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Published on Visualizing Ecology (http://www2.evergreen.edu/visecofall)

R.J. Jensen

R.J. Jensen    November 12, 2006Lucia Harrison Fatal Harvest Reader    Fatal Harvest Reader had a bunch of interesting essays that Andrew Kimbrell was trying to get the reader to think about the way most farming is destroying biodiversity and killing so many of the species that promote healthy soil and so much more.  Its so sad to me to think that they would try and erraticate an entire species by spraying pesticides that kill everything that you need to have good soil that doesn't get depleted as quickly.  Those pesticides will be carried through the water shed and will trickle through the boundaries by animals and insects that eat from the crop and as the essay Our Forgotten Pollinators says the predators that eat the pollinating insects will eventually be poisoned and the predators that eat them will eventually become poisoned and so on until it reaches humans.  In my opinion the fact that pesticides make the soil erode and carrie them with it is terrifying because some of them  don’t decompose and are always going to be their and will eventually find their way back to us.    The fact that we were able to see an organic farm was so intriguing to me because I have always seen my life headed that direction.  So for me to see an actual working organic farm and to get a general sense of how it works was amazing.  I have always been kind of interested in the techniques that are used for sustainable farming.  The way Helsing Junction alternated fields as a way to give the land a break and just let it go.  This is a great way to ensure biodiversity because it lets the natural things in the land rebuild, the way they were using clovers to put some of the nitrogen back in to the ground was ingenious to me because it would also promote a healthy equilibrium.  By this I mean that it would help allot of the macrobiotic soil dwelling critters that are harmed so easily by any type of pest control.  In the next essay Can Agriculture and Biodiversity Coexist by Catherine Badgley found “A global assessment of the status of modern species indicates that 11 percent of birds, 18 percent of mammals, 5 percent of fish, and 8 percent of plant species are facing extinction.” is terrifying to me that we as a species are waging war on nature when nature is what defines us as us.  She goes on to an approximation by E.O. Wilson that some 27,000 species die out a year because of tropical deforestation which is a staggering number to me and makes me agean really sad that we are capable of a feat like this.  It is all in all terrifying to me to think that the destruction of the human race will effectively be because of humans and the way we are headed with our quantity not quality motif.  If we were to slow down and consider our surroundings and become more symbiotic with nature we would be able to stay around for a while longer.      My solution would be to effectively imeaditly stop every and any factory farming and make a transition towards the way the Javanese or Mayan gardened.  In every community you would have a suitable number of people to each garden that would work the land for their own food and effectively sustain their small community by trading goods with each other.  We as a race need to turn back to nature and let nature show us the way to effectively grow mass amounts of food with the right organisms.  I believe that we will eventually get to the point where everything is going to be a product of something or some corporation where their wont be any nature or natural things that we can see everything will be produced and packaged.  That point is not a particular place I would like to see our race headed for which is why we need to change courses for a symbiotic relationship with nature, stop the use of pesticides and pest control and start using nature as a way to manage its self.  It’s kind of happening slowly but we need to have more people on a bigger scale thinking about where we are headed.    The use of pesticides and pest control devices are taking an inch of soil every twenty years where as if it were natural it could take 300 to 1000 years for that much soil to be washed away.  Which is why it is imperative that we stop the use of pest control in every manner and let it occur naturally.  If it were to happen naturally then we arn't tampering with the way things are supposed to grow and regenerate the soil for other plants.   


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