WITHOUT chemicals I would be dead: think antibiotics, worm tablets, Betadine, detergents, surgery-medicines.
Before industrial agricultural genius, we ploughed the soil regularly to kill weeds.
This tillage loosened the soil and made it naked.
Leave a naked body out in the weather and it will soon die.
Indeed this is what Europe is doing right now, its focus on huge tillage and avoiding smart safe chemistries is toxic to soil life.
Tillage destroys a soil’s organic life, removing the wonderful organic blanket that insulates soil from heat and cold and hail, wind and rain.
The soil says “thank you” when you cover it.
Europe has lost 50 per cent of its soil since the 1950s.
- Bill Crabtree
Smashing and bashing soils turns it fluffy when dry that will blow in the wind and later, after a rain, can turn the remaining soil into concrete.
Concrete runs water.
Understanding these simple truths explains why Australian farmers, who grow crops in the most infertile region of the world, have wholeheartedly adopted no-tillage with stubble retention.
But how can we do no-tillage without safe, smart chemistries?
Indeed, we can’t, despite thousands trying, no one has succeeded (I wish them well).
The truth is, just like a kitchen which has knives, salt, sugar, flour, coffee, protein (genes) etc, so a smart farm manager needs modern safe tools.
Politicians need to be honest and informed of the truth that regenerative agriculture is actually industrial agriculture.
It is the culmination of all the wisdom and knowledge of many people over the past 100 years.
Only 30 years ago we saw the folly of tillage for weed control, we lost thousands of years of topsoil in a few short years and we will never get it back.
Europe has lost 50 per cent of its soil since the 1950s.
What sort of crop growing capacity will they have in 20 years time if their ideology against safe tools continues?
The irony is that they have forgotten food shortages of the 1950s already.
They said they would make sure that they would never run out of food again.
Yet the EU could run short in 10-20 years.
I suspect they will be importing food from Africa by then.
Africa is learning fast from the EU’s mistakes, which demonstrates an ideology of nature worship which is not humanism.
Being at the World Food Prize last week in Iowa, in the United States and sitting as Australia’s representative on The Global Farmer Network table, this message came through clearly.
The EU does not want Africa to have genetically modified crops and Mrs P Koku told me that her fellow small farmers are starving because of the fall armyworm that two years ago marched across Africa.
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This grub needs spraying weekly and farmers can’t afford the sprays and it’s not possible to pick them all by hand – think cabbage moth in your own broccoli patch.
They are losing more than 50pc of their corn crop which is not enough to live on.
My friends is this what we want for Africa?
Should Africans starve because the EU farmers, who can spray Bt (a natural occurring, soil-borne bacteria) on their organic crops, will not allow the social license for Mrs Koku to use 22-year proven safe Bt technology in her corn?
The GM technology is safe and is encaptured in the plant where a protein produced kills only the target grubs.
Not to mention the amount of fuminosin that accumulates in the unsprayed or non-GM corn.
Fuminosin causes birth defects and spontaneous abortions.
My friends in honest agriculture, this is a crime against humanity.
Can I hear you saying, “yes, this is dishonest and mischievous?”
And why do poor African farmers need to get an EU approved social license to keep their children alive?
Something is not right and if this does not make you a little angry, then you have no heart.
I intend going to Africa in February to help them chose life over famine for their children and their nation’s sake.
Feel free to come with me on this or the next visit after seeding.