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  • From: Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Mad Bioneer: Why Small-Scale Regenerative Agriculture is so Important
  • Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2017 05:00:18 -0400

Mad Bioneer: Why Small-Scale Regenerative Agriculture is so Important
http://madbioneer.blogspot.com/2017/03/why-small-scale-regenerative.html

Mad Bioneer <http://madbioneer.blogspot.com/>

Scientists study the world to gather knowledge. Engineers utilize this
knowledge to solve problems and create a better world. This blog is about
using biological knowledge to engineer better gardens, more efficient
systems, tastier foods, and, well, anything else I can think of.
Wednesday, March 22, 2017 Why Small-Scale Regenerative Agriculture is so
Important
For the last several months, I have been throwing down a whole lot of
information. Thank you, loyal readers, for sticking with me. I am going
somewhere with this. There are a great number of techniques that can be
used to repair our degrading ecosystem, and do so while providing a
comfortable living for those doing the repairs. But people need to
understand how this all needs to work. We live in a society that is
separated to a great extent from nature. In order to fix what needs to be
fixed, we need to first bring people back to nature, to help them
understand it and learn how to heal it.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. As I mention regularly, this is
an engineering blog. I do my best to use engineering problem solving
techniques. And the first and foremost among those is this: if you wish to
solve a problem, you first have to define the problem. So, what is the
problem we are facing? And I don’t mean global warming, degrading farm
land, or carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Those are symptoms. What is the
problem? Let me offer my viewpoint on this.

The problem, as I see it, is a combination of the Industrial Revolution and
Capitalism. Bear with me here. See, prior to the Industrial Revolution,
some 90% of humanity lived a pastoral existence on small family farms. When
the Industrial Revolution hit, it needed two things to function and grow:
it needed workers, and it needed consumers. It is basic supply and demand.
So farmers were encouraged, and sometimes forced, to leave their land and
move to the cities. There, they became a part of the rat race and
Capitalism gained momentum.

In its raw form, Capitalism has some striking similarities with
Imperialism, only instead of extracting wealth from another country, you
are extracting the wealth from your own. In most cases, corporations pursue
profit at all costs. It is the metric by which a company is judged. But the
profit is judged on an annual basis, not long term. The techniques used to
improve the bottom line are numerous, and many are damaging. Wages are
lowered or allowed to stagnate. Production is automated. Environmental
damage or degradation is allowed. Governments are encouraged to give
corporate subsidies. Laws are changed so that the risk is taken on by the
public while profits are kept privately. The list goes on.

Industrial agriculture is a great example. If you take farmland with
excellent soil containing lots of soil carbon and add synthetic
fertilizers, the production goes through the roof. Profits increase wildly.
But the reason it becomes so productive is that the synthetic fertilizers
increasesoil biological activity and they use all that stored soil carbon
as a foodsource
<http://grist.org/article/2010-02-23-new-research-synthetic-nitrogen-destroys-soil-carbon-undermines/>,
burning through it in as little as a few years, or maybe a few decades at
the outside. It is a perfect example of short term profit at the expense of
long term viability.

So here we are. The profits that can be extracted have been. The rich are
richer than they have ever been in the history of the world. They are
trying harder and harder to find ways to increase profits. Wages have
stagnated to the point that large swathes of humanity are barely making it
paycheck-to-paycheck. Our environment is forfeit. We are looking at the
looming threat of technological unemployment as more companies try to
further cut expenses by automating as many tasks as possible. The outlook
is bleak.

Or is it? Maybe this is exactly what we needed right now. See, momentum is
the biggest obstacle to change. As long as everything is going along great,
people won’t make changes. Comfort is hard to compete with. But discomfort
and uncertainty, well, that has people craving change. Heck, a presidential
candidate used it as his campaign slogan a couple of years back. The trick
is for people to get to a very difficult realization: that they are on
their own. As long as you rely on those in power for your livelihood, you
are subject their whims and have little control. But when you decide to
take control of your own life, that’s where the magic happens.

The question is, how? We live in an urban, and largely suburban, landscape.
We like our connected, technological lifestyle. Who wants to give that up
to move back to the country and pursue a homestead lifestyle? Well, lots of
people, actually, but I am talking to the rest of us here. How can we live
our modern lifestyle and still pursue some measure of self-sufficiency.
Personally, I think that small-scale regenerative agriculture is the key
here.

Small-scale regenerative agriculture is the perfect solution for the
predicament we have ourselves in. It solves the problems on pretty much
every level. There have been a number of significant advances since the
last time we were an agrarian society. And I don’t mean in the technology
of the tractors currently tearing up vast swaths of farmland. Things like
organic farming (if you think this one is ancient, you probably don’t
understand it
<http://madbioneer.blogspot.com/2009/02/organic-gardening-definition.html>),
aquaponics <http://madbioneer.blogspot.com/search/label/Aquaponics>, and
mycoculture <http://madbioneer.blogspot.com/search/label/mushrooms> have
all come a long, long way in the last 200 years or so. Technology can be
employed in ways never dreamed of even 30 years ago. With careful layout
and design, more food than ever can be grown in a smaller space all while
regenerating the environment.

So what can small scale regenerative agriculture do to solve the problems
at hand today? Let’s tackle them one by one and see.

*Climate Change/Environmental Degradation*
This one is probably the easiest to justify. Regenerative agriculture is,
by definition, regenerative. This means reducing monoculture, increasing
environmental diversity, and building soil
<http://madbioneer.blogspot.com/search/label/soil>. The simple process of
building soil means adding carbon to the soil, a process also called Carbon
Farming. With enough practitioners of this practice, significant amounts of
carbon could be sequestered into the soils of the earth. Plus, the
restoration of life to soil helps mitigate pollution and further increases
environmental diversity, which will breathe life into ecosystems beyond the
farming operation.

*Stagnating Wages*
In a household budget, there are two sides to the flow of money: income and
expenses. Most people are struggling through increases in expenses while
their wages have virtually stagnated for decades. It can be very
frustrating to find more and more ways to cut expenses just to make ends
meet. Introducing solar dollars
<http://madbioneer.blogspot.com/2017/01/holistic-management-concepts-solar.html>
to the household budget can breathe new life into the flow of money. With
new methods and technologies, this can happen with only minimal additional
effort on the part of the homeowner, but can result in a much tastier and
healthier diet.

*Technological Unemployment*
As most are aware, machines are going to be taking all the jobs. I have
heard projections as high as 60% of jobs will be lost over the next 20
years to automation. Personally, I think this move is highly shortsighted.
While there will be a huge savings in production costs, that doesn’t really
help if everyone is unemployed and can’t afford to buy gadgets at the new
low cost. Regardless of how bad this move will allow companies to shoot
themselves in the foot, it is coming. So, what can be done about it?

Simply put, people are going to have to become more self-sufficient. They
will need to stop relying on employers for their livelihood. This used to
be the way nearly everyone lived before the Industrial Revolution and they
did so by living primarily off of solar dollars. Sustainable agriculture
allows a return to this paradigm, allowing individuals to reduce or
eliminate reliance on employers.

*Urban Malaise*
I read a comment recently that I thought was spot-on: You don’t hate
Mondays. You hate capitalism. Maybe it is capitalism. Maybe it is our lack
of connection to the natural world. Maybe it is a lack of meaning in our
lives. Maybe it is knowing that we spend our days toiling away to build
value for someone else. Maybe it is pollution. Whatever the cause, a
general feeling of malaise, discontent, unhappiness, and restlessness are
prevalent in our society. Small-scale regenerative agriculture hits pretty
much all of those causes head-on. You are building value for yourself on
your own land. You are working with and regenerating nature. I don’t think
it is that hard to understand why gardeners are a happy lot
<http://madbioneer.blogspot.com/2016/01/mycobacterium-vaccae.html>.

*Nutrition*
As the nutrients are increasingly extracted from farmland, our food loses
its nutritional value. We become disconnected from the nutrient cycle
<http://madbioneer.blogspot.com/2016/08/nutrients.html>. By regenerating
our own land and building nutrient-rich soil, we increase the nutrient
content of the foods we eat. And by doing that small-scale, we reconnect
ourselves to our own nutrient cycle.

*Health*
Gardening is a great way to keep active. There is definitely work involved.
This can help with fitness and flexibility. Reconnecting our bodies to the
natural nutrient cycle will also help as our bodies will be getting all the
nutrient-rich foods they need.

The best part of all this is that we don’t need to drop our modern
lifestyle to realize all these benefits. Technology can play a big part in
reducing the labor on gardening while still improving output. Universal
availability of the internet means you can still ply your trade or
profession by working part time online throughout the week to bring in
additional income. We really can have the best of both worlds.

So, tell me, what did I miss? Are there other ways small-scale urban
agriculture can change the world?
Posted by Edmund Williams
<https://www.blogger.com/profile/14641544307516292564> at 8:17 PM
<http://madbioneer.blogspot.com/2017/03/why-small-scale-regenerative.html>
<https://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=7367527072664881186&postID=5010411574291440982>
Labels: Aquaponics <http://madbioneer.blogspot.com/search/label/Aquaponics>,
bioneering <http://madbioneer.blogspot.com/search/label/bioneering>, circular
economy <http://madbioneer.blogspot.com/search/label/circular%20economy>,
ecosystem <http://madbioneer.blogspot.com/search/label/ecosystem>,
environment <http://madbioneer.blogspot.com/search/label/environment>,
gardening <http://madbioneer.blogspot.com/search/label/gardening>, Holistic
Management
<http://madbioneer.blogspot.com/search/label/Holistic%20Management>,
mushrooms <http://madbioneer.blogspot.com/search/label/mushrooms>,
self-sufficiency
<http://madbioneer.blogspot.com/search/label/self-sufficiency>,
sustainability <http://madbioneer.blogspot.com/search/label/sustainability>




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