For thousands of years farmers did not require the mined bat & bird guano, the other mineral amendments, nor the petrochemical fertilizers/poisons that the post-WWII Green Revolution absolutely needs in order for that model of farming to exist.
Petrochemicals, which are a short-term, unsustainable resource/fix/substitute for a healthy, living soil , cannot grow healthy crops.
A healthy crop, for the purposes of this discussion, is defined as any commodity crop grown in a monoculture with tillage, that has the ability to withstand the pests/diseases that ordinarily affect that particular crop.
Because the carbon levels, and the soil life, in any cropland being farmed with chemicals, & tillage, long-term are terribly low-to-nonexistent, the plants being grown on such soil's are stressed. In any given year, such plants are going to be stressed to one degree, or another. Those stresses make such plants extremely inviting to insects, and extremely susceptible to diseases. And, less able to compete with any "weeds" that grow along side of them.
If the Green Revolution method of farming, which you are championing, and which you accuse me of being starry eyed critical of, is so damn good, then answer me this question.
If modern, post-WWII, industrial farming utilizing tremendous amounts of tillage, is superior to any form of farming that came before it.......
"Then why is it necessary to require chemical poisons of many types in order for modern industrial farming to grow the yields that everyone claims are needed to feed the world?"
In any sane world, no right-thinking human being is going to apply to the soil/plants, expose themselves to, and ultimately ingest dozens of different poisons in order to eat, and sustain human life.
PERIOD. End of story.
One does not need to themselves be an industrial farmer in order to see the wrongness of the model.
I have seen the same problems that occur with industrial chemical farming with tillage, happen at the backyard level of gardening.
In the same way that a good model of doing something can be scaled up, or down, to fit the needs of the person/persons concerned; the problems with a bad model are going to scale up, or down, as the needs of the person/persons concerned utilize it.
Which means that if I am market gardening in order to feed myself/my family on, let us say a 2-5 acre plot, by utilizing lots of tillage/soil disturbance, and planting a monoculture of corn, tomatoes, beans, potatoes, cabbage, winter squash, etc.; then my plants will be stressed, and be susceptible to diseases & insects.
The only way that the current high yields for commodity crops are being maintained, is by the ever increasing amounts of fertilizers, and poisons, that must be applied in order for those yields to remain steady.
What you, other chemical farmers, the chemical companies, and the land grant state university agricultural programs fail to take in account when you are being so highly critical of small-to-medium scale farming with a diverse selection of both plants, and animals, in conjunction with minimal-to zero tillage, and a high degree of required labor; is that farmers like Joel Salatin have been able to get rid of the stunningly high bank loans that virtually all chemical farmers have to take out/borrow/pay interest on in order to pay for the yearly requirements of seeds, fertilizers, poisons, and equipment.
While their labor costs might be far more than the average large acreage chemical farmer, they simply don't need the multi-million dollar investment in machinery, and infrastructure that the chemical farmer does.
Which means that on a per acre basis, farmers like Salatin realize far more profit per acre than do their neighbors farming the industrial way. And, they do so without the incredible fears of a single bad year wiping out generations of hard work. Because Joel Salatin is so diversified, all 4 generations living on Polyface Farms know that if a particular part of their farm fails in any given year, then the myriad of other income streams on the farm will allow them as a family to survive.
Which, when looked at objectively, without the rose colored glasses, and all of the propaganda that the chemical companies spend billions of dollars in advertising & lobbying costs trying to convince (and thus far being very successful at) the average American that industrial chemical farming is the only way to feed a burgeoning planet.
Which is a complete lie. It is a known fact that 50% of all the food grown on the planet fails to ever make it into a human mouth. Or, into the mouths of the domesticated animals that we raise for pets, and companionship. Or, into the mouths of the animals that we raise to feed ourselves. Or, gets composted do that the nutrients removed from the soil, can be returned to it.
Mother Nature abhors a vacuum, and also hates to see any piece of ground barren of plant life. That's why there are no monocultures in natural ecosystems. Only human beings think that in their so-called wisdom/hubris, that they can contravene what GOD has established in the natural world.
We have paid, an are still paying, a very high price for the over-abundance of food that we produce by forcing human food plants to grow in an environment where only a select few nutrients are provided, mostly N-P-K, of the vast variety of chemicals, and minerals which exist in a healthy, balanced soil.
And, to answer your question, I have been friends with several farmers that continue to farm the way that you advocate. I just can see the deficiencies in the industrial chemical farming model. Where their livelihoods are in constant jeopardy, on a yearly basis, from a single years, or successive years, bad luck. They are only one hailstorm, freezing rain, early killing frost, late killing frost, flooding rains, blizzard, tornado, high windstorm, or drought away from foreclosure by whatever financial institution that holds their loans.
In my opinion, that's a incredibly stressful way to have to try and earn a living. And, any adult with the ability to look at the current industrial farming model objectively can see that at some point in the future the petrochemicals stored in the earth from millions of years ago are eventually going to be depleted.
Then what? Without a sustainable alternative to our current industrial farming model, there will be no way to feed the world's population as it continues to grow exponentially. Said growth that has only been possible due to using the stored sunlight that we know as coal, natural gas, oil shale, and petroleum. Which we use as a source of food, medicines, building materials, and energy to create electricity, fuel the various modes of transportation, and make our lives more palatable/comfortable/easier than those lives were before the Age of Industrialization.
I have gotten a very long way off of Britsmoothy's OP vis-a-vis his successful pheasant hunt. My apologies to Britsmoothy. I just hate to see people sugarcoat how we, as a nation, and yes, as a world, grow our food, and raise our livestock, in the industrial manner.
Last edited:
