Killing the Fields (why modern farming has to go!)

The industrial revolution wrecked a lot of things. It certainly changed a great number of things for a great number of people. Including everywhere that the British Empire invaded, for a start.

But what it also changed is our relationship to growing food. In the picture above is a set of experimental fields. In the foreground, Rye is growing in rotation with other crops. In the background, the rye has been growing in the same place for over forty years. As you can see, the rye in the foreground is a richer, healthier colour than the rye in the rear.

By industrialising food and treating our eats like yet another cog in the machine, we are robbing ourselves of valuable nutrition and making us and our farmlands sick.

Plants need food, too. Chemical companies would have us believe that their "perfectly safe" petrochemicals and assorted compounds are what plants have really needed all along. And it's profitable, too. You can theoretically grow nothing but Gmod subsidised corn until the end of days. So long as you live better with chemistry.

Meanwhile, your soil quality gets poorer, you need more chemicals, and sooner or later, Monsanto is your liege lord and you have to do what they tell you.

However... with the use of crop rotation, you destroy the habitat of the corn-eating pests (by not having corn) and enrich your soil with nitrogen-fixing legumes, and then freshen it up with some other crops after that. The need for chemicals falls, the pest rate drops (especially if you use Companion Planting), and everything is so much better.

The only reason why Dow and Corning even got their foot in was because the monocultures were creating dust bowls.

And another thing... monocultures are bad, okay? We didn't learn from the Potato Famine. We didn't learn from the Carpet-Bagger era when the Southern States were "cottoned out". We didn't learn from the Dust Bowl... I think it's high time we learned it...

GROWING JUST ONE CROP AD INFINITUM IS A BAD IDEA!

You get diseases. You get pests. You get blight. And, if you're also using the host of concoctions from the chemical corporations, you also get cancer.

Alas, they're so huge and influential that they can destroy anyone who goes against their ideals of -say- spending more money on their chemicals.

It's high time we all realised that corporate food is not that great for us. Shopping is convenient, I agree, but more than half of everything sold to us is also making us sick. And unfortunately, the companies have enough money to keep it that way.

Therefore the best way to make sure your food is healthy, is to have your own little farm in your backyard. If you're white enough to have a backyard. And let's face it, all efforts to improve the lives of anyone not white enough to have a backyard... those have been actively resisted by the white people who own the areas.

Urban gardens are paved over. Vacant lot parks are turned into office blocks. And, in extreme cases, the entire neighbourhood is gentrified, whitewashed, and the disadvantaged get a longer commute out of the alleged deal.

Food as we know it is becoming unsustainable. Between the literal mountains of wasted food, the chemicals, and the grain-feeding... there's not a great deal of stretching room. And worse, we're taking over other countries' ability to sustain themselves. It's awful.

Do we need another dust bowl before we wake up?

[Image credit Wikipedia]