If you talk about living in harmony with Nature, sometimes you get that provocative question – ‘Do you mean you want to return to the Stone Age?’ The assumption is that we are inescapably separated from natural balance. We can restore the balance, but first we need to understand how the balance has been disrupted. The first principle is that everything comes from the land. The key to all other disruptions is how we have treated agriculture. Western culture has done worse than others, but it is possible to correct our errors; in fact other parts of the world, China and India, have maintained a good agricultural balance for hundreds of generations, millennia, and continue to do so today. They do it by emulating nature, and we can too. Sir Albert Howard explained it very well in 1940, and it still applies exactly the same today. _________ THE moment mankind undertook the business of raising crops and breeding animals, the processes of Nature were subjected to interference. Soil fertility was exploited for the growing of food and the production of the raw materials -- such as wool, skins, and vegetable fibres -- needed for clothing. Up to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the West, the losses of humus involved in these agricultural operations were made up either by the return of waste material to the soil or by taking up virgin land. Where the return of wastes balanced the losses of humus involved in production, systems of agriculture became stabilized and there was no loss of fertility. The example of China has already been quoted. The old mixed farming of a large part of Europe, including Great Britain -- characterized by a correct balance between arable and live stock, the conversion of wastes into farmyard manure, methods of sheep folding, and the copious use of the temporary ley -- is another instance of the same thing. The constant exploitation of new areas to replace worn-out land has also gone on for centuries and is still taking place. Sometimes this has involved wars and conquests: at other times nothing more than taking up fresh prairie or forest land wherever this was to be found. A special method is adopted by some primitive tribes. The forest growth is burnt down, the store of humus is converted into crops, the exhausted land is given back to Nature for reafforestation and the building up of a new reserve of humus. In a rough and ready way fertility is maintained. Such shifting cultivation still exists all over the world, but like the taking up of new land is only possible when the population is small and suitable land abundant. This burning process has even been incorporated into permanent systems of agriculture and has proved of great value in rice cultivation in western India. Here the intractable soils of the rice nurseries have to be prepared during the last part of the hot season so that the seedlings are ready for transplanting by the break of the monsoon. This is achieved by covering the nurseries with branches collected from the forest and setting fire to the mass. The heat destroys the colloids, restores the tilth, and makes the manuring and cultivation of the rice nurseries possible. It is an easy matter to destroy a balanced agriculture. Once the demand for food and raw materials increases and good prices are obtained for the produce of the soil, the pressure on soil fertility becomes intense. The temptation to convert this fertility into money becomes irresistible. Western agriculture was subjected to this strain by the very rapid developments which followed the invention of the steam-engine, the internal combustion engine, electrically driven motors, and improvements in communications and transport. Factory after factory arose; a demand for labour followed; the urban population increased. All these developments provided new and expanding markets for food and raw materials. These were supplied in three ways -- by cashing in the existing fertility of the whole world, by the use of a temporary substitute for soil fertility in the shape of artificial manures, and by a combination of both methods. The net result has been that agriculture has become unbalanced and therefore unstable.
Posted on: Tue, 06 Aug 2013 18:49:30 +0000
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