Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Don Bowen" <don.bowen@earthlink.net>]

As we all know the price of food is rising faster than at any time in recent memory.  We all know the reasons, increasing oil costs cause rising prices in growing, processing, and delivering food, world wide climate change causing droughts in food producing areas, increasing incomes in developing nations changing eating habits, and the criminal act of putting food in our fuel tanks.  Two articles I read this last week, one in Time Magazine, and one at http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/05/paul-collier-re.html, portend a trend that we should be wary of.

 

Both give accurate reasons for the problem but support the wrong fix.  They push for more fertilizer, higher yielding seeds, and more water.  Neither advocate better farming using less energy intensive methods.  Both articles push for business as usual and more of the same and neither looks at alternate methods.

 

Iowa farmers are complaining about the rising costs of fertilizer and Asian Rice farmers are having problems getting fertilizer.  The Iowa farmer was worried that the current high prices he was getting for corn were not sustainable and that when things settled he would be in financial difficulty.  The Vietnam farmer was worried about feeding his family.  Fertilizer is made mostly from Natural Gas and is transported long distances so there will be little relief there in the future.

 

Higher yielding seeds come from research into plant genetics.  Starting with the studies by Mendel on peas and on to genetic manipulation by using viri to transport genes from jellyfish into plants.  Hybridization has reached a peak and leaves whole plant families vulnerable to pathogens. Direct genetic manipulation is fraught with danger and has not lived up to promise except to allow sales of more chemicals.

 

More water is a real problem in many parts of the world.  Climate change is changing rainfall patterns and population growth and shift is placing heavy strains on existing water supplies.  To increase water to crops is to increase irrigation from deep aquifers and distant surface water, both requiring expensive pumping energy.

 

The answer is not bigger farms using expensive patented seeds with more chemical and energy inputs.  There are many answers but with the constant noise from the established farming system those methods will have problems getting aired.

 

Don Bowen      KI6DIU
http://www.braingarage.com/Dons/Travels/journal/Journal.html