Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Ken Hargesheimer <minifarms2@yahoo.com>]

1.      Attract beneficials  [bats, birds, toads, spiders, garden snakes, frogs, lizards, grasshopper mice, prairie deer mice, white footed mice, opossums, lacewings, ladybird beetles, syrphid flies, ground beetles and assassin bugs]

2.      Protect pollinators  [honey bees, native bees, wasps, yellow jackets, dirt daubers, butterflies]

3.      Protect soil organisms  [worms, dung beetles, micros]

 

“Make your way carefully through these fields.  Dragonflies and moths fly up.  Honeybees buzz.  Part the leaves and you will see insects, spiders, frogs, lizards and many other small animals bustling about in the cool shade.  Moles and earthworms burrow beneath the surface.  This is a balanced rice field ecosystem.  Insect and plant communities maintain a stable relationship here.  It is not uncommon for a plant disease to sweep through this area of Japan, leaving the crops in my fields unaffected.

 

Now look over at the neighbor’s field.  The weeds have all been wiped out by herbicides and cultivation.  The soil animals and insects have been exterminated by poison.  The soil has been burned clean of organic matter and microorganisms by chemical fertilizers.  These rice fields, which have been farmed continuously for 1500 years, have now been laid waste by the exploitive farming practices of a single generation.”  One Straw Revolution, M Fukuoka. 

 

Ken Hargesheimer

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