Farming Along Side Nature
The documentary follows a young couple on an eco friendly farming experiment. The goal is to farm along side nature rather than farming nature. Everything works together and the more diverse the farm is the more efficent it will be. Throughout the documentary, pest and preditorial problems were constantly affecting the production of the farm, but come the seventh year, the ecosystem on the farm balanced itself out. Problems solved themselves due to biodiversity. The benefits of working with the land proved to be worth the experiment after an extended drought. A mass amount of rain flooded many local farms, removing the topsoil. The biodiversity of the farm is eco friendly and productive.
*The Biggest Little Farm can be viewed on Hulu with subscription
Farming has had to accommodate larger masses of people, causing it to expand. In the process, farming has become more destructive to the environment. Using biodiversity when farming has proven to be the better option for the long term with the ability to adapt quicker to change. A way to possibly decrease the rapidly increasing speeds of golbal warming and pollution it to have more small farms available. This would make produce more local and decrease the miles used for delivery. The limited need for excessive tilling would slow soil erosion. The benefits are greater than the negatives.
It would be interesting to see this experiment done on an even larger farm. For example, dedicating what now might be a mass production farm of corn to become one of these eco-friendly, biodiversity supporting ones. If this experiment could retain it's success on a larger scale, problems associated with mass farming could have a potential solution. On the chance it wouldn't however, setting up smaller local farms like this, as mentioned above, would provide communities with a great, environmentally safe, and healthy selection of local produce. For once it is encouraging to hear that farmers are finding new ways to work with nature instead of against it.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting idea, & it's great to hear that it did eventually work. If this concept could become more well-known & commonly practiced, it could benefit the Earth quite a bit. It would be awesome if people could start prioritizing that & focusing on ideas like this, rather than putting all of their energy & money into large farms that use harmful pesticides. Not only would farms like this help the environment, they would also produce crops that would be much healthier for human consumption.
ReplyDeleteThis would be a really great idea that should be investigated more. Even though it takes a bit for environment to balance itself out, it would be worth it in the long run. It would also get rid of some pollution problems with pesticides and won't be destroying the lank by creating big artificial fields.
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