Containing Pasture Runoff

America spends so much of its time licking the boots of the oil industry that our vision gets distorted when it comes to environmental-agricultural policies. The runoff that is lethal to our waterways comes primarily from the use of chemical pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. Oil and chemical interests have been very successful at distracting us from what should be our goal, the radical decrease in the use of poisons in agriculture, and focusing on the removal of manure from pastures.

It has been an easy target for them. Manure is visible to the eye and obvious to the nose. Chemical fertilizers and herbicides that destroy microbial life under the ground carry on there carnage in complete darkness. We cannot see the beneficial microbes when they are alive so we cannot directly see when they are destroyed.

But we can see the results.

Modern chemical farming reduces dirt to simply being the equivalent of plant holders. Our field's only purpose is to hold, for a very brief period of time, the fertilizers and poisons that we put on the soil each spring. The microbial life, and the earthworms that can generate plant growth perpetually, without the addition of chemicals and poison, are destroyed.

That leaves us with  a barren desert beneath the surface.

Permaculture principles can reverse this carnage in less than a decade. By simply ceasing to use any chemicals on a pasture we can increase microbial life to the point that manure is quickly absorbed in to the soil and transformed into the nutrients that pastures require. Simply pushing up slight berms around the low spots in pastures, coupled with the judicious use of swales and water retention areas, along with keeping residue of ivermectin from pastures can nearly eliminate rain water runoff in pastures that are on flat land.

Those passive steps will yield tremendous benefits. When they are coupled with a more active approach to regenerative agriculture, the benefits multiply beyond what I ever imagined possible. Multi species grazing (including poultry), application of microbial fertilizer, application of vermicompost and colonization of composting worms along with management practices that reduce soil compaction will create super soil. Soil so biologically active it will quickly breakdown horse manure and convert it to useful plant nutrients is a gift that keeps on giving. With each growing season the pastures become stronger and more alive.

And near by water ways become cleaner. And manure breaks down in pastures so fast that it is often barely visible. And your horses will be healthier. And you will be taking carbon out of the atmosphere and putting it in the soil.

And you will become a steward of the land instead of continuing on as its primary enemy.