Rethinking Lifestyle

Joining the Natural Systems Agriculture team in its annual field day at Carman, has, in recent years, become one of my summer activities. I look forward to this event. Below are some thoughts that occurred to me as I took part in this year’s event.

Implicitly, we are inclined to assume that the future will be like the recent past. If we make that assumption we will not attach much significance to the work of the Natural Systems Agriculture team. No doubt this is a comfortable assumption, but do we examine the risks involved in that assumption sufficiently?

Comfort with this assumption has lead, over the years since WWII, to an input oriented food system.

Practically this means that if a food producer determines that his crop is floundering [because of some nutrient deficiency, weed, insect pest or disease], he looks for someone within the agricultural support network with good advice on how to deal with the current challenge, and a supplier with an input designed to deal with that challenge.

But do we realize that the more we commit to an input oriented food system, the more we commit to serious vulnerability. The input oriented food system depends on economic stability and the perpetual availability of these inputs.

How much thought do we give to how dependent we are on the stability of our global economy. There was a time when the Canadian government was sufficiently concerned about global instability that it subsidized the sugar beet industry in Canada – just so Canada would be growing and producing its own sugar. It was felt this was necessary because of the global instability created by WWII. No one is advocating a return to similar subsidies, nevertheless we do well to think of what would happen to the supply of agricultural inputs, were the world economic system to become unstable. A collapse of the banking system, or, heaven forbid, a major war would be devastating to any input supply system.

Regular readers of this column are aware of the Peak Oil and Peak Phosphate concept. The inputs necessary for modern agriculture are mostly derived from oil. Nitrogenous fertilizer is totally derived from natural gas, and the big tractors don’t go far without diesel fuel in their tanks. How will our food system adapt as these inputs become harder to get? The input oriented food system has only increased this dependency over the last 100 years.

Reducing vulnerability is not the main driver of the Natural Systems Agriculture program, nevertheless that system of farming stands as a beacon to those concerned with the vulnerability of our food system. The program increases the knowledge base that says that fertility can be maintained and crop pests can be controlled by looking after the soil – with few inputs. At this time interest in such technology is limited to a relatively small percentage of growers and consumers, but the time is coming when we all will be thanking them for the knowledge base that has been built up.