To follow up on our previous two blogs, this third blog in the “soil” series talks about organic agriculture and it’s benefits relative to chemical and industrial agriculture. In this blog, we will talk about: monoculture, the effects of tilling and the broken cycle of life (we should cover pesticides in another blog). There’s lots to cover, so let’s go!
The broken cycle
In “Growing Food Organically”, is the popular book by John Bede Harrison on gardening organically. Harrison was one of the pioneers in organic growth, before there were all the resources that we have today, but even then, he has always been convinced, and indeed known, that humans have been growing organically for thousands of years and that they should continue to do as the young 50-year old chemical method is fundamentally detrimental to the earth. The main reason is that the chemical method breaks one of the links in the vital “organic cycle”.
The image entitled “the cycle of life” illustrates the naturally occurring organic cycle. Spring brings sprouting and growth, Summer brings the flower and fruit, fall brings the death and ensuing decay of the plant, then in the winter time, the decayed plant is decomposed by living organism (as we have seen 2 days ago) in the earth and the nutrients from the plants of the years past can be used for the plants come spring once again.
This natural life-giving cycle is broken at the “decay” stage when we use chemical growth methods. So-called “modern” farmers no longer have natural decay or add natural compost to their crops. Instead, they place this life-giving material in incinerators and landfills. The soil is “enriched” with chemical fertilizer, which causes a number of nutrient imbalances in the soil. In
short, the industrial agriculture has given higher yields, but it has lost local recycling of nutrients on each farm. Also, without decay, there is less humus, which as we have seen, is vital to the soil as it keeps soil particles together.
Monoculture
Monoculture is very much linked to this first issue of nutrient depletion in the soil. Monoculture obviously lack the advantages of polyculture which allows for plants to mutually repel insects, use different types of nutrients and have mutually beneficial effects with different nutrients coming from their decay.
Monoculture also subverts the natural ecological balance which occurs in a soil. As we have seen, a soil is a complete ecosystem from life to death to life again with an astounding array of life forms. Let us quote John Bede Harrison’s book which notes that in a handful of soil there is more organisms than there are people on this planet! Mind you they are small organisms, but still, that’s quite impressive!
Tillage
Increased tillage also leaves soil more compact, which allows for less exchange of organisms as well as root expansion. The increased tillage in industrial agriculture causes for depressed growth of plants.
Conclusion
Therefore, there are several caveats about industrial and chemical agriculture. I haven’t covered everything as there is too much to cover in one post, and plus, some of it is quite complex, but the bottom line is that no one denies that industrial agriculture has been able to produce more food than ever before. However, the jury is probably in on the fact that in the long term, only organic can succeed in keeping soil healthy, and indeed feeding us.
Thanks for reading!
Organically,
Mathieu
Websites used:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v396/n6708/full/396211a0.html
http://knol.google.com/k/effects-of-industrial-agriculture-of-crops-on-water-and-soil#
John Bene Harrison « Growing Food Organically »
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