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Is mulch sustainable?

I have used mulch to control the weeds in
my vineyard, especially around newly planted
vines but have never been able to get enough.
It strikes me that this is a fundamental limitation
to applying mulch on a large scale.

For my application, for example, a 1 metre 
diameter circle around a vine occupying 4.5 
square metres is a fraction pi/18 or around 1/6
of the total area to be mulched. For a depth of
mulch (see, for example, http://www.pond.com/~treeman)
of 0.1 metre (4 inches) this requires some 170
cubic metres per hectare. Perhaps 85 tonnes, give
or take. Every year.

If, for example, I grow hay for use as mulch, I
might produce 20 cubic metres per hectare (feel free
to put in your own figures for your climate etc) and
would need an additional 8 hectares of hayfield for
each hectare of vineyard. And I have to find a way
to sustain the hayfield. Unfertilized hayfield that
is "strip-mined" of hay for ever ultimately produces
much less than my estimate, I think - feel free to
supply better numbers.

If, on the other hand, I chip up my woodlot, I should
be able to get say 250 cubic metres of chips per 
hectare (another Bennett guess for you to disagree
with) so I need to chip up 0.7 hectares of woodlot
every year for each hectare of vineyard. But it takes
a hundred years for my woodlot to recover from being
stripped to bare ground. So I need 70 hectares of
woodlot for each hectare of vineyard. Or more or less.

Are my sums anything like right?
If so, does it mean that mulch on a large scale is
impracticable and unsustainable because only a small
fraction of the total land area is available to
produce output?

Andrew Bennett; Avondale Vineyard
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