Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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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.
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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.