The classical agronomy, the source of industrial farming, has a very simplistic view of nature: it denies the complexity of the soil, treating it as an inert support. This is the source of malfunctions and dangers of contemporary agriculture.
The CAP, dominated by this vision, decided to separate the culture and breeding. But when the breeding is not combined with the culture, there is more manure to provide organic matter necessary for life soil. Manure is replaced by the famous fertilizer N, P and K, which make them so sick and unbalanced plants. The farmer must use pesticides and fungicides to protect them. Ploughing is increasingly deep, irrigation increasingly important. These practices are at the origin of the biological death soil. They lock the farmer into a dependency on pesticides, produce diseased plants, cause flooding ... industrial culture is not sustainable.
Factory farming and without culture, for its part, is no more sustainable. The excesses of droppings pollute whole regions and aquifers (as in Britain or in Galicia). Rearing conditions (food, environment, etc.) do not respect the physiology of the animals and give us sick animals and force-fed antibiotics. In addition, the consumption of meat (with speculation on food products and sale of European surpluses by the EU) plays a role in the phenomenon of hunger in the world, in the sense that our animals are fed with soy Brazil or cassava in Africa, the regions that suffer in hunger. For example, 1kg of beef requires 7kg vegetable protein ...
The problem of hunger is not a problem of under-production or over-population, but of fair distribution of resources!
Moreover, industrial agriculture makes us suffer a huge loss of diversity in our diet: while there were 253 varieties of French apples in 1906, currently 4 varieties of US apples provide 90% of the market, a 70%. .. Another figure: the hunter-gatherers consumed 10,000 plant and animal species, while today 90% of humanity eat less than forty, but against ingest more than 5000 chemical molecules of food additives. In fact, biodiversity was driven by the chemical diversity!
Faced with this grim conclusion, they propose a agrology, based on the acceptance and management of the complexity of the soil.
The major change is the replacement of labor by direct seeding under cover, technical area of composting that promotes soil life. Coverage of the plants, by increasing the soil surface porosity, allows to divide by three irrigation. For the dead soil, RCW (RCW fragmented) can be a solution to restore their lives. The separation between monoculture farming and should be abandoned to make way for the mixed farming, which would rehabilitate the rotation and association of plants, this has three advantages: limit parasitism (and therefore limit the use of pesticides), limit risks Climate and best use of fertile elements. We must also put in place hedges that surround the fields, because they allow better use of carbon dioxide from the respiration of soil microbes and plants. For breeding, it will first reduce meat consumption and move towards a quality meat produced by outdoor animals, grazing of natural grasslands. It is also possible for further research, not on GMOs, but on the domestication of new animal and plant species: biodiversity is immense, and we do not serve, preferring to use synthetic products ...
This new agriculture will finally grow crops without erosion, while providing human quality products, full of flavor.
"The issue is not purely philosophical, it is vital to humanity. If this world does not radically change its way of understanding the nature and cultivated fields, it does not define a new scientific spirit, there is not much chance that this science that made the greatness of our time is also the cause of its collapse. "
