Solarpunk Farming

cross-posted from: https://aussie.zone/post/331416

The use of guardian dogs for livestock protection has a long history - farmers have been using dogs to protect their livestock from predators for thousands of years.

Books on agriculture written 2,000 years ago in ancient Rome made it clear that livestock guardian dogs were essential for successful farming and gave detailed instructions on their selection and management.

What if it is just too hard to keep this system working in the long term? Maybe predators initially avoid farms protected by guardian dogs but eventually learn to outsmart or intimidate them and go back to killing livestock; or perhaps farmers find guardian dogs too difficult to manage in the long term and give up on them.

Some farmers gave up on guardian dogs because of two kinds of problems: 24% had trouble with dog misbehaviour, and 19% had trouble with neighbours who objected to the presence of these dogs close to their own farms.

From the answers, we estimate that farmer-to-farmer contact is increasing the total number of Australian farms with guardian dogs by 5% per year.

I’m getting the ball rolling on a cannabis growing community.

!cannabiscultivation@slrpnk.net

I hope any current or aspiring growers will join me there!

Hi, I escaped from r/solarpunk. Content Warning, this post is about raising animals for their meat, so may be upsetting to some. I'm putting this under farming because I couldn't identify a better community (maybe food?) but I'd be happy to move this topic into a new, specific community if that can be done.

Something that's been going in my mind for a bit is the role of backyard farming and homesteading in solarpunk. First caveat, I think vegetarianism/veganism for 99-100% of the diet of 99% of the population is a fantastic goal, but I think we need to have solutions for the interim where society is still coming around to the idea. Even people who want the best for the planet and animals might be intimidated by the prospect of veganism or even vegetarianism, whether or not they have sound reason for this.

While we're still reliant on animal meat, I think that moving our animal raising from big factory farms into local smallholdings or even our backyards would help immensely. On one hand, the welfare of a factory-farmed chicken pales in comparison to that of a chicken who grew up knowing love and foraging. Also, each meat-based meal that is grown at home or on a well-run smallholding diverts business from the factory farms that are killing our planet.

Quite frankly, I'm hoping to own chickens soon, mostly so I can have fresh/ethical eggs and share the same eggs with my community. But I'm not averse to raising chickens for meat either. In fact, my goal would be to stop eating meat entirely unless it came from my flock or a flock that I knew first hand was cared for to the same standards.

In my eyes, meat should be something you eat as a treat, and only if you can psychologically grapple with how it got to your plate and give due respect to the animal who provided it.

There's a lot I'd like to discuss about this, and I think it's important to discuss. I know the subject of veganism or lack thereof can get heated, but I think we need to have these hard conversations if we want to come together as a community with proper solutions for the future.

So tl:dr; does discussion of home-reared meat belong here? If so, does this align with anyone else's goals?

Twitter thread.