TEDx Talks
1 HN recommender · recommended in 3 months, 2017–2022
17:05 · 355K views · Jan 14, 2016
Farmer Joel Salatin gives a TEDx talk on how well-managed grass and rotational grazing support sustainable farming and affect the climate. He draws on his work at Polyface Farm in Virginia.
HN cites it in climate and diet debates as a contrarian perspective that cattle on managed pasture can be part of the solution.
3 comments from Hacker News
Highly recommend Joel Salatin's works - he has a really interesting perspective. Here's a talk of his on Cows and Climate Change this video From my recollected (watched that ~6 mo ago), the amount of land needed to grow food for his herd is less than the amount of land that would be needed to purchase it elsewhere, because the rotation of the animals keeps his fields fertilized and trimmed to the optimum length for fast growth. Plus, by rotating in chickens, he's double dipping a bit. There are some people doing some interesting research into using herd animals to prep beds for annual vegetables: they let the animal graze as the seeds are starting to germinate, animals eat everything green. The germinating seeds are then able to fill the void left behind faster than anything else, because the farmer timed it properly.
>>potentially (and most likely) more land needed to produce equal amounts of meat >Please explain this in more detail. Sure! Plants are much less nutrient dense that animals. So for them to create fake meat that's equally nutrient dense as real meat, their farms have to be adequately large. You need a ton of plants to achieve the density of meat. Animals on land however are already nutrient dense. The only physical space they need is enough room to graze. >>and sequesters carbon/methane as a side effect >I have not heard of a farming practice that sequesters methane released from ruminants. Can you provide more information? Scientists and farmers in this area can do a much better job explaining it than I [1], [2], [3]. [1]: [LINK] [2]: this video [3]: [LINK]
Direct link to the video for those on mobile: [LINK] The problem they mention is the soil being exposed to direct sun and the solution they propose is that farming should be done under tree shade. That sounds absolutely baseless and nonsensical... and counter-productive. Look at these videos for a completely different view of soil protection: - [LINK] - this video