The person most responsible for articulating the principles of the organic farming movement was Sir Albert Howard (1873–1947). Throughout his life Howard published many books and articles. His best known are 'An Agricultural Testament' (1940) and 'The Soil and Health' (1947). They were written with both general readers and scientists in mind. Howard grew up in the English countryside and was trained as a mycologist at Cambridge University, in London. In 1905, after spending a few years working in the West Indies and a few years teaching agricultural science in England, he traveled to India where he would spend the next twenty-six years of his life directing agricultural research.
Howard’s first appointment was to The Research Institute at Pusa, near Calcutta. Since he was not familiar with the farming in India, he spent most of his time there learning from local farmers, whom he referred to as his “professors.” He watched them produce healthy crops of wheat, chickpeas, and tobacco without using chemical fertilizer or insecticides. Howard also noticed that the draft oxen used at the institute did not suffer from the contagious diseases that plagued animals on the neighboring farms even though they were in such close proximity that they rubbed noses across the fence lines.
“From these observations on plants and animals, Sir Albert was led to the conclusion that the secret of health and disease lay in the soil. The soil must be fertile to produce healthy plants and fertility meant a high percentage of humus. Humus was the key to the whole problem, not only of yields but of health and disease. From healthy plants grown on humus-rich soil, animals would feed and be healthy.” To replace the humus removed from the soil, Howard turned to composting, crediting the Chinese with the idea. In a memorial article for her husband, Louise Howard wrote, “On this crucial question of returning wastes to the soil, he always acknowledged his debt to the great American missionary, F. H. King, whose famous book, The Farmers of Forty Centuries . . . was to him a kind of bible.”
The Chinese system of agriculture described by King and Howard became the model for the worldwide organic farming movement as popularized by J. I. Rodale through Organic Gardening magazine and countless other Rodale publications. Two linked features characterize this system—plowing, and lots of work. The decomposition of organic matter in the soil occurs through the process of oxidation, similar to digestion in the human body. The rate of this slow, steady burn is regulated by the amount of oxygen in the soil. In a natural soil the rate of decomposition matches the amount of plant material the soil produces along with the droppings and decaying bodies of animals and microorganisms. When the soil is plowed, the amount of oxygen is increased so the rate of decomposition increases. To maintain the fertility of the soil, new organic matter must be added on a regular basis. That’s where the work comes in, and the need for all that compost.
When human beings first learned to plow, they gained access to the vast reserve of solar energy that had been stored in the organic matter of the soil, but access to this energy came at a very high price in the form of labor, erosion, and other environmental consequences. Albert Howard thought the trade-off was worth it because it allowed civilization to flourish. “[Through cultivation of the soil] man has laid his hand on the great Wheel and for a moment has stopped or deflected its turning. To put it another way, he has for his own use withdrawn from the soil the products of its fertility. That man is entitled to put his hand on the Wheel has never been doubted, except by such sects . . . who argued themselves into a state of declaring it a sin to wound the earth with spades or tools.” He believed that it was perfectly all right to plow the soil, entirely remaking nature in the process, as long as people also put in the hard work to maintain the soil’s fertility. “All the great agricultural systems which have survived have made it their business never to deplete the earth of its fertility without at the same time beginning the process of restoration. This becomes a veritable preoccupation.”
Mr. Fukuoka and the Indigenous people of the world did not think it was a good idea, morally or otherwise, “to withdraw for his own use the products of the soil’s fertility” by plowing. They were content to coexist with the land in a more gentle way. They also did not want to make replacing the earth’s fertility “a veritable preoccupation.”
This dichotomy between nurturing the land for the benefit of all species and using it strictly for the advancement of human civilization is summed up in an illuminating paragraph from Howard’s Soil and Health:
What is agriculture? It is undoubtedly the oldest of the great arts; its beginnings are lost in the mists of man’s earliest days. Moreover, it is the foundation of settled life and therefore of all true civilization, for until man had learnt to add the cultivation of plants to his knowledge of hunting and fishing, he could not emerge from his savage existence. This is no mere surmise: observation of surviving primitive tribes, still in the hunting and fishing stage . . . show them unable to progress because they have not mastered and developed the principle of cultivation of the soil.
In this passage, Howard reveals the smug attitudes of his culture. He maintains that until plowed-field agriculture came along, the basis of all true civilization, people led a “savage existence.” In a later passage he referred to the way Indigenous people obtained their food as “nothing more than a harvesting process.”9 Without plowing the soil these primitive people were “unable to progress,” and the only way they could improve themselves was to change their ways to be like his. Of course that would entail remaking their entire way of life and violating their own ethics. Perhaps these people had no interest in joining the “march to progress,” did not believe that dominating nature was a good idea, and felt it was not “man’s destiny” to do so. The irony is that even though things have not gone at all well for human society or the environment over the past ten thousand years, the air of superiority persists.
In 1931 Howard retired from government service and returned to England. An Agricultural Testament was published in 1943. His ideas were immediately attacked by the agricultural establishment, which viewed them as exaggerations and oversimplifications. He was marginalized as an extremist largely because of his lack of scientific proof and his hard-line stand against the use of synthetic chemicals of any kind. Where were the comparison plots? Where was the data? Science demanded that he use their empirical criteria while Howard’s understanding was based largely on whole systems analysis, intuition, and a lifetime of experience.
~~One-Straw Revolutionary: The Philosophy And Work Of Masanobu Fukuoka -by- Larry Korn
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