• GroundedGator@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I mean I could but I have a nearly limitless supply of rabbits in my yard. Their fur makes great gifts. My plants love the compost I get from everything else. As a bonus the blood compost deters rabbits from eating my cabbage.

    Funny thing, I can’t seem to find any type of vegan certification that is concerned with the use of animal byproducts or waste in fertilizer. A few specifically say they do not check fertilizer.

    • JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      Actually a lot of organic farms rely on blood and bone meal, manure and fish emulsion fertilizers. They’re inexpensive as they’re byproducts of other industries and are very good for plants.
      When I worked in an organic greenhouse I often wondered about how vegans would feel about farmers using animal based fertilizers. We definitely told people what we used, as we sold those products, but no one ever said anything about it. I guess vegans can’t control that so maybe it’s a nonissue unless they grow their own food and use seaweed based fertilizer(more expensive) instead?

      • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        If you’ve got the luxury, you can also let fields go fallow and rotate crops to avoid fertilizer. That obviously requires more land though

          • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Does that work long term on a commercial scale without egg shells/ bone meal? Afaik, there needs to be an additional source of calcium, but that could of course also supplement crop rotation/fallowing.

            Though tbf, limestone is very soft and I could see supplementing with ground limestone.

            • Danquebec@sh.itjust.works
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              3 months ago

              Eggs shells don’t work unless they’re ground into a very fine powder.

              I don’t know the answer to this question. You may be right. And yea, I can see limestone in the right doses working.

              And we could always extract the nutrients from our waste. Close the cycle: what goes in, goes out. We’re already using biosolids in agriculture.

    • threeduck@aussie.zone
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      3 months ago

      Don’t let perfection be the enemy of good. If everyone stopped eating animals, there’d be no surplus of blood and bone for fertilisers, and other plant based by-products would fill the space.

      As for the rabbits, I actually have a small Australian shepherd that runs through my lawn chasing the wallabies that meander by, I’ve been meaning to trap it and humanely slaughter it, the blue coat would make a great gift! And if the owner comes by looking for Bella, I could trap him and humanely slaughter him too. He looks a bit simple, so it seems ethical to me? He’d make good compost, that’s for true.

      • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        I expected the dog to be actually blue, but it seems to just be a pattern. Would’v been cool though