Advantage Farming

MANILA: You're looking at what I now call disadvantage farming. That is one of those things that make me cry; that's white and black smoke rising from ricefields set afire as seen from the expressway – I took the picture purposely to include a passing van to point to the burning bush of white – and I know those farmers are burning away nutrients that should have grown their next crop of rice, because clean-culture agriculture tells them to do it and I suppose nobody is teaching them otherwise. I took this photograph on 28 April 2014 at 1651 hours; I can't pinpoint the province now but, actually, burning rice fields is happening all over Bulacan, Pampanga, Tarlac, Pangasinan and La Union – been there, seen that.
 

After yesterday, Wednesday, 03 May 2015 when I blogged about The 6 Hidden Forms Of Water For Life(see my essay, "WILLs," 03 June 2015, WILLs, blogspot.com), today, Thursday, I now have a term to refer to the whole idea; I call it now advantage farming, and to appreciate it, the advantage farmer has to understandThe 7 Hidden Forms Of Water For Life(revised from 6 Hidden Forms, #5 being new and which I find crucial to the list), and they are as follows:

(1)     Moisture in the air – The air is humid, and that means there are particles of water in the air, H2O, invisible to the eye. That water can be harvested for human consumption; even the ancient Egyptians knew that!

(2)     Moisture in the soil – Most of the time, there is moisture in the soil, even when we see that it is dry. We have just not been told about it.

(3)     Capillary water – Even when the soil has turned to dust, there is still water clinging to the soil particles down there subject to capillary movement. Don't the plant roots go deeper? They seek capillary water.

(4)     Moisture in crop refuse  – The most visible invisible form of water is the standing leftover stalk after harvest, because we see the stalks but not the water in them.

(5)     Moisture in fauna & flora – In and on the soil untold numbers of diverse populations of organisms that are microscopic (like nitrogen-fixing bacteria), tiny (algae), small (ants) or bigger (bugs), or even bigger organisms (snakes), plants and animals, that live and die there. Among other things, when they are alive and when they are dead, they contribute to the moisture content of the surface soil.

(6)     Moisture in organic matter – That's what the farmers are losing when they dry the threshing leftoversand then burn them later.

(7)     Moisture in humus – If I had to choose among the 7 in this list, I would pick this as the best form of water, that one found in humus, the natural keeper of nutrients and moisture in the soil. Did you know that humus can hold 10 times its own weight in water (healthysoils.co.nz)?

And you capture all those forms of water when you build your organic topsoil starting with shallow-soil rotavation. And how do you do that? I call this one ground-generated agriculture, acronymgea – pronouncedas if it were the feminine form of geo. So now we have geaphysics, which I hereby declare is concerned with the physical processes and properties of the cultivated soil before, during and after intervention by the cultivator.

All that cutting & mixing of vegetation with the topsoil is the beginning of gea. I call it "ground-generated agriculture"because it begins with the basic or ground laws of nature, such as: 

(1)     Cycle of life and death – Your cropslive, your crops die.The seeds you sow live even if carelessly broadcasted; the crops they grow into will eventually die, hopefully after they have given you your due as the planter and cultivator. To complete the cycle of life and death, you must allow them to return to the soil what they obtained from it.

(2)     Degradation into original forms – Being organic matter, crop refuse is transformed back to the elements it came from, for instance, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, iron, manganese, sulfur, zinc, as well as water, and these are the ones that your next crop needs.

Organic is the one word for it. And when all that organic matter degrades, there is adequate moisture on the topsoil, and it all has come naturally via humus. And with the moisture in the humus? Plant nutrients come, naturally. I say that is all geaphysics, realities on the ground. 

That is why, as I have already said in my previous essay here, "Water is life." 

So, the concept of gea encapsulates the 7 hidden forms of water for life; to take advantage of all the water benefits that they can bring to our farming, I'm offering the world now my (revised) idea of WILLs, which is now the acronym for "Water Is Life, Learned in both science & sense." 

I started this one by saying "disadvantage farming" – now, what is advantage farming?With gea, you get a lot of advantages of really good agricultural practices; here, I'll give you 10of them:

(1)     Water conserved.The organic topsoil captures all the 7 hidden forms of water I have enumerated above. It's the ultimate water conservation scheme of all time!

(2)     Plant nutrients conserved.When the organic matter breaks down into its once component parts, the plant nutrients are conserved into the soil, not lost by you burning the dry matter.

(3)     Soil rebuilt.The decomposition of organic matter with the top layer of the soil results in the improvement of the soil structure. The soil becomes more porous than before, better for the growing of crops.

(4)     Never-dry soil.Your soil is always moist, so you don't need to irrigate your field again, depending on the crop. Water costs saved.

(5)     Yield increased.Even if you resort to farmer's practice after building that organic topsoil, your yield will increase, because your soil is richer.

(6)     Quality of produce higher. With gea, the quality of your produce is higher, what with all those nutrients from the soil, and not simply a super-abundance of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium from the inorganic fertilizers that you over-apply!

(7)     Any variety can be grown.The rich topsoil will see to it that the nutrient needs of any variety of rice, for instance, will be taken care of.

(8)     Any crop can be cultivated.The first 2 important group of requirements for growing any crop is soil moisture and plant nutrients, which your organic topsoil has plenty of.

(9)     Healthy crops raised.With all those nutrients in that organic topsoil, any crop will grow healthy and, therefore, can tolerate any "attack" of insects and other pests.

(10)  Healthy food produced. Since your crops are healthy, you don't have to spray chemicals; then your farm produce will certainly be healthy food.

If you don't believe any of the above, I challenge you right now:

Take me to a field of 1 ha of cultivated land that can easily be reached by public transport, and I will turn that field into a techno demo site that anyone can visit anytime. You pay for all the farming expenses, including record-keeping and security; you don't pay me anything. All I'm going to do is supervise the very first cultivation, before anything is done on the field, to make sure that the shallow cutting and mixing of vegetation with soil is done right, using a local hand tractor with rotavator blades. That is all I ask. After my kind of rotavation, then you can do all the farmer's practice you know. Just make sure the records are done right. Then I'll come back the next cropping and do my cut & mix thing before you do any of your farming. In 2 years, you should clearly see that I was right the first time.