SOS by Christine Jones

[greybeard]

Here's one for you Tweety.
Where does that sulfur come from that you are using to replace the little you used?

[tweety]

I use elemental, and the majority comes from the oilsands, and greybeard its not a little, its a lot. Think of the tonnes of grain that come off your land. The complexity of its nutrients and makeup.

To make it very simple i'm just asking how one of those nutrients, sulfur, is replaced if you don't use an inputs source as above as claimed by Dr Jones, Gabe, et al.

I'd love to not buy inputs, but, if you're soil is low in sulfur, i have no option but to buy it. It just isn't there.

While the articles go on and on about the beauty of the system, the details are very short. Grassy, you claim to do it. I'm asking you to explain how i can increase the sulfur content on my soil without buying it and dumping it on?

I think the question is quite clear and concise.

[rkaiser]

Great article gf. The one thing that can not be dealt with by folks like tweety who are caught in the web is the fact that they are caught on the web. Monoculture farming and growing the same crops year after year. Rotating of course, but why? Please tell us tweety, what is the meaning behind your rotation besides trying to stay ahead of the banks and paying your bills. Is it to feed the hungry?

[tweety]

Your post kaiser is exactly what i mean. You say great article, you obviously are well educated in soil science.

Please explain how you can replenish sulfur without mining it. Or are you just gonna personally attack rather then talk about soil?

[grassfarmer]

You seem to have things back to front tweety. Before settlement the prairies were in a state of climax vegetation which meant the mob grazing of the buffalo had done a great job of keeping the soil and the grasses/plants healthy. Funny how nature can do that eh?
There was no need to supplement sulphur then as there was plenty - it's largely derived from organic matter and of course there was plenty of that. It wasn't being "mined" because there was nothing leaving the cycle.

Conventional agriculture is what is mining the soil - growing a grain crop every year - removing it and shipping it to Vancouver and turning around and having to replace the nutrients from a bag.

Can't you see that what Gabe Brown and others are recreating is the healthy high OM soils of the tall grass prairie? Diverse species of plants with animal impact returning a lot of the nutrients back to the soil. They are creating organic matter faster than people thought possible even 5 years ago.

If you use diverse plants - not just the shallow rooted typical crops farmed today - but plants that can root down to 5 feet you can pull up all kinds of minerals and nutrients that are unavailable to shallow rooted plants. Most minerals are in abundance in the soil but they are not plant available because the plants either can't access them because they are deep down or you don't have the soil microbiology needed to convert them to plant usable form. Your sprays and fertilisers ensure that these organisms will never flourish so you are locked into buying inputs for ever. Nitrogen of course can be fixed for free by legumes so why would you want to buy it?

So much of what we do today is governed by one dimensional, reductionist thinking so it's a breath of fresh air to me to see the ideas and practices Christine Jones and Gabe Brown are teaching and implementing.

[tweety]

Nothing left the land in the old prairies. It was a closed system, nothing left, nothing exported. No need to add anything.

Your solution of 'replacing' sulfur is to mine it deeper? Remove it all to depths that not a single plant species of any kind can reach any longer?

Then when you have exported all that to china in canola wheat alfalfa barley peas beans beef chicken pork, then what?

You have not even begun to explain how any of this is magically REPLACING the sulfur you are removing. Sorry, but animals running around on the ground magically producing carbon doesn't cut it.

Maybe someone else can ask it in an even simpler way?

[tweety]

BTW, i have asked Gabe, and he says he's not replacing it either. He doesn't know how to other then add it like the rest of us dumb ass inputs buyers.

[greybeard]

Isn't that sulfur from Fort Mac free if you live down wind?
If elemental sulfur has solved all your sulfur problems,you don't have a problem.
Are you ready to replace all of the nutrients on a removal basis or just the macros?
Worldwide, farmers are all nutrient miners.
Grassfarmer summed it up with "The eye of the herdsman fattens the cattle".
You can't buy a crop. Somebody else can do it cheaper.
If this research comes to fruition and lets you do it cheaper you better be an early adopter.

[Hopalong]

Good story in March 7 Economist magazine.
Says meat and dairy products could lose out to more sustainable versions made from plants.
Could be quantum change if it happens.
Better for farmers to adjust and adapt rather than resist change (my thought).

[grassfarmer]

Sounds like it is you that needs it in simpler form.

I never said you would pull sulphur up from 5 feet, that would be ridiculous given that it is derived from organic matter. If you have organic matter at 5 feet you wouldn't be short of sulphur.

The solution is to build organic matter at higher rates than has ever previously been done in agriculture. That can be done by harnessing the free inputs (sun and water) to produce huge amounts of biomass then mob grazing with cattle.

I don't, nor would ever, remove the nutrients you conventional grain farmers do by shipping tons of grain off the farm every year. We export very few of our nutrients with our production system and we have always bought in "fertility" through feed, typically byproducts of conventional grain production like straw.