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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Soil Not Oil: Why We Need to Kick Petroleum Out of Our Farms
  • Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:54:08 -0700



Soil Not Oil: Why We Need to Kick Petroleum Out of Our Farms
http://www.alternet.org/environment/109576/soil_not_oil%3A_why_we_need_to_kick_petroleum_out_of_our_farms/
By Vandana Shiva, South End Press. Posted December 3, 2008.

Biodiverse farms offer us more food, better food, higher incomes for farmers
and a defense from climate disasters.

The industrialized, globalized food system is based on oil. It is under
threat because of the inevitability of "peak oil." It is also under threat
because it is more vulnerable than traditional agriculture to climate change,
to which it has contributed. Industrial agriculture is based on monocultures.
Monocultures are highly vulnerable to changes in climate, and to diseases and
pests.

In 1970 and 1971, America's vast corn belt was attacked by a mysterious
disease, later identified as ''race T" of the fungus Helminthosporium maydis,
causing the southern corn leaf blight, as the epidemic was called. It left
ravaged cornfields with withered plants, broken stalks, and malformed or
completely rotten cobs. The strength and speed of the blight was a result of
the uniformity of the hybrid corn, most of which had been derived from a
single Texas male sterile line. The genetic makeup of the new hybrid corn,
which was responsible for its rapid and large-scale breeding by seed
companies, was also responsible for its vulnerability to disease. At least 80
percent of the hybrid corn in America in 1970 contained the Texas male
sterile cytoplasm. As a University of Iowa pathologist wrote, "Such an
extensive, homogenous acreage is like a tinder-dry prairie waiting for a
spark to ignite it."

Industrial agriculture is dependent on chemical fertilizers. Chemically
fertilized soils are low in organic matter. Organic matter helps conserve the
soil and soil moisture, providing insurance against drought. Soils lacking
organic matter are more vulnerable to drought and to climate change.
Industrial agriculture is also more dependent on intensive irrigation. Since
climate change is leading to the melting of glaciers that feed rivers, and in
many regions of the world to the decline in precipitation and increased
intensity of drought, the vulnerability of industrial agriculture will only
increase. Finally, since the globalized food system is based on long-distance
supply chains, it is vulnerable to breakdown in the context of extreme events
of flooding, cyclones, and hurricanes. While aggravating climate change,
fossil fuel-dependent industrialized, globalized agriculture is least able to
adapt to the change.

We need an alternative. Biodiverse, organic farms and localized food systems
offer us security in times of climate insecurity, while producing more food,
producing better food, and creating more livelihoods. The industrialized,
globalized food system is based on oil; biodiverse, organic, and local food
systems are based on living soil. The industrialized system is based on
creating waste and pollution; a living agriculture is based on no waste. The
industrialized system is based on monocultures; sustainable systems are based
on diversity.

Living Soil

Every step in building a living agriculture sustained by a living soil is a
step toward both mitigating and adapting to climate change. Over the past 20
years, I have built Navdanya, India's biodiversity and organic-farming
movement. We are increasingly realizing there is a convergence between the
objectives of conserving biodiversity, reducing climate-change impact, and
alleviating poverty.

Biodiverse, local, organic systems reduce water use and risks of crop failure
due to climate change. Increasing the biodiversity of farming systems can
reduce vulnerability to drought. Millet, which is far more nutritious than
rice and wheat, uses only 200 to 300 millimeters of water, compared with the
2,500 millimeters needed for Green Revolution rice farming. India could grow
four times the amount food it does now if it were to cultivate millet more
widely. However, global trade is pushing agriculture toward GM monocultures
of corn, soy, canola, and cotton, worsening the climate crisis.

Biodiversity offers resilience to recover from climate disasters. After the
Orissa supercyclone of 1998, and the tsunami of 2004, Navdanya distributed
seeds of saline-resistant rice varieties as "Seeds of Hope" to rejuvenate
agriculture in lands that were salinated as a result of flooding from the
sea. We are now creating seed banks of drought-resistant, flood-resistant,
and saline-resistant seed varieties to respond to such extreme climate
events. Climate chaos creates uncertainty. Diversity offers a cushion against
both climate extremes and climate uncertainty. We need to move from the
myopic obsession with monocultures and centralization to diversity and
decentralization.

Diversity and decentralization are the dual principles needed to build
economies beyond oil and to deal with the climate vulnerability that is the
legacy of the age of oil. In addition to reducing vulnerability and
increasing resilience, biodiverse organic farming also produces more food and
higher incomes. As David Pimentel has pointed out: "Organic farming
approaches for maize and beans in the US not only use an average of 30% less
fossil energy but also conserve more water in the soil, induce less erosion,
maintain soil quality, and conserve more biological resources than
conventional farming does."

After Hurricane Mitch struck Central America in 1998, farmers who practiced
biodiverse organic farming found they had suffered less damage than those who
practiced chemical agriculture. The ecologically farmed plots had on average
more topsoil, greater soil moisture, and less erosion, and the farmers
experienced less severe economic losses.

Fossil fuel-based industrial agriculture moves carbon from the soil to the
atmosphere. Ecological agriculture takes carbon from the atmosphere and puts
it back in the soil. If 10,000 medium-sized US farms converted to organic
farming, the emissions reduction would be equivalent to removing over 1
million cars from the road. If all US croplands became organic it would
increase soil-carbon storage by 367 million tons and would cut nitrogen oxide
emissions dramatically. Organic agriculture contributes directly and
indirectly to reducing CO2 emissions and mitigating the negative consequences
of climate change.

Navdanya's work over the past 20 years has shown that we can grow more food
and provide higher incomes to farmers without destroying the environment and
killing peasants. We can lower the costs of production while increasing
output. We have done this successfully on thousands of farms and have created
a fair, just, and sustainable economy. The epidemic of farmer suicides in
India is concentrated in regions where chemical intensification has increased
costs of production. Farmers in these regions have become dependent on
non-renewable seeds, and monoculture cash-crops are facing a decline in
prices due to globalization. This is affecting farmers' incomes, leading to
debt and suicides. High costs of production are the most significant reason
for rural indebtedness.

Biodiverse organic farming creates a debt-free, suicide-free, productive
alternative to industrialized corporate agriculture and brings about a number
of benefits. It leads to increased farm productivity and farm incomes, while
lowering costs of production. Pesticide-free and chemical-free production and
processing bring safe and healthy food to consumers. We must protect the
environment, farmers' livelihoods, public health, and people's right to food.

We do not need to go the Monsanto way. We can go the Navdanya way. We do not
need to end up in food dictatorship and food slavery. We can create our food
freedom. Biodiverse, organic, and local food systems help mitigate climate
change by lowering greenhouse gas emissions and increasing absorption of CO2
by plants and by the soil.

Organic farming is based on the recycling of organic matter; industrial
agriculture is based on chemical fertilizers that emit nitrous oxides.
Industrial agriculture dispossesses small farmers and converts small farms to
large holdings that need mechanization, which further contributes to CO2
emissions. Small, biodiverse, organic farms, especially in third world
countries, can be totally fossil fuel-free. The energy for farming operations
comes from animals.

Soil fertility is built by recycling organic matter to feed soil organisms.
This reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Biodiverse systems are also more
resilient to droughts and floods because they have a higher water-holding
capacity, making them more adaptable to the effects of climate change.
Navdanya's study on climate change and organic farming has indicated that
organic farming increases carbon absorption by up to 55 percent and
water-holding capacity by 10 percent.

The environmental advantages of small-scale, biodiverse organic farms do not
come at the expense of food security. Biodiverse organic farms produce more
food and higher incomes than industrial monocultures. Mitigating climate
change, conserving biodiversity, and increasing food security go hand in hand.

The conventional measures of productivity focus on labor as the major input
(and the direct labor on the farm at that) and externalize many energy and
resource inputs. This biased productivity pushes farmers off the land and
replaces them with chemicals and machines, which in turn contribute to
greenhouse gases and climate change. Further, industrial agriculture focuses
on producing a single crop that can be globally traded as a commodity. The
focus on "yield" of individual commodities creates what I have called a
"monoculture of the mind." The promotion of so-called high-yielding varieties
leads to the displacement of biodiversity. It also destroys the ecological
functions of biodiversity. The loss of diverse outputs is never taken into
account by the one-dimensional calculus of productivity.

When the benefits of biodiversity are taken into account, biodiverse systems
have higher output than monocultures. And organic farming is more beneficial
for the farmers and the earth than chemical farming. When agro-forestry is
included in farming systems, carbon absorption and carbon return increase
dramatically. Date palm and neem increase the carbon density in the soil by
175 and 185 percent, respectively.

Studies carried out by the USDA's National Agroforestry Center suggest that
soil carbon can be increased by 6.6 tons per hectare per year over a 15-year
rotation and wood by 12.22 tons per hectare per year. Since both soil and
biomass sequester carbon, this amounts to removing 18.87 tons of carbon per
hectare per year from the atmosphere.

Soil and vegetation are our biggest carbon sinks. Industrial agriculture
destroys both. By disrupting the cycle of returning organic matter to the
soil, chemical agriculture depletes the soil carbon. Mechanization forces the
cutting down of trees and hedgerows.

Organic manure is food for the community of living beings that depend on the
soil. The alternatives to chemical fertilizers are many: green manures such
as sesbania aculeata (dhencha), gliricidia, and sun hemp; legume crops such
as pulses, which fix nitrogen through legume-rhizobium symbiosis; earthworms;
cow dung; and composts. Farmyard manure encourages the buildup of earthworms
by increasing their food supply. Soils treated with farmyard manure have from
two to two and a half times as many earthworms as untreated soils. Earthworms
contribute to soil fertility by maintaining soil structure, aeration, and
drainage. They break down organic matter and incorporate it into the soil.

The work of earthworms in soil formation was Darwin's major concern in his
later years. Of worms he wrote, "It may be doubted whether there are many
other animals which have played so important a part in the history of
creatures." The little earthworm working invisibly in the soil is the
tractor, the fertilizer factory, and the dam combined. Worm-worked soils are
more water-stable than unworked soils, and worm-inhabited soils have
considerably more organic carbon and nitrogen than the original soil. Their
continuous movement forms channels that help in soil aeration. It is
estimated that they increase the air volume of soil by up to 30 percent.

Soils with earthworms drain four to ten times faster than those without, and
their water-holding capacity is higher by 20 percent. Earthworm castings,
which can amount to 4 to 36 tons per acre per year, contain five times more
nitrogen, seven times more phosphorus, three times more exchangeable
magnesium, 11 times more potash, and one and a half times more calcium than
soil. Their work on the soil promotes the microbial activity essential to the
fertility of most soils.

At the Navdanya farm in Doon Valley, we have been feeding the soil organisms.
They in turn feed us. We have been building soil and rejuvenating its life.
The clay component on our farm is 41 percent higher than those of neighboring
chemical farms, which indicates a higher water-holding capacity. There is 124
percent more organic-matter content in the soil on our farm than in soil
samples from chemical farms. The nitrogen concentration is 85 percent higher,
the phosphorus content 10 percent higher, and the available potassium 25
percent higher.

Our farm is also much richer in soil organisms such as mycorrhiza, which are
fungi that bring nutrients to plants. Mycorrhizal association makes food
material from the soil available to the plant. Our crops have no diseases,
our soils are resilient to drought, and our food is delicious, as any
visitors to our farm can vouch. Our farm is fossil fuel-free. Oxen plow the
land and fertilize it.

By banning fossil fuels on our farm we have gained real energy-the energy of
the mycorrhiza and the earthworm, of the plants and animals, all nourished by
the energy of the sun.
---------
Activist and physicist Vandana Shiva is founder and director of the Research
Foundation for Science, Technology, and Natural Resource Policy in New Delhi.
She is author of more than three hundred papers in leading journals and
numerous books.





  • [Livingontheland] Soil Not Oil: Why We Need to Kick Petroleum Out of Our Farms, Tradingpost, 12/03/2008

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