Happy Urban Dirt

When you walk around the grocery store, looking at all different vegetables, it is probably challenging to imagine that a hundred years ago there were twice more options to choose from. Hundreds of years of cultivation and saturation of soil with chemicals exhausted the dirt of the necessary nutrients needed to nourish our food, leaving us much less crops than we used to be accustomed.

The following fragment comes from Dirt on the soil By Gabe Brown. Has been adapted to the network.

Changes in agricultural land in the United States due to the current production model are disturbing and melancholy.

As an example I will exploit my ranch. We know from historical archives that 140 years ago this part of the Northern Dakota was covered with a diverse mix of frosty and sultry grasses and deciduous plants. European immigrants moved to these prereits, bringing a plow with them. The varied prereits were soon turned with crop, which crush, breaks down and powdered soil aggregates.

The cultivation lasted for many decades, and with it a common practice of monoculture grain production appeared. Not only monoculture, but also fewer and fewer species of crops. Where more than a hundred species once grew up, now only a few are growing. In general, only fifteen crops are provided by about 90 percent of plant products that we eat today! The first settlers ate a much more diverse diet than we did.

We see the loss of diversity of species in our advertisement Vegetable production, in which we lost over 90 percent our varieties of vegetable seeds in the 20th century. In 1900, almost 550 varieties of cabbage were available in the United States; Today, only 28 varieties are sold on the market. In the case of beets, the change is from 288 varieties to 17. In the case of Cauli flower, from over 150 to just 9 and corn? I hate you to tell you, but we lost over 96 percent of corn varieties available at the beginning of the 20th century.

Soil scientist Dr. Wendy Taheri recently discovered it Many of today’s “fresh and improved” varieties of grain do not have the ability to create symbiotic relationships with mycorrhis fungi. These varieties are not able to exploit all the benefits that mushrooms have to offer. Breeders choose features such as performance, and do not notice that during this process – such as the ability to create relationships with mushrooms – are lost.

This is not surprising, because plant breeders develop and propagate fresh varieties in sterile soil. The roots have never been exposed to mycorrhis fungi, therefore unnoticed when diversity does not develop the ability to interact with mushrooms. These varieties will be fully dependent on the synthetic nutrients used!

The loss of biological diversity led to a smaller amount of cyclization of nutrients, which also identified with the augment in the exploit of synthetic fertilizer. This led to weeds (most weeds are high nitrogen users). Weed growth led to an augment in the exploit of herbicides. Many of the herbicides used today are chelators. Chelators are associated with metal. Metals such as zinc, manganese, magnesium, iron and copper. Can you guess where he leads?

These are the same nutrients that plants need to repel the disease.

Lack of these nutrients can lead to a higher frequency of fungal diseases. The augment in fungal diseases leads to increased exploit of fungicides. Fungicides are harmful to the biology of soil and pollinators. Yes, pollinators! Recent studies show that fungicides, once considered to be not a bad effect on bees, have an impact. Corporate scientists and directors must recognize that these relationships have a greater harmful effect than we have realized. Farmers must be educated about better methods, and consumers must demand that the exploit of these fungicides be interrupted.

The lack of nutrients available to the plant makes the plant more susceptible to pests.

An augment in pests pressure leads to increased pesticides. Of course, most pesticides are not specific to pests, which means that many favorable insects will be killed, including pollinating species such as bees that are needed to pollinate our crops. Almost all fruits and vegetables currently grown on conventional farms are sprayed with ample insecticidal amounts. Is it strange that we have such a dysfunctional ecosystem?

From an animal perspective, the life goal of production was increasingly pounds per animal in imprisonment.

Milk cows and beef cattle were removed from the pasture, where they once used on the ecosystem through grazing living plants, thus riding a bike of more coal. Instead, they are brought up in constrained quarters. Their diets were changed by the omniscient authorities from feed to high -level grains, affecting the health and longevity of animals. Most dairy cows raised in constrained high production systems have a vitality of less than four years! And milk, cheese and other dairy products from this system are much less dense nutrients, which also affects human health.

High rations of starch fed beef cattle in feed also negatively affects the life of animals, as well as the nutritional value of beef itself. Let’s take an example of omega fatty acids. Studies have shown that foods with a lower ratio of omega-6 fatty acids to omega-3 fatty acids are better for human health, and studies also showed that beef fed with grass has this low ratio, while beef fed grain has a much higher ratio of omega-6 fatty acids for omega-3 fatty acids.

The Feedlot industry has nothing to do with cattle.

Feedlot operations operate on the supply market and feathers. They want cattle that eat a lot of feed and take a long time to finish; This is in their best financial interest. Does anyone really believe that grazing animals prefer to be in feed? Just open the gate and see what animals choose.

The industry moved the pieper, chickens and turkeys to the buildings in the subbraity that animals “better”. Has anyone asked animals? In 1983, when Shelly and I moved to the farm for the first time, I took part in an incomplete hour during a nearby egg surgery. My professional duties included cleaning dead chickens. I started every morning at 6 am, kneeling in a wheelchair, stretching along the rows of frames, in which there were over twenty thousand chickens, increased above tonnes of feces material. Nine hens put three feet in a three -feet cage, living in an area where they could barely turn around, never seeing or feeling outside. I wondered how they had to feel, never having the opportunity to scratch leaves or catch the horses. They didn’t have the opportunity to be chicken! Just then and there I vowed that I never had chickens, at least not chicken.

TThe US government propagated this way of thinking with economical food policy. He wants to provide citizens with ample supply of economical food. Note that I did not say food enormous from nutrients. The United States spend more on healthcare than any other country in the world, and yet their citizens are not well.

Are farmers and ranclaus guilty for all this?

No, not entirely, but we must take our fair guilt. American public opinion must also take part in guilt for enabling this. Thanks to the buyer, dollars consumers made the choice that they want this system, even if they decide to ignore environmental degradation, indigent treatment of animals and a general decrease in human health.

And think about what else this production model caused. This led to stronger and stronger margins for producers. Lower margins mean that manufacturers must grow more and more land to meet the end. The size of the farms increases, leaving less farms and fewer people serving the Earth. In other words, this production model also led to the collapse of many of our miniature cities.

Consider these facts

• Three companies control over 75 percent of the agrochemical industry.
• Three companies provide over 90 percent of breeding storage, broilers, turkeys and pigs.
• Four companies control from half to three quarters of all animal slaughter, depending on the species.
• Five companies control over 50 percent of the agricultural machinery market.

Paul Aackley, a longtime friend and regenerative farmer Iowa, summed up the consequences of the current production model.

Paul writes: “From memory and records from 1949.: From the place where I sit at this computer, along the miles in the north in the north there were four occupied farms in the north, and at the end of this mile, south of half a mile there were school houses, in which I and four others began Kyingarten in the autumn of 1950 (one later he became a neutyrururia on Yale). With the ground, but they do not think that any of them was able to miss our side battle. Assist in Lucerne/Grass in the early 1960s.

Well said, Paul.

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