Natural Sequence Farming

Out of curiousity, does Peter's experience include crops or meat animals? I can't remember from the book. Some local farmers were dismissing his advice based on him being a 'horse person' and not a cropper, grazier or market gardener...

Is not a 'Horse Person' by definition a Grazier?

I think Tarwyn Park is run as a commercial cattle operation now. What about all the other projects on other properties? I suspect they aren't all "horse people".
What does it matter what animal eats the crop? The point as I see it of NSF is to hydrate the soil and grow plants. Whether they be fodder for humans, bovine, ovine, equine, whatever you like. Or non fodder purposes.
The people you are referring to, sound like your typical scared of anything different type to me.
It really gets my me frustrated when people dismiss anything different as to hard, or won't work.
FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN.

gbell wrote:Out of curiousity, does Peter's experience include crops or meat animals? I can't remember from the book. Some local farmers were dismissing his advice based on him being a 'horse person' and not a cropper, grazier or market gardener...

Why not try asking them some more questions? Do they for instance believe that fertility of the soil depends on the living organisms in the soil? Does water availability effect health of plants and therefore dependent livestock? Do they believe in the benefit of humus? Do they understand the impact of super-phosphate, herbicides and pesticides on the development of humus?

It really does not matter much what the questions are, unfortunately after asking 2 questions on average I doubt you will get the chance to ask a third

You will however understand much more about where they are coming from.

Hi, I talked to some farmer in the great wheat sheep belt. They certainly believes that Peter is onto something, but thinks that Peter's theory works on grazing land; however, with broadacre cropping, it's hard to apply where vast land is cleared and exposed, so that machines can operate.

Even though there are crop rotation, no tilage, mulching, planting windbreaks and paddock corridors, maybe even using natural fertiliser in practce, but I wonder if the wonderful NSF things can be done in broadacre cropping land.

I had a think and guess possbile the following NSF things can be done on broadacre cropping, I would like to hear from NSF friends and experts about your opinions:

* Where there's waterway in the cropping land, chain of ponds still need to be built to get water underground.

* Allow some areas of the land to rest (including allowing weeds to grow, then slash and return nutrient to the ground) to bring up the quality of the produce in the other areas.

* If the land is undulating, maybe graze at higher ground, and crop at lower bit to catch fertility. But if the land is flat, what do we do? These farmers grow lucerne for sheep to graze on, then spray to kill lurcerne for wheat crop sowing.

I'd really appreciate some answers in this. Thanks in advance.

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