Farming to Love the Children:

The Unfair Advantage of Small Ruminant Dairying. Lessons Learned at Northland Sheep Dairy

by Karl North

Summary: Modern farming practices produce short-run abundance but long-run damage to essential agroecosystem processes.The two fundamental forces creating these damaging practices are classical science and the laissez-faire economy.Opportunities exist in small ruminant dairy farming to counter these forces.

E vidence has accumulated rapidly in recent decades that much of our industrial way of food production cannot be sustained, for it destroys both the environment necessary to human health and quality of life, and the natural resource base food production is dependent upon. Our main agricultural export is not a commodity like grain, but topsoil. Modern farming practices produce short-run abundance but long-run damage to essential agroecosystem processes: to water and mineral cycles, to energy sources and flows, and to the eco-community dynamics that requires a critical mass of interacting species. As the adverse consequences of our economic and technological choices are often delayed, the brunt of them falls largely on future generations, on our children. Few of us would deny that we love the children, but the way we live and farm discredits our best intentions, and amounts to an intergenerational tyranny. In effect the ways we have chosen to maximize our present standard of living constitute a theft from future generations. The objective of this report is first to identify two main forces driving these choices, and then to explore opportunities in small ruminant dairy farming to counter these forces, and make progress toward a more sustainable agriculture: a way of farming to love the children.

Major Obstacles

In order to understand what has happened to food production in the modern industrial age, we need to look closely at two fundamental forces: classical science and the laissez-faire economy.

The holy grail of science up to now has been its predictive power; that is what has given science its virtually sacred status in modern times. But to achieve that predictive power scientists have had to follow a method that reduces their focus to a few variables: add genes A to Cow B and get higher milk yield C, or add heat A to raw milk B and get rid of tuberculosis C. This reductionist science works fine in a controlled laboratory, but when we practice A+B=C in the complex systems that make up the real world there are always many more outcomes than C, a lot of which, we are finding, eventually cause worse problems than the one the scientist solved.

Thanks to reductionist science, sheep farmers have the chemical technology to deliver a knockout blow to the intestinal parasites that plague lambs, but well apart from the largely unresearched effects of those chemicals on our food, a short term focus allows the scientist to disregard the fact that routine use eventually builds resistance and renders the technology useless. Similarly, the narrow focus on maximum milk yield in the modern Holstein has produced a now classic constellation of negative outcomes at least three levels: animal health, ecosystem health, and food quality, and promises a repeat performance when applied to the dairy ewe. To the numerous known negative consequences of concentrate feeding of ruminants to boost milk and meat yields, recent research adds two more: it turns the animals into factories that are generating the dangerous acid-tolerant E coli strain turning up in our food supply. And feeding grain and even conserved forage degrades the quality of milk and meat by removing substances inherent in milk from purely grass-fed dairy animals, components like CLA (conjugated linoleic acid) that help us defend against three of the degenerative illnesses that plague modern industrial societies: cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Thus the reductionist nature of most of current science is partly responsible for the delayed but accumulating problems, often down-played as 'side effects', caused by powerful modern technologies.

Our world is a complex system of elements within wholes within wholes. Some of the components are inert, some alive, themselves whole complex systems, some communities of whole systems. It follows that what we must pay attention to, as we operate in this world, is less the seemingly discrete elements and more their interdependency, their relationships. In general, it has been the assumption of the classical scientific paradigm that if we manage the parts right, the whole will come right. Evidence that this is not the case is now coming from every quarter, yet our systems of knowledge and management are still structured around this assumption. In fact some of our best thinkers are saying that the most important scientific advance of the 20th century will have been our grudging acceptance of the interdependency of our world, putting the pressure on science to change its very nature. In practice this means that problems can no longer be addressed only from a narrow disciplinary viewpoint. The complex dynamics of strongly interacting processes will force scientists and decision-makers to think and act in a more holistic manner.

Probably even more important than the nature of our science has been the nature of the economic system we have allowed to develop, especially in the United States. When Monsanto developed the Terminator gene that can land it control over the bulk of the world seed market, critics called that diabolical; but to Monsanto, Terminator is just devilishly good business. Such predatory behavior is perfectly normal and in fact necessary for long term business survival in an economic system which the French long ago dubbed laissez-faire, or 'anything goes', perhaps because at the time it contrasted starkly with their catholic notions of social order. Early predictions that unrestrained market economies contain an inherent drive toward monopoly have come true, and in the agricultural sector this effectively reduces most farmers to serfs at the mercy of farm commodity markets dominated by huge corporations. Since the amoral nature of our chosen economic system is such that it mainly rewards short term gain, and considers only local, immediate costs, it allows us to pass on heavy ecological and social costs of our economic behavior to future generations and other remote peoples. It allows, eventually even forces farmers, if we are to remain profitable within this economic system, to practice intergenerational tyranny.

In sum, both the current scientific paradigm and our current economic system have a similar flaw in design: a tendency to ignore delayed or distant consequences, down the road in time, as on future generations, and down the road in space, as when the agritoxins in the creek running below my farm empty into Chesapeake bay several hundred miles away, where they destroy fisheries and endanger public health.

Compounding the problem, the concentrated power in our economic system constantly bends the scientific establishment into its service via skewed incentives and rewards:

• Over 90% of weed scientists are dependent on funding from pesticide companies.
• When an epidemiologist documented the damage North Carolina's hog megafarms inflict on the health of nearby communities, the megafarms took him to court.

These are but two examples of common occurrences. Throughout the land grant agricultural education system, research in the corporate interest is rewarded, while research in the public interest, serving the original mandate of the land grants offers only risk and sacrifice.

An Alternative Agriculture?

Current fashion is to promote an 'alternative agriculture' focused on value-added, direct-marketing, and exotic products. This alternative fails to directly address core issues of ecological sustainability. Moreover, in as much as its goal is to exploit niches, this alternative promises little economic relief to the majority of farmers selling into commodity markets now increasingly subject to monopoly control, for niches are by definition but a small part of the system. Given the ever-increasing concentration of market power in the economy, there appears little chance of major concern with issues of sustainability until accumulating negative social and environmental impacts generate the requisite political will to manage the economy according to different priorities. However, until such time as the political will for change emerges, the niche exploitation alternative does offer a breathing space, sheltered from the predatory market forces shaping commodity farming, for some farmers to test, refine, and slowly propagate, sustainable practices. And sheep dairies are an obvious candidate for niche exploitation; that is their first 'unfair advantage'.

Sustainable Sheep Dairy Systems

What can we do in this breathing space? The task is barely begun: commercial organic farming in this country does not yet practice anything close to its vision of sustainable agriculture. We organic farmers are far too dependent on fossil fueled technologies, monocultural agroecosystems, and distant supply lines and markets, just to name a few problems and challenges. Possibly the most effective first step in the restoration of sustainability is the re-integration of ruminant livestock with grain, vegetable, and fruit farming. Self-fed from permanent hay/pasture as they were originally designed, grazers like sheep and cattle are the fastest solar-powered soil building tool farmers have. Sheep dairies can model sustainable soil fertility and animal husbandry systems. That is our second unfair advantage. But only if the sheep are grass-fed. Grain feeding may be currently profitable for many farmers, but is not sustainable for many reasons. Those farms which attempt to model totally grass-fed systems cannot think piece-meal: they must redesign the whole, adapting sheep genetics, grazing design, pasture species mix, manure management, and pest control to one another. At Northland Sheep Dairy we have been moving gradually in this direction for fifteen years.

Sheep Genetics

In the rich, centuries-old, year-round pastures and mild climate of Friesland, the Friesian cow was an efficient milk producer on grass until it was exported and became the monster Holstein of today. In a comparable climate and soil quality, the Friesian sheep may, with some readaptation, do as well just on grass. In most locations in the United States the purebred Friesian sheep is a poor candidate for a sustainable system because of its long history of coddling with a high concentrate diet, and because so many of our pasture soils need decades of regeneration. Even in a high input system, dairy ewes that are over 75% Friesian appear uneconomical.

Several sheep dairies, in both the Midwest and the Northeast, at various levels of grass reliance, are finding lower levels of Friesian cross-breeding most economic. To genetically select toward a no-grain dairy sheep that will do well in a low external input sustainable system, Northland Sheep Dairy has reduced grain feeding over ten years mainly to a month on each side of lambing, peaking at 0.5#/ewe at lambing. To the resultant hardy, Dorset/Texel base, we have added 25% Friesian with no significant loss of hardiness in the sheep or solids in the milk. Unlike several 50-75% Friesian control ewes in the flock, these sheep have maintained body condition over the lactation, while giving as much milk as the controls. These results are tentative and the experiment continues. The ultimate genetic goal is a sheep that:

• Lambs well on pasture in May, timed so that milk and meat production falls as much as possible within the grass season;
• Maximizes not quantity, but economy of milk production and lamb growth;
• Minimizes the need for farm inputs detrimental to the ecology of the farm or other environments.

This will require genetic selection for parasite resistance, as detailed below in a discussion of pest control.

An Intensive Grazing System

In keeping with the goal of making fullest use of the soil regenerative function of the sheep flock, we have developed an intensive grazing system where the flock, the farmer and the plants closely watch and adapt to one another. A careful reading of André Voisin's classic, Grass Productivity, reveals that permanent pasture, developed over time to its maximum potential, outyields temporary forage fields. Moreover, maximum production of manure, as well as milk, depends on high pasture consumption per acre, which in turn depends on a grazing rotation where both the graze-off and the rest period are timed to keep vegetative, highly palatable plants in front of dairy ewes and growing lambs. It also depends on overseeding and grazing management to develop the most effective mix of legumes, grasses, and broad-leaf plants. Broad-leaf plants are ignored in conventional research because of low relative yield. But broad-leaf plants that are high on the forage preference list of sheep, like dandelion, plaintain, chicory, and wild carrot, are essential to a sustainable pasture species mix. Their deep roots and unique character keep them growing during dry periods, and fill special nutritional needs. Research has demonstrated that sheep will make forage choices based on nutritional need. Accordingly, we are using pasture management and overseeding to develop the widest possible pasture smorgasbord consistent with flock preference and ability to thrive in our conditions. This includes some hedgerow forage, species with even deeper roots than pasture plants, which our flock craves from time to time. It includes overseeding of trefoil, our main legume, better adapted than alfalfa to our poor, acid soils. We must reseed every 2-3 years, or give it time to self-seed, which it does successfully enough to be a permanent part of the roadside ecology in our region, where one pass per season by the road maintenance mower creates a niche to its advantage. Our other overseed to date, Puna chicory, chosen because of its superior lamb production ability, has been persistent, but will not reach an economical size until our soil fertility improves. Our first choice for future overseeding will be a late maturing, diploid perennial ryegrass, although the jury is still out on whether newer varieties have finally achieved the winter hardiness necessary in the Northeast and Northern Midwest.

A future project in the quest for a sustainable pasture system will integrate black locust rows, spaced to allow machine hay harvest and just enough shading to protect pasture and flock from the hot, drying sun of midsummer. This sylvo-pastoral arrangement will produce both lumber and nitrogen for the farm. Planted in the fence row as well, and coppiced to fence post height, the locust will replace dead posts with more permanent live ones, and yield a regular harvest of palatable, nutritious forage.

The black locust project typifies the design strategy farmers will have to use to build an agriculture that uses land and other natural resources both efficiently and sustainably. The strategy uses the biodiversity potential of a location to capture synergistic relationships between species. Sheep/orchard sylvo-pastoral systems on our farm and elsewhere have demonstrated the capacity of the synergy design principle to address orchard pest problems by:

• Keeping undergrowth down to promote air flow to reduce disease;
• Consuming windfalls to break an apple pest cycle;
• Enriching orchard soil, increasing both yields and earthworm populations which break another apple pest cycle by consuming fallen leaves.

We believe these are only first steps in realizing the full synergistic potential of sheep/orchard systems.

Manure Management

Just as proper sheep nutrition feeds the rumen bacterial community, not the sheep, sustainable fertility systems feed the soil community, not the plant. Direct chemical plant fertilization that boosts yields while destroying soil and plant health has been a telling example of the failure of reductionist science serving a profit-at-any-cost economy. The end of cheap oil, due to arrive in one generation, around 2020, should curtail the use of these petroleum-dependent chemicals, so what better alternative can we model for the next generation?

The soil community needs more than manure or green manure: it needs the stabilized nutrients, high carbon content, and bulk of manure that has been composted with a large quantity of high fiber plant material. So soil fertilization schemes built around grass/ruminant core will need to capture as much manure for composting as possible, especially in the colder months, when much of the value of pasture-dropped manure is lost. Before the chemical age, corralling animals at night provided not only protection against predators, but manure collection as well.

Our farm works toward ideal manure management by:

• Feeding hay in sufficient quantity to provide leftovers for deep litter bedding that will capture the nutrients in winter manure build-up;
• Designing a sheep barn for easy summer clean-out;
• Using a bucket loader hefty enough for fast turning of composting windrows to achieve a stable end product before the weather turns too cold;
• Scheduling compost spreading for the following summer when soil biological activity is again high, for the compost to be absorbed with the least loss of nutrients.

The functions of the deep litter winter manure pack are multiple: manure storage with minimal leaching and ammonia losses; warmth, cleanliness and sanitation for livestock; odorless barns, and proper carbon/nitrogen balance for making good compost. The manure pack is such an attractive manure storage solution in sustainable livestock systems, that even a few organic cow dairies are beginning to consider it seriously again. The unfair advantage of sheep and goat dairies is that sheep manure packs need less bedding, and pasture manure is well dispersed.

Combined with artful intensive grazing management, this type of careful manure management eventually generates a fertility surplus beyond the fertility needs of the livestock supporting fields, as Voisin demonstrated. The surplus then becomes the fertility source needed to integrate tillage crops sustainably. So the grass/ruminant complex becomes the fertility production core capable of driving a wide variety of crop farming in a self-contained system dependent largely on current, local solar gain. Once the core is in place, other animal-powered complements become economic: draft animal traction, pig and chicken composters, and poultry-based pest controls, for example.

Pest Control

Since heavy reliance on vermifuges, be they chemical or herbal, breeds resistance, the burden of sustainable parasite control in small ruminants falls on genetics and management, especially grazing management. Genetic selection for parasite resistance can take place only where reliance on parasiticides is low to non-existent and animals are allowed to sink or swim within a management-controlled farm parasite load. The most effective management tool is the provision of clean pasture every year by dividing the farm forage field space in half, and alternating the main production stock yearly between halves. Forage on the other half is harvested by machine or by another pasture animal species.

Northland Sheep Dairy has been certified organic and we make no routine use of parasiticides, at some sacrifice in lamb production. However this allows us to select for parasite resistance in replacement ewes from the lamb crop, which we expect to pay off in the long run. Our main criteria for parasite resistance are weight and condition at six months or more of age, after the lambs have weathered the summer gauntlet of parasite attack.

Acreage shortage has limited full implementation of the management program, but for the last 3 years we have been able to put the weaned lambs on pasture reserved for hay the previous year. Lambs are still exposed to contaminated pasture until weaning, but lamb production seems to be slowly improving, and for years we have seen little sign of excess parasite load in adult ewes. Plans for the future are to add enough animal units of another hardy pasture species, like a few Highland cattle, along with our team of Haflinger draft horses, to balance the dairy ewe and lamb flocks, and provide the annual alternation of stock that we need for sustainable pest control in the sheep.

Unwanted plants invading hay/pasture are another pest control problem. Since permanent hay/pasture is our goal according to the sustainable model we have set for the farm, we need to find management solutions: changing the patterns of grazing, haying, clipping, or overseeding. Bedstraw, our main unwanted pasture invasion, gets worse in an intensive grazing rotation, even with some hay harvest and clipping, because the sheep graze it last. So far we have not had the resources to subject invaded fields to repeated haying or clipping alone.

Conclusion

Small scale sheep dairies doing processing and direct marketing are excellent candidates for modeling farming systems that can repair and rebuild our sorely depleted natural resource base: ways of farming to love the children. A number of principles of sustainable design emerge from our experience, and from other efforts around the world:

• Use holistic, site-specific designs
• Capture inter-species synergies
• Use current solar gain
• Respect nature's cycles
• Design to appropriate scale

-- Karl North
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