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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Traditional farming
  • Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2007 17:57:13 -0700


A series of remarkable experiments has shown that the growing techniques
which his company (Novartis) and many others have sought to impose upon the
world are, in contradiction to everything we have been brought up to
believe, actually less productive than some of the methods developed by
traditional farmers over the past 10,000 years. ... We have, in other
words, been deceived. Traditional farming has been stamped out all over the
world not because it is less productive than monoculture, but because it
is, in some respects, more productive. Organic cultivation has been
characterised as an enemy of progress for the simple reason that it cannot
be monopolised: it can be adopted by any farmer anywhere, without the help
of multinational companies. Though it is more productive to grow several
species or several varieties of crops in one field, the biotech companies
must reduce diversity in order to make money, leaving farmers with no
choice but to purchase their most profitable seeds. This is why they have
spent the last 10 years buying up seed breeding institutes and lobbying
governments to do what ours has done: banning the sale of any seed which
has not been officially - and expensively - registered and approved. (in
the UK)

Monbiot at http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4054683,00.html





  • [Livingontheland] Traditional farming, TradingPostPaul, 01/12/2007

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