Look! The Original Sin Committed By Man After Adam Bit The Apple In The Garden Of Eden – Iron Biting The Earth, Or Plowing: Man Biting The Hand That Feeds Him!

About 57 years ago, when I came across American gentleman farmer Edward H Faulkner’s book Plowman’s Folly (1943), with his careful positioning and exposition, I came to realize that plowing for any purpose is wrong. So why does the whole world insist on a wrong practice?!

(Tractor plowing image from Medium, medium.datadriveninvestor.com/)

Plowing is The Original Sin in Agriculture!
(Apple tree image from New Yorker, newyorker.com)

From my wide-&-wild readings, I gather these, that plowing:

1.     destroys soil structure.

2.     results in soil erosion when it rains.

3.     buries the trash, burying the treasure.

4.     is expensive.

5.     requires chemical fertilizers afterwards.

Look at the above image again.

1.     Soil structure is utterly destroyed.
When you plow, you turn the field into dust, literally, soon enough. “Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return” was not spoken of the soil! Read your Bible again; certainly, God did not say that about the Garden of Eden. Man is teaching Mother Nature she does not know what she is doing, that an uncultivated field is wrong! Man forgets that where Mother Nature rules undisturbed, plants and animals thrive – look at a virgin forest, or any forest for that matter – Mother Nature knows best!
 

2.     Soil erosion is encouraged.
So, after you plow and destroy the structure of the soil in your beloved farmland, what happens when it rains? Soil particles happily escape with the raindrops flowing into the nearest stream. Along with the particles go the richness of the soil – the nutrients that would have nourished the standing vegetation, or the crop you would plant.

3.     Trash is buried.
Bad: Plowing buries the richness coming out from weeds when they rot, food for crops to grow with. Badder: Farmer collects the weeds and disposes of them. The field looks clean; it is clean – of the substances that crops need to prosper. A plowed field looks neat, but “neat” is only for the farmer’s need for beauty, not his crop’s need for nutrients.

4.     Plowing is expensive.
PhilRice says land preparation comprises about 19% of total labor cost in rice production (PhilRice.gov.ph). Rice farmer Rodolfo San Antonio of Victoria, Laguna with a 3-ha farm had a choice: P50,000 tractor hire, or P30,000 animal power (thenewhumanitarian.org). Expensive still!

5.     Plowing demands chemical fertilizers!
Indeed, since the farmer deprives his own crops of natural foods, he must buy unnatural foods for them.

Esquire says the UN Sasakawa Award for 2022 goes to Filipino scientist Glenn Banaguas, with this explanation (esquiremag.ph):

For this year, the [Sasakawa] has the overarching theme of "Recognizing excellence in reducing disaster risk for a safer, more sustainable world."

And I say, the practice of organic agriculture (OA) is deserving of such a prize many times over! Because OA both combats Climate Change by reducing greenhouse gases, and simultaneously produces abundant harvests that are healthy for the human race.

Sasakawa Award, I’ll go for organic agriculture each time!@517