Over the years, there have been many discussions about the potential to create large-scale organic farming enterprises to replace the disastrous impacts of chemical farming.
A lovely article by Tom Philpott of Mother Jones outlines one attempt by some US farmers to break the dead-end cycle of spraying, tilling and loss of environment caused by commercial farming, using no-plough methods and winter “cover crops”. While this method does not completely eliminate the toxic impacts of spraying ; it does go a long way to develop large-scale sustainable farming practice.
Another “new” farming concept is is the use of charcoal in soil. Native american indians used Terra preta in pre-Columbian times to create long term sustainable gardens in environments where high rainfall leaching should have made sustainable agriculture impossible.
Given that at least a third of commercially produced food is wasted, it would seen perfectly feasible to create food sources closer to food consumers, allowing less wastage in transit, and better targeting of food production to need.
We dont need the environmental destruction that is touted as necessary by agribusiness to create sustainable global food production. We don’t need to keep killing our essential insects with insecticides, spraying weedicides to control the plants we dont want, constantly digging up the soil to destroy its structure and life, and destroying more and more natural environments and the plants and animals that live there, for short-term gain. We can live a wonderful sustainable and more joyful life through living instead of buying.
New Antarctica 