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Comment by msandford | Hacker News Reader

Joel Salatin is one of the first people that comes to mind after reading the article. He might not rub you the right way (as he's an evangelical Christian, etc) but he sure does seem to have some interesting ideas about raising cattle in a natural way that's also highly productive. His way of farming seems to be about 4x as land efficient as his neighbors (if you believe him, I tend to) which is a big deal. It also seems to be relatively low input (not buying lots of feed) and low capital; he uses mostly cheap electric fence.

If I sound like a fanboy it's because I'm leaning that way. It really feels like he's "hacking" farming and I have a big appreciation for that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjzvtM-Wo4c

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I am also a big fan of Salatin, though I'm not convinced his method is the answer to our problem. Not because I don't think it works, but rather because his approach doesn't currently fit into our food system. He has stated that he has no intention of scaling up and only sells to consumers in his region. This means that we would need thousands more operations like his to meet our current demand and I just don't see that happening. There aren't enough incentives for farmers to make the switch and I feel confident saying that Salatin's approach requires a lot more work than most of our farmers are used to these days.

Not to mention we live in a society that demands fast, cheap, convenient food. It's easier to walk down the street to Whole Foods than it is to find a local farm in your area, figure out what's in season, and then figure out how to obtain it. Whole Foods isn't even cheap by most people's standards and buying directly from a local farm is going to be even more expensive.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see the food system return to local communities! I just don't think society is willing to change...yet.

On the other hand, gardens seem like they would be much easier to integrate into society today. We can obtain far more calories per acre growing food than we can raising it and most people have the capacity and space to grow something, e.g., window sills, rooftops, backyards, empty lots, etc. This still doesn't really get around the problem though because it doesn't address the demand for meat. I have and will continue to advocate in favor of reducing demand. This seems like the most logical choice given our current situation.

EDIT: Just wanted to add: Support local farms!!

The way I read it is that he's not trying to become a mega-corp. I suspect that he knows that's the fastest way to ruin what he's doing; getting big would mean that the company grows faster than the culture and new folks might be tempted to cut corners, etc.

I also think he's more interested in seeing thousands of independent farmers have some control over their own destiny rather than getting caught up in the commercial debt cycle that a lot of them tend to.

You wouldn't need all the farmers in the US to convert to his methods, since he's far more productive per acre you could have 1/4 of the acreage (and presumably 1/4 of the farmers) that are used in conventional farming and still produce the same output.

Given that he uses very little in the way of inputs and sells higher priced outputs (free range chickens, grass fed beef, etc) it's entirely likely that he's far more profitable than traditional farms. That kind of competitive advantage might make it possible for start-up farms to grow and slowly buy out retiring farmers so that no tremendous upheaval is necessary for new ideas to become the norm.

I find myself agreeing with most of what you said, but just wanted to address a couple things.

>>You wouldn't need all the farmers in the US to convert to his methods, since he's far more productive per acre you could have 1/4 of the acreage (and presumably 1/4 of the farmers) that are used in conventional farming and still produce the same output.

I'm not sure about this. It seems today that most conventional farm operations are fairly large (speaking from my experience in the Midwest). Not only would they need to restructure their operations, they would also need to scale down significantly. So we would actually need more farmers. Not to mention that Salatin's region is well suited for raising animals. I would venture to guess that farmers in arid regions would not fare as well.

Furthermore, this still wouldn't meet our demands. Salatin talks about seasonality; there are certain times of the year when it makes sense to slaughter cows, chickens, pigs, etc. We demand all of these meats even when they are out of season. It wasn't to long ago that we reserved beef for special occasions. Now some people eat beef multiple times a day on a consistent basis.

>>That kind of competitive advantage might make it possible for start-up farms to grow and slowly buy out retiring farmers so that no tremendous upheaval is necessary for new ideas to become the norm.

I am hoping that something like this will happen, but Wall Street is also interested in this land[0]. We need to decrease our demand in the cheap, convenient food that Wall Street makes money off of and increase our demand in high quality, local food. If we do this then our demand for meat will also decrease because we will start to eat with the seasons in mind.

[0] - http://www.wsj.com/articles/more-individuals-are-looking-to-...

On the first point, you're right. It will require more farmers. But if you increase the productivity of the land and don't grow an intermediate feed it might not be as bad. And because there are multiple things going on (cows, meat chickens, egg chickens, etc) that does help from a productivity standpoint.

On the second point, I think it'a s business that's decidedly unfriendly to scale which means that it's protected (to an extent) from being over financialized or otherwise exploited. Wealthy folks may buy land, but in this farming model it's not the land that's the limiting factor; it's farmers. And there are plenty of young people who can't get real jobs these days that are getting pretty fed up with their traditional prospects. If you could earn a real living farming that doesn't require you to sell your soul that might look very attractive to a lot of people.

Now the wealthy folks bidding up the price of land such that "normal" people can't afford enough land to make a go of it, well, that's a real risk. But since the land is so much more productive it's easier to make it happen. You don't need to farm 1000 acres to make a living if you spend little/nothing on inputs and sell fairly pricey outputs. 50 acres might be enough to earn a low middle class income that you can slowly grow to upper middle class as your herd grows and you buy more land.

> Furthermore, this still wouldn't meet our demands.

Well, nothing will ever meet our demands: we want everything, for nothing. But if the prices of meats were allowed to fluctuate in the open market, then people would eat less when there's less to go around, and more when there's more.

A BBC Horizons documentary with subtitle "How to Feed the Planet" (popsci--I'm aware) was posted to reddit a few months ago. The conclusion, IIRC, suggested that even the best hacks in beef farming don't hold a candle when compared to approaches that lean more heavily towards transitioning away from beef to other types of meat, especially chicken.

Cattle have a FCR of between 5 and 20 or so. Chickens more like 2ish. If beef is bad because it takes 20 units of food to make one unit of beef and you have a way to make 4x the units of food per acre, then your effective FCR (relative to traditional methods) drops from 20 (at the worst) to 5. If it was at 5 then your effective FCR could be as low as 1.25 If it was more in the middle at say 10ish then the effective FCR could be at 2.5 which is pretty respectable. This is made better because you're also getting eggs from the sanitizing chickens and meat from the broiling chickens that are all making multiple passes over the same land at different times.

This is of course predicated on grass fed beef with the farmer taking a substantial interest in raising as much grass as possible (sanitizing chickens and paddock system). It's not a lot of work, but it does take more effort than just throwing grain at cows in a feedlot.

I don't know what a sanitizing chicken is, and apparently neither does Google. I assume from context it means chickens bred to lay eggs?

In this case it's chickens which get carted around a few days behind the cows. Cows eat grass. Cows poop on field. Flies lay eggs in poop. Eggs hatch into maggots, which eat poop. Chickens dig through poop looking for maggots. This spreads the poop out and gives the chickens an excellent source of protein.

Cow poop is actually a good fertilizer for grass, but it's too concentrated normally. The chickens spread it out to a more reasonable concentration and produce eggs in the process.

How are they farming the chickens? Free range, or in broiler barns?

I'm not going to rewatch it, but the facility they visited used uncaged chickens housed in a barn. If you're making a point about the ethics of it, note that even the concepts of "intensive farming" and "humane treatment of animals" aren't mutually exclusive.

Agreed. But broiler barns and cows in fields isn't a fair comparison.

He isn't done 'hacking' either. He brings younger people to teach them what he knows and to learn from them and their ideas.

This was good, thanks for posting.

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