I regularly take pseudo-environmentalists to task here for advocacy that is destructive to the environment as well as society in general. Their motives for doing so are varied but in general are a confusion of political and cultural desires with sensible environmentalism, a certain mean spirited priggishness, a neurotic tic associated with their authoritarian personalities and the impulsive cringing, whingeing and aggressiveness that's part of that whole package. But their ignorance is more important than their motives since there is a slim possibility that ignorance can be cured. When events conspire to refute them unambiguously their biases can be overcome and in spite of everything they can actually learn.

A post from the old Crumb Trail blog, Brain Death, noted the environmentally destructive advocacy of an article in Grist Magazine. Grist is one of the most destructive sites with the stupidest advocacy.

One of the most damaging gaffes of environmentalism, right up there with the stupidity of the punitive ESA policies (see Mending Fences) is touting vegetarianism as being somehow environmentally beneficial. It demonstrates that the movement types aren't interested in the environment. Instead, they misuse it to advance their cultural agenda, a grab bag of loopy beliefs equivalent to religious fundamentalism but less coherent.

The post goes on to explain what is so stupid about the Grist article and suggest superior environmental approaches. Perhaps they are getting the message.

Michael Pollan delivered an apt description of it in an issue of Gourmet in 2002: "[I]f you ask Salatin what he does for a living, he'll tell you he's a 'grass farmer.' That's because healthy grass is the key to everything that happens at Polyface, where a half-dozen animal species are raised together in a kind of concentrated ecological dance on the theme of symbiosis. Salatin is the choreographer, and these 100 acres of springy Shenandoah Valley pasture comprise his verdant stage."

Environmentalists take note. Salatin is using his land to transform grass -- which humans can't metabolize -- into high-quality protein. Feedlot beef production, which leans on petrochemical-intensive corn for fodder, requires 35 calories of fossil fuel to create one calorie of food. Salatin's system burns a fraction of that.

The article, in somewhat muddled fashion, goes on to extol multi-species grazing while repeating some of Salatin's more controversial views. For example:

. . . his libertarian strain leads to insights worth heeding. The last two chapters rail against the environmental regulations that animal farms operate under -- regulations that make sense for, say, a 6,000-cow feedlot operation, but are utterly absurd for a midsized farm like Polyface. Salatin shows that regulations designed to rein in industrial farms often wind up bolstering their power by burdening smaller, environmentally friendly operators with ruinous and unnecessary costs.

He also casts a wary eye at the USDA's organic-certification program, which he sees as a weak substitute for the hard and rewarding work, as a consumer, of visiting local farms and using one's own eyes to see what's happening there. "It deeply saddens me to go into the average health food store and note that 95 percent of what is on the shelves comes from just as far away, and often is picked and processed by the same unjust labor pool, as the Wal-Mart counterparts," he writes. "Are organic Twinkies really what we're after?"

Salatin is after something quite different. He wants to restore the sensual basis of food production and consumption in a society that largely accepts flavorless food grown on aggressively ugly farms, under ugly labor conditions. In doing so, he seeks to heal the environmental and social calamities we cause in the process of feeding ourselves.

Good points. All true. These are things that ought to be a primary concern for environmentalists though this is seldom the case. In fact, much of their advocacy is destructive support for the bad policies Salatin complains about. Regulatory destruction of sensible small and medium sized agricultural businesses, and the organic foods certification hoax, aren't the only environmentally destructive practices that pseudo-environmentalists advocate. Another one that comes up in the article is fertilizer.

In one of the few sections of Holy Cows that does describe the goings-on at Polyface, Salatin delivers an example of how his system works. He unleashes portable chicken yards -- known among small-scale farmers as "chicken tractors" -- on fields after cows have finished grazing there. The chickens peck at the remaining grass, sterilize the cow manure of worms, and leave their own manure behind. All of this prepares the pasture for the next planting of grass -- without a bit of off-farm fertilizer.

All true, good stuff, I do it myself. But they are wrong that it is "without a bit of off-farm fertilizer". Chickens are not ruminants. They get a fraction of their nutrition from the pasture but the vast majority comes from bags of grain. This is imported fertility. The chicken droppings left on the pasture do fertilize it, but the nutrients came from some other farmer's field, the one that grew the grain. In effect, the fertilizer that farmer used is what keeps Salatin's pastures growing.

There's no magic. Whatever is removed from a field must be replaced or it degrades. Fields must be fertilized. The issue is only how that is done and where the nutrients come from. Some methods and sources are better than others.

Growing legumes which harbor symbiotic bacteria that convert atmospheric nitrogen into a plant available form is one way. Clover is common as a companion for grasses in grazed swards. But there's no free lunch. The bacteria extract energy that the clovers produce by photosynthesis and would otherwise use for growth. And it only benefits the companion plants when the nitrogen remains in the field, when it is consumed and excreted in place, or plowed under as green manure. The net benefit depends on how much is removed as a crop for consumption elsewhere. The cost is reduced production of the legumes and other grasses and forbs in the sward due to the energy consumed by the nitrogen fixing bacteria.

The nitrogen compounds the legumes produce and that plants can use are the same as those applied by farmers as fertilizer. It makes no difference to the plants where they come from or how they are made. What matters is that they be present in the proper amounts when needed. Too much can be as bad as too little though the symptoms differ. It's like that other key nutrient, dihydrogen monoxide, which is life itself or death by drowning depending on volume and duration. Legumes benefit too. The more there is in the soil from other sources the less they have to "buy" from the bacteria with the sugars they made with such great effort. Other soil bacteria that help decompose raw organics into durable carbon compounds that improve the soil need nitrogen too. When they have and do their work the soil is improved making nutrients more plant available. Plants get more benefit from the same total nutrients, or said another way, it is as if more fertilizer had been applied.

Fertilizer is not optional. If you take something off the land you must replace it or you are merely mining the fertility and will see diminishing returns over time until the land is exhausted. If you had a closed system where the nutrients were all returned after use in the form of dung and fiber, even the bodies of dead animals including humans, then you'd have a natural system that endured for a very long time before exhaustion. We don't have that on any cropped or grazed land. One way or another the fertility that is exported as food and fiber is reimported. Salatin is importing fertility as the grain he feeds to his chickens. Some buy and spread compost or manure. Cattlemen feed hay on pasture to import fertility. There are a number of ways, some more direct than others.

If you do full green accounting that considers all the materials and all the costs you'll find that plain old fertilizer looks pretty good and is often the smartest way to go. You have to apply the right amount at the right time, just like the dihydrogen monoxide, to avoid causing harm, but when you do you get better results and increasing returns. As the organic matter in your soil improves you need less and less. You may in time reach the point where some fertilizer, such as nitrogen, is produced by symbiotic bacteria as fast as it is used by plants, other bacteria and fungi. Minerals such as calcium, phosphorous, potassium and others usually must be mined elsewhere and imported. Calcium is especially important since it raises PH, keeping the soil from becoming too acid to grow plants well, and enabling the soil chemistry that keeps everything alive. Nearly every other soil amendment and natural process lowers PH. Nitrogen and sulfur from the air lower PH. Dung, tree leaves, and organic debris lower PH.

To do good environmentalism we need some sophistication and sufficient knowledge to develop workable policies. A chemical pesticide is very different from fertilizer. They may both be chemicals but fertilizer, like water, is only a problem when there is too much at the wrong time. To grow enough food and fiber to meet our needs without turning the whole planet into a farm and driving species to extinction we need to be productive on a per acre basis. To do that fertility must be managed and supplemented.

The trick is to do it with full knowledge in ways that have no harmful side effects, and that are efficient as well as affordable. Being truly frugal means considering the true value of materials even when they don't cost much due to distortions such as subsidies. Salatin uses corn because it's cheap, but it's cheap because its production is subsidized in myriad direct and indirect ways. An economist would say use corn but an environmentalist would hesitate, knowing how harmful grain is to the environment and knowing that it is only the subsidies that make it affordable. Following the chain back even manure and compost that depends on grain production is just a sneaky and indirect way to use grain. And if the grain was grown with fertilizers then you haven't achieved anything at all, you just had someone else take the blame.

Each of these methods is useful sometimes, is the environmentally correct response. Environmentalists need to examine their fetishes and taboos to make a distinction between ideas that are sensible from an environmental perspective and those that are unrelated dogma from their various socio-cultural and religious beliefs. This isn't just tidiness, it is an environmental necessity since many of those dogmas are harmful to the environment. It just makes environmentalists look stupid to advocate them as if they were beneficial, and it makes it ever so much harder for real environmentally aware practitioners to function. It is self defeating as well as intellectually bankrupt. Leave the politics and religion at home when you go the fields. Mother nature doesn't share your beliefs and won't cut you any slack.

Update:

See Junk Journalism for some related thoughts.