Intensive Farming?

Question

When intensive farming, why do farmers ensure that all energy taken in by animals is used to make new biomass?

Answer 1

When you say "intensive farming" I wonder exactly what you mean?  There are no words to describe "farms" which mean the same thing to everyone.

Intesnsive farming for me is using your land to produce, in conjunction with livestock, and I usually think of it as vegtable growing.  I also think of intensive farmers as being small farmers, truely family owned and the family is working the land.  I also think of intensive farmers as living in more temperant climates, where they can plant two different crops together, harvest the one crop in early spring when it's producing, and allow the other to mature, and be harvested in the fall.  I also think of it as mimicing nature.

My husband and I live on a permaculture farm.  However with our scant 90 day growing period, I don't really concider us to be intensive farmers.

The French are quiet good at intensive farming.  Lets say the French farmer raises rabbits, along with the vegtables and fodder for the rabbits.  

As the fodder for the rabbits is harvested, it takes the trace minerals, nuetriants, and vitamins it toook to grow those foods with it, and transfers it to the rabbits.   The rabbits of course produce manure and urine.  Urine is usually allowed to drain away, but as the manure builds up under the rabbit cages, the manure itself will absorb and retain some of it.  

This manure/urine mix is returned to the growing beds in the early spring, or late fall (depending on crop and when it's harvested).  Because the manure/urine is returned to the soil, vitamins, trace minerals, and neutriants are being replenished, instead of stripped away.  The manure also adds mass, in the form of the fiber which was not digested.  

This actually INCREASES the amount of soil the farmer has to grow his crops in.  The soil becomes deeper, richer, better able to hold water over the years.

Intensive farming if done properly is the farmer mimicing nature, but on and intensive scale.  That can produce STAGGERING amounts of fodder for the animals, and in return a staggering amount of livestock, in a small area.

Another example of intensive farming is the grass farmer, who raises cattle.  A high number of cows are kept in small pastures, but only for 1-4 days.  Then the cows are moved to another pasture.  The farmer can run chickens behind the cattle.  The chickens will tear apart the cow manure, looking for the fly larval.  This spreads the manure out to managable proportions for the plants to use, and also provides natural insect control.   Fly larva hatch in 6 days, so the chickens are always following on the heels of the cattle.

So now you have your grass land producing a LOT of fodder for the cattle, because they are constantly being moved, and allowing the plants time to rest and recover.  You are also feeding your chickens high protien grubs, which will ensure wonderful grow, and high quality eggs (the chickens will need some suplimental grains).

In the winter when the pastures are at rest and not growing, chicken and cattle are removed and the cattle put in winter corrals.  The cattle eat hay the farmer produced elsewhere on his land.  The manure from the cattle, as well as the waste hay build up in the corral all winter long.  Come spring, the cattle are sent back to pasture.

Now pigs are turned out into those winter corrals.  The pigs will root all through the waste hay, and manure, constantly churning the compost, and adding their own waste products.  This churns it very quickly into compost which is useable by the plants.  The compost is then spread back out over the hay fields.  So the biomass which was used to feed the beef is returned to the land.  

If you just harvested your hay year after year, and had no livestock to give you back the rich manure, you actually start to loose your topsoil.  Your soil also has no proper neutriants, vitamins, and trace minerals to pump back into the growing plants.

This kind of intensive grassland farming is rather mimicing nature and the buffalo.  Large concentrated herds graze intensively in one small area....then the herd moves on, leaving behind tons of manure. Large flocks of birds followed the buffalo, churning up many of the manure pats, and searching for grubs.   The buffalo may not return to that spot again for weeks, months, or even an entire year.  This gives the grass a chance to completely recover.  The biomass taken by the buffalo was returned to the land from which they took it.

Mimicing nature is always a good idea in farming.

~Garnet

Homesteading/Farming over 20 years

P.S.  When Mike read your question, I believe he's thinking about the intensive, industrilized farming.  See what I mean that no one phrase to describe farming means the same thing to two different people?

Answer 2

If I understand your question correctly, this type of farming is reliant on little space and supplants the natural cycle of the animals life, in terms of feed and space.  It is essential that the animals utilize all (feed) energy available for this system to run efficiently.  The more feed which is wasted the more capital is lost.  This type of farming is about money, plain and simple.  An in-efficient business is an albatross to the shareholders.

Answer 3

It does not work like that. Intensive farming of animals just considering it from a production standpoint (cruelty and abuse issues aside) is a terrible waste of resources. Land allocated to animal farming can produce so much more valuable vegetable crops for people. I believe it is on the order of 7 to 1 but may actually be higher, I can't remember. No amount of manure returned can equal and balance what is removed on top of that statistic, and that manure needs to be regulated to protect the ground water from nitrogen seepage. Also, the animal product is sent out and with our consumption of food, and the human being increase in personal "biomass" and population, we are not in the natural chain established by nature. We have taken the human out of nature completely. We hide our own waste products underground to ruin the water table and bury our dead in concrete boxes. We regulate sewage, and burn it for energy at times because ours is unfit to use with respect to heavy metals (which we produce and spread around in all our little gadgets that make life so rich and wonderful) and we worry about what disease we might catch from p**p. There! I said it. p**p! Dirty p**p! I won't even go into how bad animal products are to the body in the vast amounts we eat as humans

Answer 4

It does not work like that. Intensive farming of animals just considering it from a production standpoint (cruelty and abuse issues aside) is a terrible waste of resources. Land allocated to animal farming can produce so much more valuable vegetable crops for people. I believe it is on the order of 7 to 1 but may actually be higher, I can't remember. No amount of manure returned can equal and balance what is removed on top of that statistic, and that manure needs to be regulated to protect the ground water from nitrogen seepage. Also, the animal product is sent out and with our consumption of food, and the human being increase in personal "biomass" and population, we are not in the natural chain established by nature. We have taken the human out of nature completely. We hide our own waste products underground to ruin the water table and bury our dead in concrete boxes. We regulate sewage, and burn it for energy at times because ours is unfit to use with respect to heavy metals (which we produce and spread around in all our little gadgets that make life so rich and wonderful) and we worry about what disease we might catch from p**p. There! I said it. p**p! Dirty p**p! I won't even go into how bad animal products are to the body in the vast amounts we eat as humans.