This post about regenerative agriculture reminded me of something that I learned about last year. In a discussion on the nature of precision agriculture and monocropping methods which have been introduced to areas around the world, one point that was brought up was that plants might thrive in a less homogeneous environment. Meaning that, rather than planting a garden full of one crop(likely for export) one might be better served by mixing crops together.

It’s an old idea, but one that had been ignored by modern agriculture and never fully investigated as it was often assumed to be inefficient. Anyways, its an idea that is returning perhaps to the forefront of Western thought, and researchers have been looking into the idea of gardens as social network.

One piece I read on the topic described how Guatemalan home gardens were so productive because plants were brought together in a way that they served each other: dried corn stalks would be there for vining plants, leaves from one plant would shelter and feed another, other plants would change the mineral balance of soils, etc. In the book “Seeing Like A State“(which gives a much more thorough description of the situation than I do here), James C. Scott explains that in regards to polycropping and plant networking:

“The advantages were often evident even at the level of narrow productivist outcomes; and once the other goals such as sustainability, conservation, and food security were considered, their advantages seemed especially striking.”

The point of it all, I think is to at least initiate a conversation and an investigation into “traditional” farming techniques, ignoring the bias that modernist ideas of monocropping are automatically better. Perhaps in the short term, but in the long term one would have to factor in environmental degradation, increasing costs of inputs such as fertilizer and pesticides(Hicksian income), and possible health side effects. Not to mention the increased susceptibility that monocropping has to disease, a factor that traditional growers deal with by planting multiple crops, and multiple strains as a way of hedging bets.

One particular avenue of exploration for this could be the notion of biodynamic agriculture, which takes some of these older ideas into account. You can even begin that exploration at a biodynamic winery.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 19th, 2008 at 11:39 am and is filed under Agriculture, Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.