For most of human history it was self-evident, that Nature is the producer of all food, fibre, timber and medicine yields that we depend upon for survival. Consider how obvious this was to people who lived primarily through hunting and gathering. Even today many people still enjoy this aspect of our heritage when they go fishing, foraging for wild berries, mushrooms, fruits, nuts, wild game, much of what we call bush tucker. The distinction and separation from this pure connection has come about with the advent of certain agricultural practices that are inherently destructive to healthy natural ecology and have served to progressively distance us as a species from the inherent well-being of nature. Chief among these practices is the repeated ploughing of the soil. A onetime plough-up of the soil can be a strategic action to open compacted soils, add organic matter, seed with new species and/or create contour beds on sloping land. But the repeated ploughing to grow a rotation of mono-cultured crops depletes essential nutrients, destroys the dynamic soil ecology and is the chief cause of erosion and susceptibility to drought. The imbalance caused from repeated ploughing is typically followed by the a range of standard agribusiness practices that are deemed necessary to achieve results after nature has been laid bare. These are the planting of standardized singular crops, the application of commercial fertilizers and an ongoing barrage of chemicals or mechanical control measures against perceived weeds, pests, fungus, bacteria and/or viruses that will inevitable flourish in these imbalanced ecologies that defy 3 billion years of nature’s successful adaptation, colonization and ability to thrive on Earth.
If we search for the roots of ploughing based agriculture, it seems to have coincidently occurred around the same time of anthropomorphized deity worshiping. It could even be speculated that the two phenomena are linked, as both are causes of separation from essential life source energy and from nature which is the manifestation of the visible universal life force moving through living forms around us. Adding further weight to this potential historical connection are the religious parables of the fall from the Garden of Eden, or the Lost Paradise, alluding to a time when humans were entirely at one with their environment-habitat but are now widely dispossessed and living in a state psychological and conceptual division from their own inherent source energy and harbouring a longing (albeit largely subconscious) for a return to a state of connectedness and belonging.
It is estimated that around one third of all the Earth’s terrestrial environments still exist in the absence of deliberate human intervention and many of these are robust and thriving. This is of great significance because it shows that there is an underlying pattern of well-being, abundance, and the ability to thrive that inherently exists in nature. So what can we learn from observing these remaining natural ecosystems that are thriving without human intervention?
The universal features of these naturally optimized ecosystems come down to 5 macro conditions that are being met to greater or lesser degrees throughout the seasons and are as follows.
- Water availability to optimal requirements for the growth of all species through the changing seasons.
- Soil rich in both essential nutrients and a dynamic range of symbiotic living organisms.
- Adequate sun exposure for the light and warmth needs of all species.
- An optimal diversity of species filling every ecological niche and widest possible genetic variation for adaptation within them.
- Freedom from limiting and unnatural processes (ploughing, mowing, spraying chemicals, compacting soil with machinery etc)
The successful provision of these conditions directly equates to how efficient in terms of time, energy and resources, the production results will be.
Nature offers these and many more insights to anyone who can observe with stillness, humbleness and openness, the simultaneous interplay of the vast range of processes and dynamics that create and maintain healthy natural ecological balance.
The challenges of creating healthy and sustainable food production is now well and truly on the table for examination and improvement. The onset of extreme weather events leading to crop failures around the world and the degraded and contaminated products being offered by multinational corporate agribusiness, mean that Localized food security initiatives are now taking hold all over the world as a growing wave of people seek to reclaim both their connection to the Earth and their sovereign right to healthy foods.
All that’s required now is for more people to start supporting locally produced organic foods, or even better, start growing some of their own. We have access to the widest range of food plants in human history now and we can all be learning directly from nature what works well and what is the most efficient way to achieve results that are reliable, sustainable, resilient to climate change and the most elegant collaboration between us and the phenomenal capabilities of nature to thrive.
Growing with nature optimized conditions
Recent Comments