New Agriculture Via Natural Trash & Composts, Old Agriculture Via Chemical Fertilizers & Pesticides – Bringing In The New, Wringing Out The Old!

Top image shows how “advanced” agriculture has become, with drones simultaneously applying chemicals to a wide sugarcane field. How innovative can you get?! “Look Ma, no hands! Look Pa, not hard!” It’s exciting to watch those mechanical flyers swoop up and down and glide across vast fields doing agriculture – farming has never been this easy and exciting! No more farmhands; isn’t it stress-free and fast? 
(Image from agrimoon.com)

Ah, but old-fashioned me, I am more excited with the old folk’s ways. This time I want to go really native; I want to go “Primitive Agriculture” (my term) – with the rotavator mechanically but especially instructed to create a natural trash, a mechanically made compost right on the field with the weeds and/or crop leftovers, with soil simultaneously cut up and mixed, to provide the natural richness as the plant materials decay in place. How primitive can you get?!

Indeed, we have to look at these twin problems: “Farmer Poverty” and “Climate Change.” They are twins because they have the same mother: Chemical Agriculture (CA). Chemical fertilizers and chemical pesticides are not only expensive; they also generate greenhouse gases (GHGs) that help generate the “Greenhouse Effect” that generates those devastating droughts and destructive floods; we know them as “El Niño” and “La Niña.” Yes, chemical agriculture is the hidden enemy of the farmers! (And therefore, the rest of society!)

What do we need now? Regenerative Agriculture (RA); Never, I never tire of listing the RA practices I have gathered from the Internet:

1, Cover Cropping
2, Crop Rotation
3, Farm Crops + Tree Crops (Agroforestry)
4, Green Manuring
5, Intercropping
6, Multiple Cropping
7, No-Till Farming
8, Organic Fertilization
9, Ratooning
10, Rotational Grazing
11, “Three Sisters” Planting
12, Trap Cropping
13, Trash Mulching.

And I never tire saying, “If all our farmers practiced old Regenerative Agriculture (RA) and junk their modern Chemical Agriculture (CA), they would be solving these twin problems, one for them and one for all of us:

Farmer Poverty
Climate Change!

They would be solving Farmer Poverty because, I never tire repeating: Chemical Agriculture has high total costs and low total returns. That’s plain old economics. In contrast, Regenerative Agriculture has low total costs and high total returns!

Bottom image shows how “sorry” agriculture can be, with a field of sugarcane grown via trash mulching. It looks like trash; it is trash – until you see the results, the high, natural yield that will shoot your eyes up!
(bottom image, renegaderum.com)

Today, Bella Cariazo says, (19 Aug 2024, PhilStar, philstar.com): “Armyworm Damage In Western Visayas Hits P67 Million.” And why do we have so much destruction from armyworms in rice? Because the rice growing is palatable, appetizing to the worms – because the fertilizers and pesticides have made the rice palatable to the worms and other insects!

Chemical solutions give the farmers more problems than they can handle – and these affect all of us. In chemical agriculture, the farmers are the enemies of the people!@517