Sep 5, 2020. Updated: May 26, 2023.

Part of "Natural Living" series

Farming

Farming has the aspects of ethics and ecology, with the ethical aspect referring to how food that is grown or reared is treated — it is ethical when treated as a life and unethical when not — and the ecological aspect referring to the ecological consequences of the farming methods used — it is sound if the farming methods used are in harmony with ecology, and unsound if it isn't. Sustainability is a subset of food's ecological aspect. A farmer cannot achieve sustainability without practising ecologically sound farming methods, therefore natural farming is sustainable.

How humans should farm starts with two questions: what does it take to grow or rear their food, and what does it take for their food to grow? Two questions that are so similar, yet different as day and night, both scientifically and philosophically. Humans took the approach of growing and rearing their food instead of letting their food grow, and in this madness, they transformed food into a commodity and commercialised farming. Now, profit mattered which forced farmers to cultivate their land, clear it off other organisms eliminating bio-diversity, and practice mono-culture for maximum output.

These practices decreased the fertility of soil forcing them to use chemicals for nourishment, which killed the microbes¹ and further made the soil lifeless now forcing them to grow food with a cocktail of chemicals to support growth — and it produced toxic food. Many called this 'scientific farming'. Farming is neither scientific nor unscientific. Science is knowledge and a systematic method of understanding how things work. Thus, the words 'scientific' and 'unscientific' are adjectives ² that can only be used with nouns that resemble knowledge or are activities whose goal is to acquire knowledge. The goal of farming is to produce food; not to learn or understand something. Therefore, it is technically incorrect to say that farming is scientific or unscientific, or refer to farming methods as scientific or unscientific methods. On the other hand, studies and researches conducted with a goal of understanding and learning how plants work, the harvest yield, the role of diversity, etc. can be termed as either scientific or unscientific.

Many people tend to call methods that can be explained by science and also work for them as 'scientific'. But every method, its functioning and results can be explained by science. In fact, it is us who label methods as 'working' or 'not working'; or 'right method' or 'wrong method'. Such classifications are human qualifications. What happens in the universe does not contain any element of good, bad, or right or wrong; instead they are events of causes and effects. The qualifications of right and wrong only appear when examined through a set of conditions — if a method gives us the desired results, it earns the name of a working method, or the right method; else, the method is said to not work, and labelled to be wrong. Therefore, what works for us and what does not work for us does not decide whether something is scientific or not.

Humans must practice farming methods that aligns with the natural process of plant growth: one that does not erode the soil or kill the microbes in it, one that does not transform plants and animals into commodities or ingest toxins in them, one that ensures biodiversity in the farm and yields nutritious food. Understanding the workings of nature is science and to practice natural farming, humans must first learn how plants and animals grow and how nature works.

Seldom did humans ponder on what does it take for their food to grow. Had they pondered, it would have revealed that the growth of plants and animals is a natural process, where nobody needs to pull out the plant from its seed and make a cattle conceive; or make the roots suck in water and nutrients from the soil and spoon feed cattle; or walk into their food lab inside the leaves and make food for the plants or get inside the digestive system of animals and help in digestion. Like all species on the planet, plants and animals grow by themselves. All that humans must do is preserve the optimum environment for them to grow, which consists of quality top soil, water content and natural predators for hostile insects and pests. If such environment is absent, it must be created.

Top soil, that takes hundreds of years to turn optimal for plant growth and only minutes to turn toxic, is the asset in farming. The water content of soil depends on the geographic area, but a natural ecology with good vegetation cover will increase the water retention of any soil, thus requiring less irrigation at first and no irrigation eventually. Natural predators for harmful insects and pests are the easiest and safest way to kill them. All these elements can be created, maintained and improved simply by allowing great floral and faunal diversity in the land.

It so evolved that on planet earth, the survival of every organism is very much inter-dependent on each other: plants need birds to help pollinate, worms to soften and nourish the soil, and animals to fertilise it; who in return receives food, shelter and shade from plants. All that organisms need to do, is perform their part in the system and they can eat, drink and live; it is a symphony of co-operation, and this symphony benefits farming.

The microbes in the soil soften it with their activity, thus eliminating the need for tilling and ploughing; they eat organic matter present on the soil and decomposes what remains, which enriches the soil and improves floral diversity, which in turns improves faunal diversity, which returns more organic matter that further enriches the soil and feeds the microbes. It is in this harmonious cycle that human's food, health and progeny lies. A farming method that respects this cycle is the ultimate method of farming, satisfying all the aspects of food: nutrition, ecology and ethics.

The bio-activities in the soil: ie, the activities of the microbes, fauna and flora in the soil, must only be disrupted by natural boundaries like geography. Artificial boundaries like walls dug into the soil or trenches dug out of the soil only disturbs the natural scale of microbial activity, fragmenting soil into many smaller plots, restricting the movements of many fauna, thus eventually disturbing and disrupting the ecosystem. It must therefore be noted that to naturally maintain quality top soil, it must be left as a single large natural fragment.

Goals determine human actions; it is essential to establish the goal of farming first, which must not be to make money, but to grow ethically and ecologically sound produce that will either feed the masses or produce natural products for them. Although money is results in both cases, different goals make farmers take different approaches to farming. When money becomes the goal, farmers develops a mindset to treat farming elements like soil as mere resources. They are queued to be squeezed and overused for money, resulting in their exploitation and endangerment. On the other hand, when the goal is to produce food and natural products ethically and ecologically, farmers develops a mindset to employ methods that will yield them quality produces over quantity, which will direct them to follow farming methods that are natural, thus resulting in sustainability instead of exploitation.

Humans must also realise that plants and animals do not bear fruits and offspring for humans, but for themselves to procreate. Because of the designs of ecology, they provide a share of their produces to other organisms who help them procreate. When humans claim the whole produce of plants, they are snatching the share of the microbes living in the soil, the share of birds who help plants pollinate and the share of animals who provide manure.

When humans take the whole produce, they are killing the resources producing their own food and initiates the slow destruction of the land to a barren, infertile and fruitless one, which can only be then farmed with tiling machines, inorganic fertilisers, pesticides and insecticides. Humans must therefore remember when they pluck fruits and leaves, dig up the roots or cut stems for food, not to claim the whole produce for themselves, for the plant lives for itself and provides some of its parts to others, among which humans are a part too. This is the way of nature.

Out of all these thoughts rise the idea of natural farming — a way of growing food in the most natural way by not tilling, ploughing, irrigating, fertilising or administering chemicals; instead it allows the ecosystem to grow and mature with the necessary chemicals, which then supports plant growth and humans takes a share of their produce. Only with natural farming can humans produce food that lived a natural life in its natural habitat — the thumb rule of food in natural living.

Natural farming has been long practised by many farmers of which, the prominent ones include Masanobu Fukuoka and Subhash Palekar. Natural farming is not to be confused with organic farming, which is a system of farming without the use of chemicals, but activities like cultivation, tiling, ploughing, irrigating, organic fertilising and mono-culture are practised. Natural farming does not practice any of these activities, it instead engages in maintaining the natural ecology to give the benefits of tilling, ploughing, irrigating or fertilising. To put the differences in simple terms, chemical farming is bad for health and ecology, organic farming is good for health but bad for ecology, and natural farming is good for both health and ecology.

With natural farming, one can grow food almost everywhere including road sides, parks, public places, government owned lands, community farms, schools, etc, where weeds, plants and trees already grow. The goal is to produce food that is nutritious, locally and abundantly available for almost no cost. Only then can humans gratify their moral responsibility as an intelligence species.

The methods of natural farming are heavily dependent on the existing conditions of soil and there is no one method for all. One must first learn the foundation on natural farming by studying literature like One straw revolution, The way of natural farming, works of other farmers who practice natural farming, texts on ecology and permaculture and understand how nature works. This, is the first step.

A simple approach to practice natural farming is to establish the goal of farming and analyse the many elements of the farm including existing financial liabilities, type of soil, availability of water, climatic conditions and bio-diversity. Then, using common sense and acquired knowledge on ecology, one must formulate activities to either fix the unfavourable elements and sustainably use the favourable elements for farming.

Levelling slopes and grades for farming is against the principles of natural farming because it destroys the top soil as well as the integrity of the land mass. A workaround is to collect the top soil first, level the slope and finally layer the land with the collected top soil. But doing this on a large plot will destroy the integrity of land. The fact is, there is no need to level a plot for farming. You get nutritional soil and you save on expenses too.

Greenhouses, hydroponics, hydroculture and the likes are against the principle of natural farming since they aren't the natural habitat of plants and animals. These methods can indeed produce food that is nutritious but not ethical — that which is grown in their natural habitat and that which lived a natural life. There is no need for such food production methods when planet earth has given us the best raw materials for food production: soil and climate. If these resources have turned bad, fix them.

Meat should be produced by rearing animals³ in their natural habitat where they can forage their food, enjoy freedom of movement and live in natural conditions as they evolved. Such breeding require lesser resources than industrial rearing methods, but puts a limit on the number of animals the can be reared with respect to the size of the farm — a limit that must be respected and adhered to. Earth's ecology is not designed to provide meat regularly to all. Disregarding this limit produces meat with undesirable nutritional, ethical and ecological footprint.

Industrial cattle farms are against the principles of natural living because cattle do not enjoy their natural habitat and natural life. Although domesticated, cattle evolved foraging natural food in their natural habitat. But in the cattle farms today, food that the cattle didn't evolve eating–such as artificial feed and corn, is fed to them, thus depriving them of their natural food, making them malnourished and rendering their meat less healthier than otherwise. They are held captive in unnatural conditions such as cages, thereby displacing them from their natural habitat. The cruelty and unethical treatment animals face in cattle farms is ineffable.

Cattle farms require massive land and water resources forcing producers to clear the land of its vegetation and diversity and construct large shelters and grazing area for thousands of cattle. Things does not stop there: most of the Amazonian and South East Asian forests have already been cleared of it's ecology for this purpose. Tons of litres of ground water are required for constant cleaning, bathing and drinking; further stressing the already deprived ground water table. Cattle generate methane — a potent greenhouse gas — as part of their digestive system, which when adjusted to number of cattle raised, is enormous.

The nutritional, ethical and ecological destruction of modern cattle farms are surprising that most people will never believe it until they research the issue⁴. The ecological destruction caused by the cattle industry is not to be taken lightly because the destruction does not limit itself locally around the farms, but impacts globally, including the vegetarians. Moreover, in vegetarian societies like India, meat consumption is on the rise further forcing cattle farming which will soon follow the ecologically destructive models of other countries with positive nutritional, ecological and ethical footprints."

Industry poultry farming as it is today, is against the principles of natural living. By caging birds, cramping up the farms, transporting them in deplorable conditions, and injecting them with antibiotics and hormones for maximum output, they are denied of their natural life and health.

Rearing of ducks on land is against the principles of natural farming since their natural habitat is denied to ducks. Look at their feet, they have webbed feet to make them swim better in the water, because water is their natural habitat.

Fish farming is against the principles of natural living. Fish tanks made of tarpaulins or concrete have bad nutritional, ecological and ethical footprints. Plastics and cements are synthetic materials proven to leach gradually into the water in micro particles. Fishes can consume it, get caught and consumed by humans thus passing on these micro particles to human body. Such farming methods are ethically guilty as well, as fishes are taken from their natural habitats, held in captivity and bred in artificially built tanks. Fishes in fish farms often get infected by lice parasites, anemia, chlamydia, etc.

Sea food from the fisheries industry is against the principles of natural farming because of their enormous ecological and ethical footprint. The techniques employed in catching sea food, such as trolling, often wipes off large areas of ocean floor destroying their rich ecosystem. Most often, only a part of their catch is useful for sale. The rest, often called as by-catch, is discarded back to the ocean — some of them dead already. Industrial farming is also known to have employed human slavery for free labour. With rampant illegal fishing run by cartels, it is almost impossible to identify ethically caught sea food produces from fisheries industry.

The only sea food that aligns with the principles of natural living is that which is caught by old school fishing methods. Only certain fishing communities follow these methods.

All dairy farms where cattles don't live their natural life in their natural habitat are against the principles of natural living. Only distributed dairy farms that allow a natural life to the cattle, allow them to breed as per their natural reproductive cycle, milk them without inflicting pain and within the natural limits, and treat life as life will align with the principles of natural living.