The misinformation that continues to be perpetrated about raw dairy is symptomatic of a much larger problem, as various individuals have pointed out on this blog. Farmers like Joel Salatin, who successfully use sustainable techniques to produce and market nutrient-dense foods, invariably become convinced that their approach is much more than a curiousity–rather, it’s an approach that can feed the world. The ever-expanding problems affecting the global commodity food-production system may give us the opportunity sooner rather than later to test that thesis.
In this article, Dave Milano analyzes the nature of the challenge facing all of us who worry about the growing calamity that is worldwide agriculture, and what it means to us as a society. Dave Milano a small-time dairy farmer, as well as a gardener, writer, hospital rehabilitation director, and devotee of “local”.
Dave MilanoNot long before the end of forage season last year, I fertilized a small piece of our pasture with milk. (We had extra milk, and I was curious.) I sprayed about 1 gallon of raw milk, diluted with water, onto a half-acre section, twice, two weeks apart.
About three weeks later a few local farmers were visiting and I asked them to take a look at the pasture and tell me what they thought. They noticed immediately that an oddly shaped section seemed to be in better condition than the rest—the part sprayed with milk of course.
So when the topic of enhancing soil with raw milk came up again here on The Complete Patient (with the help of comments from Galina Ch) I was all ears. Since the observable result of my own little experiment—thicker grass and faster recovery of grazed areas—suggested that encouraging soil microbes is a winning agricultural strategy, it was exciting to hear of more impressive results, along with reasonable cause and effect theorizing, from long-term user David Wetzel, a steel company executive turned dairy farmer.
Coincident with recent talk on this blog about soil enhancement came a torrent of gloomy news reports about food shortages and increasing food prices, and their terrible consequences in places like Africa and Eastern Europe. The two seemingly unrelated stories of raw milk as fertilizer and global food supply disruption, I believe, are really two sides of the same story.
The shortages now causing acute third-world deprivation are in so-called “staple commodities” like corn and other cereal grains, and the commodity beef and pork that rely on those grains. Commodity foods are indeed the primary dietary elements in many third-world (and developed) countries, but they are very different than the fruits, vegetables, and animal products native and natural to various regional population groups.
Commodities are produced purely for high dollar-to-production ratios—nutritionally they are at best subsistence foods even when plentiful. (Commodity-based diets have fairly been called slow-motion starvation.) It is not only physical bodies that suffer from them via increased susceptibility to chronic and other disease. A population dependent on commodities becomes itself a commodity of sorts, subject to far-away events from political machinations to weather calamities to the whims of distant investors, all completely unconnected to their indigenous circumstances. Eventually, a commodity-based society will lose the will, and perhaps even the ability, to feed and care for itself.
Some, including me, find hope in a return to diversified, local, organic-based agriculture—admittedly a tall order when small, regional farms have been chased out of the landscape, and the once common local business networks necessary for stable, symbiotic regional economies, have all but disappeared.
Necessity here will be the mother of transition, and there are two main factors at play. First is the current path of agricultural least resistance, defined by chemical fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, monoculture cropping, and import/export systems. That particular mess is not likely to change dramatically very soon, especially in commodity-rich countries or in those that maintain political ties with them. Second is the persistent opinion that food is food, wherever or however it’s grown and processed, and economy is economy, whether personal or impersonal.
Fortunately that last is an opinion ripe for change, as thousands of small farmers and market gardeners are proving every day as they reach out to customers suspicious of the heavily advertised goodness of cheap, processed commodities and global food enterprises. (That this new farmer class is succeeding at all in the face of government regulations designed to encourage and support global agribusiness, and a populace trained to enjoy cheap food processed from subsidized commodity grains, is ample evidence that change is stirring.) Alas, in less developed countries where the need for diverse, regional farming is painfully acute, opportunities for large-scale improvement are dismally remote, what with endemic poverty and severely limited access to land.
So we do what we can with what we have, and wait for the tipping point. Certainly whatever success the world might enjoy will not come from the top down, but from the ground up, as David Wetzel, busily feeding raw milk to his pasture microbes, would surely attest.
We have been applying old raw milk, old raw whey to our fields for years. They have never looked better. We even feed old return raw milk and return kefir to our chickens. Now we have complaints that our pastured egg shells are too hard to crack ( we were proud and we had to laugh at those complaints ).
The addition of raw milk to the soil is something that the CAFO guys should do with their raw milk…it would be beneficial to their soils….and less allergenic to the end consumers.
http://images.inmagine.com/img/imagebrokerrf/imb014/imb0140372.jpg
Mark
From Dave M. above link- This speaks volumes about the health benefits of raw dairy.
"Food sovereignty" is a term coined by members of Via Campesina in 1996 to refer to a policy framework advocated by a number of farmers, peasants, pastoralists, fisherfolk, indigenous peoples, women, rural youth and environmental organizations, namely the claimed "right" of peoples to define their own food, agriculture, livestock and fisheries systems, in contrast to having food largely subject to international market forces.
Via Campesina's seven principles of food sovereignty include:
1. Food: A Basic Human Right. Everyone must have access to safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food in sufficient quantity and quality to sustain a healthy life with full human dignity. Each nation should declare that access to food is a constitutional right and guarantee the development of the primary sector to ensure the concrete realization of this fundamental right.
2. Agrarian Reform. A genuine agrarian reform is necessary which gives landless and farming people especially women ownership and control of the land they work and returns territories to indigenous peoples. The right to land must be free of discrimination on the basis of gender, religion, race, social class or ideology; the land belongs to those who work it.
3. Protecting Natural Resources. Food Sovereignty entails the sustainable care and use of natural resources, especially land, water, and seeds and livestock breeds. The people who work the land must have the right to practice sustainable management of natural resources and to conserve biodiversity free of restrictive intellectual property rights. This can only be done from a sound economic basis with security of tenure, healthy soils and reduced use of agro-chemicals.
4. Reorganizing Food Trade. Food is first and foremost a source of nutrition and only secondarily an item of trade. National agricultural policies must prioritize production for domestic consumption and food self-sufficiency. Food imports must not displace local production nor depress prices.
5. Ending the Globalization of Hunger. Food Sovereignty is undermined by multilateral institutions and by speculative capital. The growing control of multinational corporations over agricultural policies has been facilitated by the economic policies of multilateral organizations such as the WTO, World Bank and the IMF. Regulation and taxation of speculative capital and a strictly enforced Code of Conduct for TNCs is therefore needed.
6. Social Peace. Everyone has the right to be free from violence. Food must not be used as a weapon. Increasing levels of poverty and marginalization in the countryside, along with the growing oppression of ethnic minorities and indigenous populations, aggravate situations of injustice and hopelessness. The ongoing displacement, forced urbanization, oppression and increasing incidence of racism of smallholder farmers cannot be tolerated.
7. Democratic control. Smallholder farmers must have direct input into formulating agricultural policies at all levels. The United Nations and related organizations will have to undergo a process of democratization to enable this to become a reality. Everyone has the right to honest, accurate information and open and democratic decision-making. These rights form the basis of good governance, accountability and equal participation in economic, political and social life, free from all forms of discrimination. Rural women, in particular, must be granted direct and active decision-making on food and rural issues.
Gompert's suggestion is to apply raw milk at 4 to 6 inches high at time of rapid growth. But he encouraged farmers to try different timings on their farms and experiment because we don't know all that is going on. The lessson here is microbes rule the world and there is so much we don't know yet!! If only we could get FDA to admit this!!!
Wayne Craig