Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["E. E. Mitchamore Jr" <emitch@att.net>]

So the bottom line for Malawi, as well as other places, is that the politicians will work with the Ag companies to generate some short-term benefits for  a suffering populace in order to gain support for themselves.  The resulting long-term problems are not their concern.  Sounds familiar.

 

E. E. "Mitch" Mitchamore
www.hillcountrynatives.biz

----- Original Message -----

From: Ken Hargesheimer

To: emitch@worldnet.att.net ; Healthy soil and sustainable growing ; Livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2007 1:55 PM

Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] NYTimes.com: Ending Famine, Simply by Ignoring the Experts

I have taught ag workshops in five African countries including Malawi.  The cheap fertilizer is a good solution for the short term but fertilizer was not the main reason they had a good crop;   "The lucky part was that they got the rains.” as one man was quoted.  They will promote the planting of seed varieties by the seed corporations that require a high level of imputs.

 

If they continue down that road they will become like India.  I was going to get a drink of water out of a 400 ft. deep well and was told "No way".  It was full of chemicals from over use of fertilizers and pesticides. 

 

The next step is that to continue high yields, they will have to use more and more fertilizer per acre each year.  THEY ARE FEEDING THE PLANTS RATHER THAN FEEDING THE SOIL.   The Philippines farmers soon arrived at the point that the cost of the required fertilizer was greater than the value from the crop. 

 

The solution is what many of you already know:   organic, no-till using legumes and non-legumes for the soil.  That will never come about from the government as technocrats have a mindset of high tech and cannot think in terms of low tech, proven methods.  All of this helps the multi-national corporations who will work under the table to get the farmers hooks on their products.

 

The Philippines famers revolted by returning to open seed and legumes, etc.  That is profitable. 

 

Ken Hargesheimer

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