Fwd: FW: Another Perspective on Low-Till Farming

[Guest guest]

> Editor's Note: Last week Foodnews posted an article

> by the FAO on the advantages of low-till agriculture

> in Africa

> (http://allafrica.com/stories/200510040254.html). A

> number of readers responded to this posting,

> pointing out that there is a distinction between

> commercial and other forms of no and low-till

> agriculture. Low-till farming often involves the

> heavy use of chemical inputs and is advocated by

> large-scale, capital intensive agriculture.

>

>

>

> According to Foodnews reader and organic farmer John

> Wise: " The majority of North American farmers use

> low-till or no-till farming to reduce erosion,

> reduce trips over the field (saving time, machine

> wear, and fuel), and to improve soil structure. The

> downside: weeds do grow, despite the mulch layer,

> and are sprayed with herbicide, usually glyphosate

> (Roundup). Roundup is the no-till farmer's plough. "

>

>

>

> In the African context, with the exception of

> industrial-scale agriculture, most farming in Africa

> is already low-till, typically involving a

> " home-made hoe and (usually) an exhausted woman

> trying to scrape enough soil together to perhaps

> provide sustenance for one more day for herself and

> her babies, " according to another reader. At the

> commercial level, low till refers to farming that is

> capital intensive and involves extremely costly

> cultivation equipment that is of little benefit to

> poor farmers of the south. This same reader

> concludes with the following comment:

>

>

>

> " Maybe check to see if this German " benefit " is

> about selling German equipment before suggesting

> that it might help the 3rd world's billions of

> people with their ¼ hectare farms and life and death

> struggles. These would be the same families who had

> ½ hectare farms before the " green revolution " of the

> 1960's and 1970's came along and devastated much of

> the wisdom of sustainable practices - making the

> rich richer, the poor poorer and accelerating the

> desperate move to urban slums of the newly landless

> rural poor that continues today. "

>

>

>

> Cathy Holtslander writes " No Till is also herbicide

> dependent, and often uses GMO herbicide-resistant

> crops. Because it is so capital and input intensive

> it results in the big farmers getting bigger and the

> small farmers getting pushed out. FAO is trying to

> promote GMOs in Africa, and this looks like a Trojan

> horse to me.

>

>

>

> Another r brought to our attention a paper

> prepared for the UN FAO that sought to understand

> the adoption of conservation agriculture (CA).

> http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/004/Y2781E/Y2781E00.HTM

>

>

>

> A key conclusion emphasizes the need to be attentive

> to local conditions and to resist one size fits all

> approaches to agriculture:

>

>

>

> " The above analysis contains implications for

> policy-makers. On the one hand, an assumption that

> CA will spread on its own in some desirable fashion

> is not appropriate. On the other hand, a uniform

> policy prescription to fit many locations is not

> realistic either, whether it consists of direct

> interventions or more indirect incentives stemming

> from research and development, or some mix of both.

> Designing successful policies to promote CA is

> likely to start with a thorough understanding of

> farm-level conditions. This understanding needs to

> include management objectives, attitudes to risk,

> willingness to make trade-offs between stewardship

> and profits. The next step is the careful design of

> location-sensitive programmes that draw on a range

> of policy tools. Flexibility is liable to be a key

> element in policy design to promote CA

>

>

>

> Finally, Foodnews rs have also brought to

> light that there are versions of low or no-till

> farming that do not rely on heavy chemical inputs

> and do pay attention to varied ecosystems. These

> include permaculture and the Japanese " One Straw

> Revolution " which advocates no chemical inputs and

> the incorporation rather then extermination of

> useful weeds. Another approach is Natural Systems

> Agriculture (NSA). Below is an article from The Land

> Institute, describing this approach.

>

>

>

> Many thanks to readers for contributions.

>

>

>

> This story was printed from The Land Institute

> (http://www.landinstitute.org).

>

>

>

> Natural Systems Agriculture at The Land Institute

>

> Jacob Gatschet

>

>

>

> Released September 1997

>

>

> Shortly after The Land Institute began in 1976 near

> Salina, Kansas, its founder and current president,

> Wes Jackson, published a paper which became the

> cornerstone of the institute's programs and vision.

> That paper, later expanded into New Roots for

> Agriculture, argues that we have a problem of

> agriculture, not just problems in agriculture. And

> the core problem is soil erosion, a problem nearly

> as old as agriculture itself.

>

>

>

> The transition made by our ancestors 8-10,000 years

> ago from hunting and gathering to agriculture

> represented a significant shift in terms of

> ecological impact. Initially they probably did not

> notice the destructive power of their farming, for

> in the great valley civilizations they could

> assemble monocultures of annuals for centuries on

> end and get away with it. Their high-yielding annual

> grains, planted in monocultures in the expansive

> fields of the Tigris, Euphrates, Nile, Indus and

> Ganges valleys, were fertilized by periodic flooding

> - a sort of extractive economy, more or less

> acceptable, for nutrients were being chipped from

> the mountain highlands and sent to fields below. As

> populations grew, the agriculture of the valley was

> carried to the hills. The consequences of farming

> then became more devastating and apparent because

> only the flattest of lands can escape problems of

> soil erosion. (About seven-eighths of the tillable

> land in the US slopes enough that rain washes away

> the topsoil. The effects of wind erosion, of course,

> are more independent of slope.)

>

>

>

> Soil loss and soil degradation have historically

> been " offset " by overdraft of water resources and by

> appropriating lands which are either ill-suited for

> agricultural production or which have been serving

> vital ecological functions. As agricultural land is

> spoiled, wilderness lands are converted to

> agricultural uses. Jackson sums up this

> oft-overlooked causal relationship, " If we don't

> save agriculture, we won't save wilderness. "

>

>

>

> Because we have continued to ignore the basic

> dilemma faced by our ancestral farmers millennia

> ago, we have had to employ ever more drastic means

> of compensation. Most recently in historical terms,

> this compensation has taken the form of massive

> inputs of " ancient sunlight " (fossil fuel) for

> traction purposes, for control of pests and

> pathogens and for fertility (natural gas being the

> stock for anhydrous ammonia). Compensation has also

> meant the adoption of genetically narrow,

> high-yielding strains of seeds. As the situation

> becomes more critical, increasingly technological

> fixes are being pursued, such as " precision [or

> satellite] farming " and the engineering of

> herbicide-resistant seeds. None of these responses,

> however, addresses the fundamental problem of soil

> erosion; indeed, they might very well exacerbate it.

> Even no- and low-till practices, because of their

> heavy reliance on herbicides, pesticides and

> fertilizers, amount to poisoning our soil in order

> to save it. " Anyone aware of Darwin and modern

> molecular studies, " Jackson says, " knows it's not

> very smart to put into our food system any chemicals

> which our human tissues have no evolutionary

> experience with. These chemicals ought to be assumed

> guilty until proven innocent, not the other way

> around. "

>

>

>

> Many ecologically-minded persons consider

> industrialization the culprit and see a potential

> solution in the widespread adoption of more

> sustainable methods of agriculture. Jackson

> vehemently disagrees at the same time that he

> supports such efforts. According to Jackson,

> industrialization has served mainly to accelerate

> and intensify destructive farming processes that

> have been in place for millennia, but the

> sustainable agriculture movement has made important

> improvements. " We depend upon their increasing

> success to save as much soil as possible, " he notes,

> " but their practices are truly sustainable only on

> very flat land, which is about one-eighth of the

> tillable land in the US. I'm worried about the other

> seven-eighths. "

>

>

>

> The severity of the problem is enormous, as borne

> out by some rather grim statistics. A major recent

> study published in Science pegged the cost of soil

> erosion at $44 billion per year in the US alone.

> Reliable estimates contend that up to half of

> America's topsoil has run to the rivers and seas

> since the white settlement of this continent.

> Meanwhile, the average rate of topsoil erosion in

> the US continues at five tons per acre per year; for

> croplands it is nine tons per acre per year.

>

>

>

> But can soil erosion be such a dangerous problem if

> it has been going on for thousands of years? First,

> contrary to the thinking implicit in this question,

> the damaging and widespread effects of soil erosion

> have already appeared numerous times. History bears

> out a disturbing pattern: worn out and eroded soils

> cause civilizations to crash, and if they do rebound

> it is to a reduced level. Vernon Gill Carter and Tom

> Dale point out in Topsoil and Civilization, " All

> across the continent of Asia and into Europe and

> North Africa, you find the seats of former leading

> civilizations that are now among the backward areas

> of the world. ...

>

> These are the lands from whence our western

> civilization arose. " Secondly, the question itself

> reflects the seriousness of the problem. Food

> depends on soil. Agricultural use of fossil fuel

> inputs cannot mask the true costs of soil loss

> forever, and the confidence in a future high-tech

> soil alternative is sorely misplaced. According to

> Donald Worster, chair of The Land Institute's board

> and the Hall Distinguished Professor in history at

> the University of Kansas who authored the 1980

> Bancroft Prize-winning Dust Bowl, " the common

> American confidence in technological remedies for

> erosion must appear dangerously naive. We can no

> more manufacture a soil with a tank of chemicals

> than we can invent a rainforest or produce a single

> bird. " In short, soil is the only medium in which

> enough plants will grow to capture and convert

> sunlight into the food we need.

>

>

>

> The Land Institute's major program, Natural Systems

> Agriculture (NSA), seeks to meld conservation with

> agricultural production. Jackson is quick to point

> out that Natural Systems Agriculture is an entirely

> new paradigm of food production rather than a type

> of sustainable agriculture. NSA begins by looking at

> what nature produces in an area when left

> unmolested. Because nature has built up over the

> millennia a great wisdom in fitting flora and fauna

> to the particular soils, weather, and geology of any

> given locale, NSA attempts to understand and mimic

> the complexities of these relations and their

> interactions.

>

>

>

> For The Land Institute, that means looking to the

> prairie that once blanketed the plains. There is

> another reason for The Land Institute to look to the

> prairie; it is the home of the grasses, the plant

> family which provides most of the important food for

> humanity. Grains such as wheat, corn and rice - all

> of which are annual grasses - comprise almost 80

> percent of the human calorie intake worldwide.

>

>

>

> Compared to agricultural systems of annuals which

> have historically eroded and degraded ecological

> capital as they provide for human needs, the prairie

> shows a remarkable " wisdom. " Prairies don't lose

> soil beyond replacement levels; in fact they build

> soil over time. Their perennial grasses grow from

> the same roots each spring, avoiding the tilling

> which lays the soil bare to erosion. Furthermore,

> prairies run on contemporary sunlight, recycle their

> materials, and sponsor their own nitrogen fertility.

> The prairie's biodiversity, a product of

> evolutionary processes over many millennia, provides

> the ecosystem with built-in resilience to

> environmental and other disturbances, such as pests

> and pathogens. Natural Systems Agriculture attempts

> to mimic the structures of a native ecosystem like

> the prairie in order to obtain these attendant

> benefits.

>

>

>

> Jackson realizes the boldness of the claim that for

> the first time in history, an agriculture that is

> resilient (and therefore productive over the

> long-term), economical (the need for costly inputs

> would be significantly diminished), and

> environmentally responsible is well within reach.

> " Although I hesitate to employ an industrial

> metaphor, " Jackson says, " we've had our 'Kitty Hawk'

> - we've shown the feasibility of Natural Systems

> Agriculture - and now comes the 'wind tunnel'

> phase. " The " wind tunnel " phase has meant working to

> put NSA into a position where it can take on a life

> of its own and become a national effort.

>

>

>

> Not surprisingly, NSA requires a different type of

> scientist, one who appreciates the importance of

> context, evolution, ecology and therefore restraint.

> There is necessary scientific work to be done (for

> example, in the attempt to perennialize our current

> major crops and domesticate wild perennials), but

> Jackson argues it must take place in a framework

> that favors nature's wisdom over human cleverness.

> Science done in the service of NSA will therefore

> have to be done in a different way. The traditional,

> reductive approach is inadequate. For example,

> individual candidate species cannot be selected

> without at the same time designing for the larger

> " whole " of the domestic prairie. Yet the " whole "

> influences which species will " work " in the mix. As

> Jackson puts it, " Parts affect wholes, and wholes

> affect parts. "

>

>

>

> The Land Institute has several other programs which

> complement and support its research, education, and

> public policy efforts in NSA. The Sunshine Farm

> Project, which is in year 5 of a 10-year term, is an

> exploration of the potential of conventional annual

> crops and livestock without fossil fuels, chemicals,

> or irrigation to determine a more accurate

> ecological cost for food production. Detailed

> records are kept for the energy, materials, and

> labor for each operation. Each year the Intern

> Program welcomes eight to ten post-baccalaureate

> students who engage in a 43-week " head and hands "

> experience, learning more about sustainable

> agriculture and its integration into a sustainable

> society. Their time goes to research assistance,

> classroom discussions and lectures, seminars with

> visiting scholars, public events, and farm labor.

> And finally, the Rural Community Studies program,

> located in the small community of Matfield Green in

> the Flint Hills of Kansas, focuses on such issues as

> why small rural communities are losing their young

> people to cities, how this depopulation is related

> to land use, and how rural schools can be catalysts

> for change. The program aims to develop conceptual

> tools which will help communities minimize

> dependence upon non-renewable resources and maximize

> possibilities for cultural innovation and

> adaptation.

>

>

>

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