{"id":55,"date":"2012-10-19T20:37:18","date_gmt":"2012-10-20T00:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/crop-rotation-for-profit.html"},"modified":"2012-10-19T20:37:18","modified_gmt":"2012-10-20T00:37:18","slug":"crop-rotation-for-profit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/crop-rotation-for-profit.html","title":{"rendered":"Crop rotation for profit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nWant better yields and the same or more profit?\nStop buying pesticides, rotate more crops over longer periods,\nand mix in animals.\nYet another study confirms this.\nOh, and a hundred times less\n\ndisease-causing pesticides<\/a>\nin streams, and presumably also less pesticides in the food going to market.\n<\/p>\n

\nMark Bittman wrote for NYTimes today,\n\nA Simple Fix for Farming<\/a>,\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nThe study was done on land owned by Iowa State University called the\nMarsden Farm. On 22 acres of it, beginning in 2003, researchers set\nup three plots: one replicated the typical Midwestern cycle of\nplanting corn one year and then soybeans the next, along with its\nroutine mix of chemicals. On another, they planted a three-year\ncycle that included oats; the third plot added a four-year cycle and\nalfalfa. The longer rotations also integrated the raising of\nlivestock, whose manure was used as fertilizer.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n\n\"Figure<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe paper’s Figure 3 (above)\nillustrates that labor increased with crop rotation length,\nbut so did yield, and profit remained the same or better.\nHow can this be?\n\n\nThe figure also shows energy use (fuel) and especially\nfertilizer and pesticide use plummetted.\nIt’s not clear they even figured in not paying for Monsanto’s\noverpriced monoculture poison seeds.\nAnd without all those herbicides, freshwater toxicity also plummetted.\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nThe results were stunning: The longer rotations produced better\nyields of both corn and soy, reduced the need for nitrogen\n\n\"Marsden<\/a>\nfertilizer and herbicides by up to 88 percent, reduced the amounts\nof toxins in groundwater 200-fold and didn’t reduce profits by a\nsingle cent.\n<\/p>\n

\nIn short, there was only upside \u2014 and no downside at all\n\u2014 associated with the longer rotations. There was an increase\nin labor costs, but remember that profits were stable. So this is a\nmatter of paying people for their knowledge and smart work instead\nof paying chemical companies for poisons. And it’s a high-stakes\ngame; according to the Environmental Protection Agency, about five\nbillion pounds of pesticidesare used each year in the United States.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nAn increase in labor costs means more jobs.\nSmart work instead of poisons!\nCould be\n\nhealthier for all of us<\/a>,\nstarting with the farmers, who are the most directly exposed to the pesticides.\nAnd farmers profit the same or more.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe study:\nDavis AS, Hill JD, Chase CA, Johanns AM, Liebman M (2012)\n\nIncreasing Cropping System Diversity Balances Productivity, Profitability and Environmental Health.<\/a>\nPLoS ONE 7(10): e47149. doi:10.1371\/journal.pone.0047149\n<\/p>\n

\nWhy does this sound familiar?\nBecause it’s similar to what\n\nJoel Salatin’s Polyface Farm<\/a>\nhas been doing for years, except he does it without any chemical fertilizer.\nAs explained\n\nin the movie Fresh,<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n

\n…the industrial food system has created two problems out of one\nsolution. By separating animals from plants and creating two\nmonocultures….\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n\n\"Rodale<\/a>\nAnd it’s not like this is the first study that emphasizes crop rotation,\neither.\nSee, for example, the\n\nthree-decade Rodale study<\/a>\nthat concluded organic four-year crop rotation produced better yields\nand more profit than “conventional” pesticided two-year crop rotation.\nHere are\n\nsome more studies, from Africa and India and elsewhere.<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\nSo-called “conventional” agriculture with its cult of petrochemicals\nto replace labor is hardly more than 50 years old.\nMaybe it’s time to get back to organic food, or, as our grandparents called it,\nfood.\n<\/p>\n

\n-jsq\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Want better yields and the same or more profit? Stop buying pesticides, rotate more crops over longer periods, and mix in animals. Yet another study confirms this. Oh, and a hundred times less disease-causing pesticides in streams, and presumably also less pesticides in the food going to market. Mark Bittman wrote for NYTimes today, A […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7,8,40,42,9,44,6,73,74],"tags":[2761,2762,168,4,2774,2776,3,2763,2778,5,2,2760,173,171,172,169,2790,167,2791,170],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","category-agrochemicals","category-economy","category-food-and-drink","category-glysophate","category-health","category-okra-paradise-farms","category-science","category-water","tag-agriculture","tag-agrochemicals","tag-crop","tag-day-month-year","tag-economy","tag-food-and-drink","tag-georgia","tag-glysophate","tag-health","tag-john-s-quarterman","tag-lowndes-county","tag-okra-paradise-farms","tag-organic","tag-pesticide","tag-profit","tag-rotation","tag-science","tag-usda","tag-water","tag-weed"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Gj0O-T","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}