of its contribution to global warming, is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, we nice and toasty in here.

who's with me!!

IMHO
What's missing is how much did he produce! One can provide enough for their families needs using Permaculture techniques BUT it is extremely unlikely that he produced enough to support a community which is what we expect of our farmers. One can simply look at the harvesting requirements to see this. It is one thing to walk about picking what you need or what is ripe but to pick enough for even several families suddenly would become a chore. I am all for the person that has the space and time to live this lifestyle. I believe there are few that would be satisfied with this sort of life. I know it sounds so idyllic bUt the truth is that it is a tough existence. Any way you look at it you are still managing the land. I used to pick wild blueberries in the woods of Alabama and I could always go to certain areas and get a small basket full. All it took was a 15 minute walk there and back and about twenty minutes of picking. Oh and you could only do that for a short season. Now I have mono plantings of several varieties that will produce from May through August and the berries are much larger, sweeter and more prolific making them easier to pick. Realistically Permaculture cannot be done on a large scale. And therein lies the beauty. It was never intended to be a replacement for commercial farms but a way for a family to live a more simpler life.

When you drive through Kansas on I-70 you will see signs along the side of the highway, approximately every 100 miles or so that reads, "Every Kansas Farmer Feeds 92 people". When I read cristofre's link about Masanobu Fukuoka, I was impressed by his work ethic, but I also noticed that the link did not say what size area he actually cultivated. Anyway, happy Saint Valentine's day.

Saint Valentine: born ? - D 269.
Millet (343 ABo-)