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Modern agriculture coasts on the sunlight trapped by floras long extinct; we pump it, process it, transport it over the countryside as chemicals, and inject it into our wasting fields as chemotherapy.
Is there any possible return to a system that is at once self-renewing like the prairie or forest and yet capable of supporting the current and expanding human population? I think there is.
Then we watch the fields respond with an unsurpassed vigor, and we feel well informed on the subject of agronomics. That we can feed billions is less a sign of nature’s renewable bounty and of our knowledge than a sign of her forgiveness and of our own discounting of the future. For how opposite could monoculture of annuals be from what nature prefers? Both the roots and the above-ground parts of annuals die every year; thus, throughout much of the calendar the mechanical grip on the soil must rely on death rather than life. Mechanical disturbance, powered by an ancient flora, imposed by a mined metal, may make weed control effective, but the farm far from weatherproof. In the course of it all, soil compacts, crumb structure declines, soil porosity decreases, and the wick effect for pulling moisture down diminishes.
