A Simple Fix for Farming
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/19/a-simple-fix-for-food/
I read many years ago about a rancher in the mid west that decided to forgo the hugely expensive and time consuming effort of clearing shrubs and bushes, killing ‘invasive’ browsers (like antelope) and hunting coyotes and see what happened. They discovered that their _profit_ was unchanged (though their revenue dropped) and their product (cows) was healthier. The discovered that the coyotes didn’t kill healthy animals (even babies) and were really only taking down animals that were dying anyway. I was quite impressed with their results but became increasingly surprised over the years that the number of people adopting their approach were miniscule. Here we have a case where some extra rotation in crops actually winds up with a better, more diverse product offering (and the same _profit_), yet, even though the work was sponsored by our government, not a peep is heard. Of course it doesn’t require an active conspiracy to explain this, lots and lots of people in the agricultural business have cross ties with lots of other organizations so it might not even require conscious thought on some people to suppress the information. I bet, coupled with things like no-till farming, we could dramatically reduce the impact to the environment while simultaneously increase yields AND save money at the same time. What is not to love? If I weren’t already committed to aquaponics I might get really interested in dirt farming as it seems to me that there are some significant advantages that could be put in place to yield some outsized margins (just where I like to live).
BTW, the article appears to be freely available if you are interested:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0047149
