This is good stuff. Two
questions:
1) This webpage format is not familiar. Is it
part of a larger website devoted to natural farming?
2) Brief mention is made of encouraging
"beneficials". I've been thinking lately that importing beneficials from
elsewhere is not ideal. So, is there anything to be done to promote native
(to each specific area) beneficials and pollinators, other than the
often-mentioned diversity of native "host plants"?
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2007 12:39
PM
Subject: [Livingontheland] Synergistic
Agriculture
Synergistic Agriculture
http://www.your-data.com/A5559C/FSDesign.nsf/5e8c14f7d1d2c13f86256d5f0081452 6/3eba340771680cb886256dff005143d0?OpenDocument
Over
the course of almost 40 years, Emilia Hazelip has developed a method of
herb and vegetable gardening she calls "Synergistic Agriculture". While her
early work drew on the methods of Ruth Stout, Marc Bonfils, and Masanobu
Fukuoka, it has evolved through experiment and experience into a very
productive tool for use in market gardens with a very unique perspective.
Hazelip's method focuses on, and emphasizes the need to restore and
encourage what she calls "wild soil". Her gardens are conciously designed
to allow all the dynamic lifeforms present in the soil to remain and thrive
while growing abundant food crops with minimal inputs.
Where Fukuoka is
primarily concerned with orchards and rice/barley production, Hazelip
focuses on growing annual and perennial food and medicianal herbs and
vegetables. Hazelip not only wants to create profitable market gardens
using minimal inputs, but to do it without destroying all of the creatures,
microscopic and larger, that live in
the soil.
"I truly believe that as long as we have not found peace with the soil, we
won't find peace above the ground. That as long as we justify the
exploitation of any organism, other exploitations will follow and we will
remain parasites, consuming more than participating, and spiralling into
entropy until we commit mass suicide. The living world is not understood by
the technician, and since it is not understood, it is not studied for its
diversity. People always want to apply mechanical laws to it... "
The four basic principles of Hazelip's method
are: 1. Keep the soil undisturbed and
uncompacted. 2. Use the soil's self-fertility as
fertilizer. 3. Integrate the litter zone with the
agricultural soil profile. 4. Establish a partnership
with beneficials to protect crops.
Hazelip was able to demonstrate the
practicality of her work in at least three different countries by
supporting her family solely from the income of her market gardens. Because
of the importance and usefulness of her method, we have established an
entire section of this website to provide online access to her published
work. It is the Synergistic Agriculture of Emilia Hazelip
Section.
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