Feb 25th 2011, 18:23 by The Economist online
Feeding the worlds growing population will require changes to the way we grow things. This might mean leaving the plough behind
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The economist deserves commendation for even discussing this issue, but their slant is a little misleading. No till farming does not require GMOs and pesticides and herbicides to be practical. It requires crop rotation and diversification. Monoculture is the problem. Permaculture is the solution. The solution to fresh water shortages, excessive fuel consumption and emissions in production and delivery of food, job shortages, rampant obesity and other health problems, top soil erosion, and a number of other major challenges confronting humanity, could all be accomplished by making it a priority to shift from a globalized, chemically subsidized, monoculture food economy to a localized and diversified permaculture economy. By prioritizing the transformation of public green spaces, unused farm land, and lawns into vastly more productive permaculture farms, we could make the first steps toward re-uniting with the natural flow of the ecosphere instead of fight it at every turn.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yHZCpl5p84&feature=related
Australia experienced vast adoption of No-Till agriculture without the use (or the need) for GM technology.
In the last fifteen years, no-till adoption has increased from 5% of the cropping area to 90% of the cropping area.
Several states in Australia have begun lifting long standing GM moratoriums in recent years however GM is not permitted for use in South Australia. Nevertheless, South Australia has developed a viable, robust and resilient No-Till farming system covering about 4 million hectares (10 million acres).
No-Till systems that are developed without GM are more likely to incorporate other integrated and sustainable weed management strategies.
I believe the main problem is not some need for a new production method, for some agricultural revolution - reserves of arable land, especially in Asia, are huge, and there is a big space for efficiency improvement in countries like India, or China, where lot of agricultural processes are non-mechanized. The real problem is terrible economic situation of some countries, so they can't afford to mechanize, to store, to protect their crops. Once they are able to reach continuous economic growth without disturbance, their food production will rise.
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