- A New Vision for Iowa Food and Agriculture, Food, Energy, and Agriculture Commentary
- September 20, 2010
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The Design Of Nature’s Ecology
by Francis Thicke[The following is an excerpt taken from my book, 'A New Vision for Iowa Food and Agriculture'.]
Chapter 12. The Design of Nature’s Ecology
Twelve thousand years ago, in the wake of the most recent glacier, the land that would become Northern Iowa was a geologic wasteland. Glacial materials conveyed from the north had obliterated the biological diversity of the previous era. But then nature’s ecological processes began anew, creating – over 12 millennia – a prairie ecosystem with fertile, productive soils.
How did that happen? Gradually, plants, animals and microorganisms colonized the desolate landscape, creating an increasingly diverse and complex ecosystem. The ecosystem’s plants and animals generated organic materials which soil microorganisms consumed and used to develop fertile soils from raw geologic materials.
It has been estimated that 60 million bison once roamed the prairies and plains of North America. (That compares with about 95 million cattle in the U.S. today.) The bison traveled in large herds and their behavior contributed to the development of fertile soils in the areas they traveled. Bison herds roving the prairie landscape are a useful model we can employ to design animal production systems that are resilient, energy-efficient, biologically diverse and ecologically sound.
When bison herds grazed the tall, deep-rooted prairie plants, they reposited their manure nutrients back to the soil from whence the plant nutrients had come. And, their grazing activities stimulated regeneration and robustness of the ecosystem. After being grazed, the shortened prairie plants had excess root mass for their reduced above-ground leaf mass, so the plants sloughed a portion of their roots into the soil. As the plants grew new shoots and leaves above the ground, they also grew new roots below the ground. The root mass that had been released into the soil after the bison had grazed the prairie plants became food to sustain soil microorganisms and produce humus (sequestered soil carbon). Repeated grazing cycles of the roaming bison herds increasingly added to the soil’s fertility, productivity and organic matter.
As we will see, modern livestock production systems can be designed and managed to mimic the ecological processes that created the diverse prairie and its productive soils. And these systems can be much more energy-efficient than current industrial animal production methods. The key is to find ways to harness the energy, efficiency and organizing power of nature’s ecology. Modern scientific understanding of ecology provides insights into the design and management of these systems.
[Stay tuned to this blog: I will be posting all the chapters from my book, 'A New Vision For Iowa Food And Agriculture' to this blog during the final weeks before the election on November 2nd. I look forward to any comments or questions you have.]
