Talk:Vegan organic gardening

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Reverted from allegations of 'nonsense' from 'heegoop'. I would refer you to the publications of the Vegan Organic Network and their paper publication 'Growing Green International' (to which I regularly contribute) for more on the Vegan Organic 'line' on humanure quercus robur 23:56, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Using humanure as a gardening fertilizer is not vegan because humanure is technically an animal product and no products derived from any members of the kingdom Animalia are vegan. Can't you get that through your head. 3 Sep 2004, Heegoop (UTC).

Well there is no need for your rude tone, Heegoop, and if you bothered to check out the reference I gave you [Vegan Organic Network http://www.veganorganic.net/info4.html], you would understand that humanure is acceptable in vegan organic gardening systems as it is not a product of animal exploitation, in fact the idea of any system that does not include any animal products at all is clearly ridiculous. The organic component of any soil is basically worm shit. quercus robur 15:09, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Proposed merger

Oppose, Veganic gardening is a distinct system of gardening with very specific surface cultivation techniques, wheras Vegan Organic Gardening means to garden organically and without the usage of animal products such as blood, fish & bone or manures, etc, but beyond this does not advocate any specific techniques or methods (although no-dig mulching systems are often prefered).

The term 'veganic' is often misused by people who mean to say 'vegan organic', I feel that merging the articles would serve only to perpetuate this misunderstanding, wheras keeping them seperate clarifies that they are not the same thing. quercus robur 17:34, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Arguments against a merge are strong, as the systems are distinct. However the phrase Veganic Gardening has a common meaning not limited to the the particular system described in the article. By itself I'm not sure if the Brian & Bruce systems is sufficiently notable to merit its own page. There is an order of magnitude more google hits for Veganic Gardening (use as a synonym for V.O.G.) than for the specific system. I think that the best solution would be to have a section on the Brian & Bruce veganic system in the main Vegan Organic Gardening page. --Pfafrich 20:00, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

OK maybe you are right- we can always de-merge the articles again later if the Veganic gardening section starts to grow into a decent sized article in its own right quercus robur 00:38, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Clean up

It would be nice if the following text from the article could be both expanded upon yet at the same time expressed neutrally;


[edit] Benefits of Vegan Organic Gardening

  • It reduces food safety risks such as E. coli and the human form of Mad Cow Disease (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) which can be spread through bone and blood meal
  • It decrease dependence upon slaughterhouse and fisheries by-products by eliminating the use of bone, blood, feather, and fish meals and manure
  • Preserves water and soil quality, reduces waste, feeds more people

quercus robur 15:06, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

The first two make good sense to me, but the third one doesn't. First of all, the first part is talking generally; the second two parts seem to be making a direct comparison to non-VGO farming, which makes it pretty ambiguous overall. I'm unsure how you can really farm without reducing soil quality (without introducing more good soil from other areas, which isn't really unique to nor specified by VGO), but then I'm no biologist. fel64 18:07, 9 May 2006 (UTC) I'm going to take out the third one, seeing as from what I can tell it's wrong. fel64 22:09, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

The third one is really three points I'll address individually
  • Preserves water and soil quality
this is more to do with the organic gardening part, improving soil health plays a big part of the organic approach
  • reduces waste
heavy use of composting will reduce gaden waste products. Aslo in systems terms instead of crops -> animals -> man you just have crops -> man then the ineficiancies which are created by the middle step are removed and also the extra layer of waste products
  • feeds more people
This is a standard vegan argument: you can feed feed six times as many people from the same area of land if the ineficient middle step is removed.
That said these do leave something to be desigred, no source at present, not clear what its being compared with, I suspect conventional agriculture. Maybe these should be worded a claims rather than testable results. --Salix alba (talk) 22:52, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vitamins and minerals

(This section was cut from the main article)

There is no research available to prove or disprove the statement that 'Vegan organic gardening can provide all the nutrients the human body needs, without supplementation'. Proving this statement is important for anyone who advocated this system of food production for the developing world. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.153.113.160 (talk • contribs).

  • Plenty of reseach on Vegan nutrition, in the Vegan page. It is probably worth some discussion on main page. --Salix alba (talk) 19:44, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] veganic vs vegan organic

I am for a merger. However the title should be veganic gardening, not veganic organic gardening. And info about veganic organic gardening, which is not available in large amounts, should be included in the veganic gardening section. A veganic organic garden is a kind of veganic garden. A subset. Not all veganic gardens are organic, but some are. Veganic simply means avoiding the use of products of animal origin, due to concerns about the suffering inflicted upon animals, that production of animal-origin materials, involve. Thus vegans do not eat animal products, and make an effort to avoid leather, wool, and fur, in their clothing. When they garden, they make an effort to grow food without relying on soil amendments of animal origin, or beasts of burden, such as animals to draw carts or soil-loosening implements. This avoidance of animal exploitation is sufficient to make a garden veganic. Veganic gardens generally do tend to be "organic-like" even if they are not strictly organic. Vegans do, however, kill insect pests, but try not to do so unnecessarily. If it is necessary to preserve one's crop, vegans will kill insects. In addition, so-called organic gardening methods can be used, making some veganic gardens, vegan organic gardens. This would entail avoidance of plant food and soil amendments made by industry, and reliance on simple organic plant food sources and soil amendments, such as compost and green manures, and tilling in of plant residues. Vegan organic would also entail avoidence of industrially-produced pesticides. Thus a garden can be veganic, organic, or both.

There is no single system of veganic gardening. Their are veganic gardening systems that are a subset of veganic gardening, such as The O'Brien system. But a gardener does not have to follow the O'Brien system to be a veganic gardener. The O'Brien system is a low-till method that relies on natural mulches and deep-rooted cover crops to loosen the soil, and invloves shallow digging of the soil, or "surface cultivation" as they call it.

Nomenclator 16:13, 16 June 2006 (UTC)nomenclator I'm pretty sure I wrote the above. Sorry I forgot to sign it. Anyway, it represent my thoughts, and appears to be my writing style.

[edit] Requested Move

It seems obvious that vegan organic gardening is a kind of veganic gardening. Veganic gardening is a broader category that includes vegan organic gardening. Vegan organic gardening, or organic veganic gardening, is most certainly not the only kind of veganic gardenign. Apparently there used to be two pages, one for Veganic Gardening and one for Vegan Organic Gardening, and it has already been decided to merge the two pages. I would suggest that since Vegan Organic Gardening is a kind of Veganic Gardening, that the title be changed to Veganic Gardening. This page already includes material on several methods of gardening veganically, and material on more than one way of doing that organically. Apparenlty since there is a non-displaying "veganic gardening" page that redirects people to the "vegan organic gardening" page, it is not possible to execute a move by simply using the "move" tab for the page. One needs to use the Wikipedia:Requested Moves page, and request a move. I took a look at the Wikipedia:Requested Moves page and found it very difficult to understand. I need help requesting a move. --Nomenclator 01:57, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Another method - cut material from main article pasting here

I've cut the following from the main article. Mainly because it is not in an encylopedic tone. Use of I is not appropriate for an encylopedic article, nor are personal observations which would count as original research. --Salix alba (talk) 16:39, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

The O'Brien system clearly does use mulches. From Veganic Gardening by Kenneth Dalziel O'Brien. From page 16: "the veganic method of clearing heavily infested land is to take advantage of a plant's tendencies to move its roots nearer to the soil's surface when it is deprived of light. To make use of this principle, aided by a decaying process of the top growth of weeds, etc., it is necessary to subject such growth to heat and mositure in order to speed up the decay, and this is done by applying lime, then a heavy straw cover, and then the herbal compost activator.... The following are required: Sufficient new straw to cover an aread to be leared to a depth of 3 to 4 inches..."

Personally, I have found clearing land by the O'Brien method to be rather time-consuming, and in a hurry to have usable land, I have cleared land by cutting down tall grasses and weeds, and then breaking up the soil they were rooted in with hand tools and with a power-operated walk-behind rear-tine tiller. The weeds were left to decompose, decay, where they were turned in. Any weeds that re-grew due to vegetative reproduction or reseeding, were simply turned in again, and again. Once the soil is broken up the first time, turning over its surface again is very easy to do with a surface cultivating tool such as the one Mr. O'Brien recommends, or a long-handled one such as the surface-cultivating hoe developed by Eliot Coleman. If you do it early, before the soil becomes compacted and weeds become deep-rooted, it only has to be done shallowly, and it is very easy to do, requiring little muscular effort. Pull those weeds while they are small. Pull them again when they grow again. Cut through their roots with a surface-cultivating tool. Or both pull and surface-cultivate. I find it to be a pleasant pastime, like people finding knitting to be.

I think that because I do not use any animal materials, and do not use animals to pull the tiller, that this way of clearing land, although not as "natural" as the O'Brien method, is nevertheless a veganic method. Despite Mr. O'Brien's frequent implications, in his book, that his method is the veganic method, I would consider it to be a veganic method. His method may be more natural and less envrionmentally intrusive than the method I have described, but that doesn't mean the method that I used isn't veganic. I think his method is fine. I have no objections to it. But, if power-tilling tools are available as an alternative, the O'Brien method is certainly more labor-intensive and time-consuming. Also, it depends on having mulch material that does not blow away, such as straw. I rely on compost, and much of that is made from fall tree-leaves. Such leaves are not useful as mulch -- they blow away. When decaying, they provide a breeding place for slugs, so they cannot be used on slug-susceptible plants until fully composted. Leaves are what I have in my area. If I wanted straw, I would have to grow it or buy it. --Nomenclator 15:51, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] veganic gardening does not have to be organic

veganic gardening does not have to be organic. Gardening can be organic, veganic, or both. The implication of titling this page vegan organic gardening, and having no separate page for veganic gardening , is that all veganic gardening is also organic gardening. It is not.

Even the book on gardening written by Kenneth Dalziel O'Brian is entitled Veganic Gardening and not Vegan Organic Gardening, even tho it is a strictly organic method. Veganic simply means without causing harm to animals. Veganic gardening is thus nothing complicated. There are a myriad of ways to grow food without causing harm to animals. To pretend that there is a single veganic gardening method is misleading, untrue and especially -- it is confining -- thought-confining. We need to be encyclopedic, not confining. It is necessary to change the title of this page to veganic gardening, and include information on the numerous organic veganic gardening methods and methods that may not be strictly organic, that veganic growers have used successfully.--Nomenclator 18:56, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

My copy of O'Brien's Veganic Gardening defines 'veganic' to mean "vegetable organic", not "Vegan organic", ie, it uses only vegetable matter, the lack of harm to animals is thus incidental only, and doesn't appear in the intro as a reason for adopting the system. What is stressed is that animal manures are 'unhealthy for the soil', animal welfare doesn't figure at all. Kathleen Jannaway of Movement for Compassionate Living was always very keen that 'Vegan Organic' and 'Veganic' shouldn't be confused for this very reason, which was why I was arguing earlier that the pages should be kept distinct. Cheers quercus robur 20:31, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
I supose this depends where you come from. In the UK we have the Vegan-Organic Network and I've heard very little about O'Brian. I'd always thought the term veganic was a contraction of vegan and organic. The Vegan society use veganic as a synonym for vegan-organic which is the first link in google. Most of the other site I've looked similarly use veganic to mean vegan-organic. --Salix alba (talk) 20:53, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
I always went with Jannaway's argument in that the 2 things are distinct. I think the problem is people tend to use the term 'veganic' as shorthand for 'vegan organic' because it sounds snappier. But as stated above Rudd, who presumably coined the term, defined 'veganic' to mean 'vegetable organic', and O'Brien's book gives very specific methods and techniques. Unfortunately it seems that merging the 2 pages is serving to jumble up the two systems, well 'veganic' is a system, wheras 'vegan organic' is more of a broad ethical approach that encompass any number of techniques and systems, which confuses things even more... quercus robur 21:05, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] i think you are making things too complicated

The term vegan was coined by Donald Watson. See Jewish Blogging for his own words on the subject. Also see The American Vegan Society for a further definition of veganism. Supposedly the term, it is simply a contraction of the word vegetarian. This is what is stated in the wikipedia article on [[Donald Watson]. It means living off the products of the plant kingdom, and excluding products from the animal kingdom in regard food, and also trying to do so in everything. Since dairy and eggs are from the animal kingdom, and many "vegetarians" used dairy and eggs, Mr. Watson and others thought a new term was needed, that described vegetarians who were more strict about their diet, and eschewed dairy and eggs. It also denotates that the reason for the diet is that eating animals causes unnecessary harm to animal, and distinguishes vegans as being ethical vegetarians, vegetarians who are vegetarians for reasons of compassion for animals, rather than vegetarians for heatlh reasons alone, or any other reason. It further dentotes that they carry this compassion over into other parts of their lives other than their cuisine-life. That is, in trying to avoid harm to animal, vegans also adopt a policy of extending the idea of not harming animals, to other aspects of their lives besides food. Thus a vegan would try to avoid, if possible, using animal products in her clothing, and her housing -- and also in how she gardens.

Veganic gardening is simply the kind of gardening that a vegan would do -- without using animal products. It means nothing more and nothing less. According to what I understand the term vegan does not mean vegetable-organic.

Veganic gardening is not any special system of gardening. It is simply the gardening that follows vegan ideas of avoiding harm to animals. The fact that Kenneth Dalziel O'Brien has published a book that he entitled "veganic gardening," and the fact that his book refers to a very specific type of gardening, doesn't mean that this is the only kind of gardening that can be properly called veganic gardening. Far from it.

K D O'Brien appears to be alone in claiming that the term veganic was coined by Geoffery L. Rudd, or that it means "vegetable organic." Most sources attribute the term to Donald Watson, and state that it is simply a contraction of the word vegetarian. This includes the American Vegan Societyand The Vegan Society, which states "... Donald organised a London meeting of six like-minded "non-dairy vegetarians" at which it was decided to form a new society and adopt a new name to describe themselves - vegan derived from VEGetariAN.

While sometimes people use the noun vegan as an adjective, as in "I went to a vegan restaurant," other times they add ic to the end of the word, to make an adjective, and ically to make it and adverb. Adding ic to the end of a noun, and is one of the most frequent methods of constructing adjectives. Adding ically to a noun is one of the most frequent methods of constructing adverbs. As in "the woman prepared her husband's meals veganically, and he was not aware of anything unusual about his meal, or that it was veganic." This is similar to how the noun ectasy becomes ectatic when we want an adjective, and ectatically when we want an adverb. Or "the vegan gardened veganically in his veganic garden." I might add that organ is a noun and by adding ic to the end we make an adjective; by adding ically we make an adverb. Since ic is simply a very frequently used "adjectival suffix," adding ic to the end of vegan would not seem likely to be construed by anyone to be a contraction of vegan and organic. There is nothing whatsoever of the core word, organ, in the term veganic. There is nothing added to the word vegan but the adjective-making suffix ic.

I suppose you could view veganic as being a contraction of vegetable and organic but avoidence of use of animal products for ethical reasons is not "incidental" to the O'Brien system.

Nevertheless I would view a changing the page title to "vegan gardening" as acceptable alternative to changing it to "veganic gardening," with "vegan-organic" gardening being included as a subset of "vegan gardening."

Three are dozens of gardeners across the world who call their gardens "veganic" and who do not use either the O'Brien system, or any strictly organic system. They simply a vegans with a vegan garden, in which they do not use animal products, just like they do not use animal products for food, clothing, or shelter. That said, most such gardeners use lots of compost amd have gardens that are predominantly organic. But using pesticides and industrially produced plant food is not unheard of among such gardeners -- as long as the industrial products are not derived from animals. Industrially-produced nitrogen plant food meets this qualification. --Nomenclator 04:31, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] the K D O'Brien method is not new

By the way there was nothing new about the KD O'Brien method at the time it was published, nor anything unique about it. It is simply a compendium of existing organic methods that the author had confirmed produce good results, having used them together for many years. And methods that involve animal materials are left out.

These include non-compaction of soil, minimal disturbance of the soil by tilling , compost, mulch, cover crops, and green manures, and turning grassy areas into usable areas without digging, by use of straw mulch alone. Interstingly, although the raised beds get converted from weed and grass to soft soil by the application of mulch alone, the paths between them are created by -- the hard labor of digging up the grass and weeds with a spade and tranferring the dug up soil from the paths to the beds, to help raise them above the paths! You are told exactly how wide to make every bed -- 4 feet and 6 inches. And to leave the same spot as bed, year after year, and the same spot as path, year after year. And to never walk on the beds. You are also told to put compost on top of the soil once it has been mulch-cleared, and given tips for making compost, watering, laying out beds from north to south, and other well-known organic techniques. Existing intensive techniques are explained, such as putting plants in double rows, or more -- ou don't need a path between every row as in commercial farming. This raised-bed technique was not new in 1986. What is new is that you are asked to make them all 4 feet 6 inches wide. You are also given many suggestions for seed cultivars that work well with this system -- in the author's tiny area of England -- when we all know that a cultivar that may be magnificent in one part of the world, may be the last one that works out well in another. The main benefit of this book is the reassurance that with lots and lots of compost (the author does not give actual quantities) you can have a good yield without resorting to feces, urine, blood meal, bone meal, or industrially produced soil amendments.

I have no problem with the book or Mr O'Brien. I use many, if not nearly all, of his techniques, to a certain extent. The book is useful by being a compendium of existing techniques found in other books, including books or raised bed gardening and intensive gardening, and by containing the reassurance you can eliminate animal products successfully, and still have a very productive garden. I just don't think it is really anything more than a personal collection of existing techniques techniques that don't require animal exploitation that Mr. O'Brien tells us have worked out well for him.

While the book limits its discussion of veganims to the ecological and heatlh benefits of veganic gardening, it is my understanding that Mr. O'Brien is a vegan (by definition, a vegan is someone who avoids animal products for reasons of kindness to animals, and may have other reasons in addition), and that in addition to what he explains in his book, his personal motivation for gardening without animal materials has been the same as an other vegan - basicly, kindness to animals, and ahimsa. However I would not include that in the article unless I first can find some confirmation of this.

--Nomenclator 11:52, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question

It is not really clear to me what is intended to be meant by "Soil fertility doesn't originate from animals; it comes from plants at the bottom of the food chain."

Natural soil provides several things for green plants. These include anchorage; spaces that hold air, water, and dissolved materials, in a way that is well suited for roots and root hairs to be in good contact with them and absorb nutrients (together these are soil tilth); and nutrients created by the action of micro-organisms on organic matter in the soil, both animal matter and plant matter. Mostly plant matter. There is really no such thing as soil fertility. what there is, that is useful for green plants, is (1) its tilth and (2) its supply of organic particles and (3) a healthy balanced set of micro-organisms including decay organisms that are busy converting the organic matter into (soluble) nutrients the plants can feed on.

The soil tilth and the soil's complement of organic matter and micro-organisms don't "originate" anywhere. Rather, they are a part of a circular process.

Green plants need nitrogen to construct their tisses, but green plants cannot feed directly on elemental nitrogen in the air, and connot feed directly on the nitrogen bound up in particles of organic matter. Decay micro-organisms convert the nitrogenous parts of the organic matter into ammonia and nitrates -- which are the only forms of nitrogen that green plants can feed on. Other micro-organisms convert aeriel nitrogen into the nitrogenous matter of their cells. these contribute to the organic matter of the soil. The particles of organic matter in the soil that decay organism convert to nitrates and ammonia come mostly from green plants, and to a smaller extent from all sorts of animals. It is mostly from green plants, and only slightly from the bodies and excretions of animals -- simply because there is so much more living matter, gram for gram, in the form of green plants, relative to how much is in the form of animals. All the animals that exist -- almost all of their matter comes from green plants they ate, or to a smaller extent, from animals they ate -- that ate the green plants. So there is no origin to plants nutrient. They are a point on a circle.

Nitrogen, a key ingredient in plant and animal matter, goes thru a "nitrogen cycle." The nitrogenous material of plants and animals (amino acids and nucleic acids) gets converted from plant to animal (and in a sub-circle to other animals) to micro-organism to green plants -- in a circle (or cycle) not a chain.

The sentence in question doesn't really sound to me like a consise way to say the above. There is no origin, just an endless circle. Soil is not really fertile, it is (1) an anchoring medium, (2) a source of nutrients, and a (3) texture that is relatively well-suited or relatively ill-suited to the process of absorbing the nutrients

About 40 percent of the organic portion of soil consists of living nematodes. These ar multicellular and are at the borderline between microsocpic and visible; you could see them if you were able to extract them from the soil one by one.

But this is natural soil I have been talking about. As far as soil that has been fooled around with by humans, plant nutrients can "originate" from wherever humans decide they want them to originate from. Humans can add industrially-produced ammonia, nitrates, or organic matter that comes from plants, or from animals, or from all of these sources.

--Nomenclator 01:28, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Soil contains lots of animals

Soil contains lots of animals -- insects are abundant, but nematodes are even more abundant, making up mabye 40% of the organic matter in soil. The rest is mostly dead, decaying plant matter being metabolized by fungi and bacteria, not to mention eaten by the nematodes. Every time you "surface cultivate" the soil you undoubted kill millions of nematodes. So there is no way to be completely harmless, completely vegan. We can avoid killing reptiles, amphibians, and mammals, but avoiding harm to nematodes seems impossible. I don't see how it is possible to "eradicate" the causing of harm to "any living creature." Whether you measure creatures by number or by weight, getting the harm down to zero creatures or zero kilograms of creature is not a reasonable goal.

Nematodes are not microscopic. One way to see them -- and to see that they act as if they experience pain (there is no way for me to tell if anyone else but myself experiences pain; all I can do is infer it from their actions that are similar to the ones I have, when I experience pain) is to lightly spray the surface of moist soil with a rotenone or pyrethrin solution. Rotenone and pyrethrins are pesticides that are derived from a plant, and are generally considered acceptable for organic gardening. Rotenone is virtually non-toxic to all vertebrates, but toxic to invertebrates such as insects, mullosks (we don't really want it running off into waterways), and — nematodes. Pyrethrins are only mildly toxic to humans. You will see 100's of tiny, millimeter-long "strings" ( maybe .05 mm in diameter) dancing above the soil's surface. I believe these are nematodes jumping out of the soil, trying to escape the rotenone. Anyway, they look like nematodes -- tiny, thin, short "strings" that wiggle and locomote. The fact that they are so vigorously jumping out of the soil suggests that they are made to feel ill, feel pain, from the rotenone, or are having some kind of "seizure" from the rotenone. It doesn't prove it; but it sure looks like it to me. Presumably simply "surface-cultivating" the soil also causes harm to millions of nematodes, and over an acre of land, to several tons of them.

Most of these nematodes are beneficial nematodes. They eat organic matter. They make nematode feces. They die and decay and thusly they make nitrogen available to green plants.

No, I am not as concerned about a million nematodes as I am about the nest of 4 baby rabbits that I might accidently hit with a power tiller. Nor am I suggesting that anyone who kills a nematode is not a doing their best to be vegan. But it is not easy to be completely vegan. I personally don't see being 100% vegan as being possible. I am content to avoid killing or hurting unnecessarily rather than trying to be completely harmless.--Nomenclator 09:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I Removed Part about nitrogen being lost in urine

It simply makes no sense to say that usable nitrogen is lost if grass is composted in a cow instead of in a pile, since the "manure" made from cows consists of both urine and feces, and the nitrogen in cow urine is in a very usable form, urea. Urea is rapidly broken down by soil microorganisms into ammoniacal nitrogen and nitrate nitrogen, the 2 forms of N that plants can use. Ammoniacal nitrogen is also converted to nitrate nitrogen, which is the more useful of the two.

Where nitrogen is temporarily "lost" is where the cow absorbs nitrogen from the grass it eats, to make its muscles, enzymes, and chromosomes. A basic fact of life is that energy production by living things requires the elements carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. The production of living tissue by living things requires these 3 elements — and also the element nitrogen. In a sense, energy also requires N, because the enzymes that catalyze the process of deriving energy from C, H, and O, are made of C, H, O, and N. However only a tiny amount of such enzymes are needed. Also, when the cow itself dies, and then decomposes, its nitrogen becomes available to plants. So some of the nitrogen in grass is not really lost when grass is fed to a cow, rather, its use by plants is only delayed while the cow lives. It is only "lost" if a human eats the cow, and then we don't compost the person who eats the cow, or their excrement (urine and feces), and don't use these to feed plants. --Nomenclator 09:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

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