Permaculture, Biodiversity, and Feeding the Masses

An awesome article at the David Suzuki Foundation explains that large, industrial farms actually hurt biodiversity, and aren't that great for feeding the masses, either.

Duh.

After explaining the multifaceted harms that these monolithic, pesticide soaked, fossil fuel rich farms inflict on the living breathing world, in the name of food security, the article goes on to say:

 despite the incredible expansion of industrial farming practices, the number of hungry people continues to grow.

Huh. Well get this: according to a number of studies cited in the article, small scale organic farms produce more output per unit than industrial farms.

I really liked the quote from Eliot Coleman:

"[T]he thinking behind industrial agriculture was based upon the mistaken premise that nature is inadequate and needs to be replaced with human systems. They contended that by virtue of that mistake, industrial agriculture has to continually devise new crutches to solve the problems it creates (increasing the quantities of chemicals, stronger pesticides, fungicides, miticides, nematicides, soil sterilization, etc.)."

According to Edible Forest Gardens, Native North Americans employed a kind of agriculture known as agroforestry. It's a very specific form of permaculture that relies on the systems of the forest and its cycles to grow or harvest an array of food, without harming the forest or its inhabitants. Quite the opposite: it seems that many of the agriculture oriented activities of Native North Americans were an integral part of forest health, and that many species relied on the careful attention that these people paid to the land.


And get this: new evidence suggests that the 'empty land' that Europeans invaded actually had a higher population density than Europe did at the time. 


Don't clean out your ears: you heard right. This eco-positive, respectful, caring form of agriculture was able to support higher population density than the intensive monoculture farming that has evolved into todays industrial agriculture.


Why? How? Am I saying that modern science has failed us?!?! 


Not at all. All I'm saying is that Mother Earth hasn't.


Polycultures (multiple plants planted among each other), one of the fundamentals of permaculture and forest gardening, allow plants to partition resources among themselves more easily. A field of only one plant will use up lots of some nutrients and none of others. It will only support certain soil bacteria, the rest of which will perish, leaving the soil food web broken. Meanwhile, a polyculture patch is much more likely to grow and be healthy without us having to dump fertilizer on it all the time.


It's like this: let's say soil is like your cupboard. If you're me, you have some people food, some dog food, and some cat food in there. But if you're house only has cats, they are quickly going to run out of cat food, and more will have to be brought in. Meanwhile, the dog food and human food will spoil, benefiting no one. If, on the other hand, you have a happy multispecies family like I do, then everyone is happy and you don't live in a crazy world run by cats, which is absolute madness.