Organic Farming

Abstract

Agriculture by its very definition represents a disturbance of the natural ecosystem through cultivations, the husbandry of single species and the removal of nutrients from the soil, either in crops or animal carcasses. The degree of disturbance is related to the intensity of the system of husbandry practised. Traditional agricultural systems have generally been based on mixed farming where animal wastes were returned to the soil, and nutrients, exported from the farm, were replaced by biological nitrogen fixation, or by importation of feeding materials for stock, and of lime, phosphate and potassium for application to soils. In such a system soil organic matter plays a crucial role and its important characteristics, which create an environment in soil conducive to healthy plant growth, have been reviewed in preceding chapters. Modern intensive systems appear to pay less attention to the importance of organic matter in soils, sometimes to their peril, and the increasing use of chemicals, in the form of fertilizers and pesticides, has been criticised from the standpoint of the increasing energy demands of the system and the potential damage which may be inflicted on the environment.

“You will have to work hard and sweat to make soil produce anything until you go back to the soil from which you were formed. You were made from the soil and you will become soil again” — Genesis 3:19.