BIAG Is Water Farming

MANILA: Look at the image above (from Sarah Palmer, gettyimages): Where do raindrops go? With a little prayer, they will go into the proper places. Read on!

First, let me tell you this is the 4th in a series; you should have read the other 3 first before this:

1, "BIAG, The New Agriculture" (11 April 2016, BIAG, blogspot.com).
2, "BIAG: Do You Begin With Seed, Soil Or Water?" (12 April 2016, BIAG, blogspot.com).
3, "BIAG Economics: Brand-New Intellectualization of Agriculture" (14 April 2016, BIAG, blogspot.com).

So now you know; the heart of the matter as far as The New Agriculture of Life is concerned: "Seed, Soil or Water?" The answer is "Water."

BIAG, bio-inclusive agriculture. BIAG, life in Ilocano. BIAG is water farming. I equate it with water, because without water, there is no life.

In BIAG, water is the first and last resource. As an acronym, I will show you WATER is this:

Wet
Adaptive
Treasure-Trove
Everywhere
Renewing Resource.

In 7 words, if you cannot summarize your story of natural farming, or ecological farming, or organic farming, or organic agriculture, or sustainable agriculture, or permaculture, then your story is just a laundry list, you have not gotten into the core of it.

Yes, BIAG is water-based agriculture, that's all there is to it. Remember, water is the key, so how do you put an endless stream of water into your soil?

Put humus in it.

That you can do by putting in organic fertilizer, or compost, or leaf mold, can't you? Yes, but the water in the humus of fertilizers, composts and leaf molds does not replenish itself. In BIAG, the WATER is Water As The Eternal Resource; it replenishes itself. Don't forget, the WATER is the Wet, Adaptive, Treasure-Trove Everywhere Renewing Resource. To repeat: The water must renew itself.

So, it's not simply introducing humus into the soil.

It's not composting. When you do your composting in a hole (compost pit) or vermicomposting in a box, all you get is essentially the humus, which of course has water in it – but you lose the rest of the water while the organic material is decomposing.

Can you imagine if you allow the organic material to decompose right on the soil after it has been spread all over your farm? The water will be everywhere.

What experts call The Carbon Cycle (see fao.org), I look at as The Water Cycle. The crop is more water than anything else; the crop residues likewise. When the crop residues are decomposed by microbes and other soil organisms, including fungi, bugs and earthworms, among other things, water is released. If the decomposition happens in a compost pit, that's where the water goes and stays. If the decomposition happens in a vermicompost box, that's where the water is released and contained. If the decomposition happens right on the field, the water is released to the soil and stored for your next crop. Of course, with that water comes the nutrients that the plants need.

What I'm saying is that the decomposition of any organic material should happen right on top of the soil in your field or farm, not elsewhere.

And how do you arrange that? Think of a cultivation system where the crop refuse or leftover and the weeds are finely cut and mixed with the topsoil in one clean operation. That's the long and short of it.

Think water. Without water, you cannot exist; your crops cannot grow – so why is water the last priority of farmers? It must be the first!

With any crop, the first thing that you should think about as a farmer is water. Water As The Eternal Resource.

Water is life.

So, we go back to the water and, if we go back to the water, we go back to the land, the soil.

BIAG is entirely new. It is not a reconciliation of the concepts of organic farming, organic agriculture, biodynamic agriculture, and natural farming, permaculture whatever.

If you call for a reconciliation, everyone will bring his own agenda. In the water, there is no agenda, only life. Life begins with the water. BIAG begins where nobody else does: With water. When it rains, that is heaven sending life; it is up for you to manage it, keep it somewhere. If you don't, don't complain later about the drought!

I don't want to compute my carbon footprint – it's complicated; I want to compute my water footprint – it's easier.

I have been trying to simplify BIAG, The New Agriculture of Life, into one term or concept, and I have come up with: water farming.

Water Farming, as in Carbon Farming. Carbon farming is like this ("What is Carbon Farming," Carbon Farmers of Australia, carbonfarmersofaustralia.com.au):

Carbon Farming is simply farming in a way that reduces Greenhouse Gas emissions or captures and holds carbon in vegetation and soils. It is managing land, water, plants and animals to meet the Triple Challenge of Landscape Restoration, Climate Change and Food Security. It seeks to reduce emissions in its production processes, while increasing production and sequestering carbon in the landscape.

Yes, carbon farming is the answer of people who subscribe to rapid climate change as man-made because they believe that carbon dioxide is the culprit greenhouse gas. Mistake! I know the deadliest GHG is nitrous oxide, as the US EPA has estimated that it traps 300 times more heat than carbon dioxide. (I have written about this; see my essay, "Pope Francis, Here Is My Big Bang Theory On Farmers On Climate Change," 16 January 2015, A Magazine Called Love, blogspot.in). So, carbon dioxide is the wrong GNG if you want to combat climate change 300 times more effectively!

How do you catch raindrops? I insist on water farming. Paraphrasing now the Carbon Farmers of Australia, I say:

Water Farming is simply farming in a way that reduces Greenhouse Gas emissions to zero and captures and holds water in vegetation and soils to the max. It is managing land, water, plants and animals to meet the Triple Challenge of Landscape Restoration, Climate Change and Food Security. It seeks to eliminate emissions in its production processes, while increasing crop production and sequestering water in the landscape.

How does BIAG as water farming capture and hold water in vegetation and soils? Initially via a cultivation technique called grass manuring – my concept – where unlike in green manuring, the vegetation is plowed over, not plowed under the soil. How do you plow over a soil? Use the rotavator, which in the Philippines comes with the 4-wheel Howard rotavator or the 2-wheel hand tractor (kuliglig). Simply pass the rotavator blades over and above the weeds and crop refuse or leftover (not burned), so that the topsoil and plant materials are cut and mixed together all over the field in just one passing, providing a natural mulch. As the grass manure decays, the water and nutrients in the organic matter are released into the humus that forms, ready for the next crop. The mulch stays in place.

Now, to answer my question, "Where do raindrops go?" Into that topsoil with humus; when this is saturated, the water runs off the field.

And why do I call the process water farming? Because the water from the grass manure holds the key to the productivity of the field. The humus that forms holds both water and nutrients; the plant nutrients cannot be released to the crops without the water. And since the grass manure is spread all over the field, the humus continues to store water as decomposition proceeds even as it feeds the crop. Not only that; the humus captures the capillary water that comes up from the underground water table, an endless supply. Thus, the humus is the Wet Adaptive Treasure-Trove Everywhere Renewing Resource.

No, it's not the same as when you apply organic fertilizer, compost or leaf mold – the decaying is already finished and much of the water is gone. Why is your fertilizer, compost or leaf mold black? That's your humus. Whatever humus the fertilizer has is all; it cannot add to itself. Perhaps the story is different if you blanket the field with organic fertilizer that it becomes a mulch, not considering the cost; even then, there is no continuing decomposition of organic matter that results into humus. In grass manuring, humus is formed and added to as the vegetation slowly decomposes. When you plant a crop, the fallen leaves, stems and the dead roots provide further organic materials that decay into humus. After harvest, with the crop leftover, please do grass manuring again.

How does water farming reduce greenhouse gas emission? No artificial or organic fertilizers are applied; no nitrogenous fertilizers, so no nitrates and nitrous oxide are formed as in conventional farming, or carbon farming.

Yes, water farming for climate change. Drought is visiting on us. So, Apostolic Vicariate of Puerto Princesa Palawan Bishop Pedro Arigo has publicly prayed for rain (veritas846.ph). I'm a Roman Catholic; I'm not discounting any miracle at all – but a one-time rain is not a solution at all.