What if we worked with nature, not against it?
My vision is for agricultural practices to move away from monocultures, pesticides, and Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO) and embrace more diverse, perennial polycultures. I envision thriving health for farms, nature, and people, alike.
I value working towards a world with greater sustainability, including agriculture. Working with population dynamics and ecosystem cycles builds resilience and diversity. Nature is the manifestation of millions of years of evolution – it offers a wealth of ecological mechanisms that can be applied to agriculture.
I aspire for a compiled collection of interventions to tackle the problem of modern agriculture from different sides. A common theme I have noticed splattered across the bloody history of times where science does damage is as follows: simplistic, one-sided, monopolistic, and/or unchallenged approaches may overlook the whole issue. Life is complicated and thus warrants solutions to encompass a wide range of tactics.
Governments should establish a committee with interdisciplinary researchers to design a sustainable agriculture plan. The current agricultural subsidies in Canada (and worldwide) should redistribute these funds to subsidize polycultures and tax monocultures via said detailed plan. For example, positive incentives could include using cover crops and a variety of crops. Another potential positive incentive could be falling within an appropriate grazing animal-to-land ratio range (perhaps different among animals). Disincentives should be implemented for using monocultures, pesticides/herbicides, CAFOs, and chemical fertilizers. Perhaps to exaggerate the positive incentives and disincentives, governments could employ a tiered rewards system up to a predetermined limit for each element.
My background is in marine biology. So forgive me if this is a little off topic. I have always been fascinated by aquatic ecosystems ability to recirculate nutrients within the system. An example of this is aquaponics where fish, planta, bacteria, and bio filters work in “harmony” to recirculate nutrients and water. This process allows the flora and fauna to thrive symbiotically. My question to you is: Do you think we have the capabilities to develop a terrestrial agricultural system that mimics aquaponics ability to recycle nutrients and waste?