Ecological agriculture

Organic foods often show aesthetic imperfections.

ecological,, organic or biological agriculture is a cultivation system of an autonomous agricultural exploitation based on the optimal use of resources natural, without using synthetic chemical products, or genetically modified organisms (GMOs) —either as fertilizer or to combat pests—, thus achieving organic food while preserving the fertility of the land and respecting the environment. All this in a sustainable, balanced and maintainable way.

The main objectives of organic agriculture are to obtain healthy food, of higher nutritional quality, without the presence of chemical synthesis substances and obtained through sustainable procedures. This type of agriculture is a global production management system, which increases and enhances the health of agrosystems, including biological diversity, biological cycles and soil biological activity. This is achieved by applying, whenever possible, agronomic, biological and mechanical methods, as opposed to using synthetic materials to perform any specific function of the system. This form of production, in addition to contemplating the ecological aspect, includes in its philosophy the improvement of the living conditions of its practitioners, in such a way that its objective is attached to achieving the integral sustainability of the agricultural production system; that is, to establish itself as a socially, ecologically and economically sustainable agrosystem.

Natural agriculture, indigenous agriculture, family farming, peasant agriculture, are types of natural agriculture that seek balance with the ecosystem, are sustainable agricultural systems, which have been maintained over time in different regions of the world. world seeking to satisfy the demand for natural and nutritious food to people and animals, so that the agroecosystem maintains balance. Biodynamic agriculture, and permaculture, share some of its principles and methods, but are more recent.

In this practice, polycultures can be taken into account, which, unlike monocultures, cause soil erosion and prevent the use of soil resources.

Types of crops

One of the most used crops for its practicality is the terrace. This is a basic system of biodynamic agriculture, established by Rudolf Steiner in 1924. When using this method, divisions are made in the field approximately 1 m (meter) wide and as long as desired. By not leaving more than 1 m wide, it has the advantage that the bed can be worked without having to step on it, and thus the farmland does not clump together. Therefore, it is advisable to leave a suitable step between the terraces and terraces.

They must be based on adaptation to the environment, their resistance/tolerance to pests and diseases and their economic profitability. To the extent possible, biological diversity must be maintained, which is achieved by alternating different varieties. Biodiversity is given by the integration of components at different levels: edaphic (earthworms, beneficial bacteria, fungi, Rhizobium nodules); wild species (30% of weeds) and with the implementation of crop rotation. This biodiversity within the agrarian ecosystem provides stability, resistance and sustainability against droughts and pests, etc.

Farmers can use seeds whose origin can be from conventional cultivation, due to the difficulty in finding seeds produced with ecological criteria. Seed networks, increasingly extensive, deal with recovering autochthonous seed varieties, well adapted to the environment and without genetic modifications.

Pest and disease control

Organic cultivation must be based on preventive methods, promoting the proper development of plants and therefore their natural resistance to pests and diseases. Prevention should be maximized through appropriate cultivation practices that ensure the proper development of the plants and, therefore, that they are more resistant. The autochthonous species and an adequate subscriber make the plants more resistant.

Avoiding the cultivation of a single species, diversifying the planted species makes it difficult for pests to appear, using an adequate rotation and association in the fields.

It is advisable to promote the development of native auxiliary fauna, through the use of hedges and the release of useful insects (parasites or predators), such as the parasitoids of the aphid, Toxoptera aurantii.

Ultimately, different products of natural origin may be used, such as pyrethrins obtained from dried chrysanthemum flowers or Bacillus thuringiensis, which are aerobic bacteria that produce an insecticidal toxin.

pheromones, attractive and repellent

Garlic extract is biodegradable and serves to repel whiteflies, birds and different types of suckers. It is based on a masking of the smell of food, of pheromones (it prevents the reproduction of pests) and in birds it disconcerts them because garlic is irritating to birds. It does not prevent that in periods of great hunger this method may be ineffective for birds, other methods such as ultrasound or gas explosions with movement detectors can be used.

Garlic extract can mask the odor of some pest pheromone traps and can make them more ineffective.

Fertilization

The fertilization of the land dedicated to organic farming is one of the pillars of this form of cultivation. It is very practical that the fertilizer is self-produced, one of the most used is the production of compost.

Organic matter is the basis of fertilization, although green fertilizer can also be used as fertilizer, which consists of cultivating and burying a plant, so that when it decomposes it becomes fertilizer, especially using legumes, these enrich the soil especially in nitrogen thanks to bacteria that live in its roots and that fix atmospheric nitrogen, and that the plant, when buried, yields to the soil in the form of fertilizer. Nitrogen fertilizers have a central role, particularly in strategic crops for agricultural sustainability, such as wheat and corn.

The mineral fertilizers that can be used are those from natural sources that have been extracted by physical processes.

Floor maintenance

Organic

In the soil there is naturally an infinity of living organisms that carry out a continuous "tillage": the roots when exploring in search of water and nutrients; worms, insects and rodents, with their galleries; other organisms with their exudations and residues that help bind the clay and humus particles.

Nor should we underestimate the large amount of organic matter that these organisms provide, as well as the conversion of organic matter into material that can be assimilated by plants.

Various experiences have shown that biological work has advantages over mechanical work. As they are:

• It does not appeal the soil by passing through the ground, which usually occurs when working the land with machinery and which forces to perform a deeper work every time.
• By cutting the grass and leaving it as a mezzanine, there are several improvements, on the one hand the sun does not dry the land while preserving the humidity and on the other hand it serves as protection to microorganisms and other organisms.
• On the other hand, adventitious plants, or "bad herbs", are not systematically combated. They are attributed the protection of uncultivated soil and organisms such as predatory insects that can help combat pests. They can also help improve the soil structure, when it returns to it once dry or cut. To prevent the field from filling with adventias, crop rotations are performed with false sowings and balanced fertilization programs.

Mechanical

The main condition that an implement must meet is not to turn the soil in depth so as not to alter the natural order of the soil, working with tempering and not abusing them, thus partly avoiding the undesirable effects of mechanical tillage such as the mineralization of the soil and its compaction due to the weight of the machinery.

Based on practical and historical reasons, the reasons for using mechanical tillage are:

• Faster work in the field, both planting, harvesting and treatments.
• Eliminate competition from adventias.
• The transport of the productions from the same field to their destination.

Crop rotation

Picture of circular fields in Kansas, end of June 2001. Green growing crops. Maize in prefloration. Sorgo, very similar to corn, grows slower (small, possibly paleer). Trigo bright gold when harvested, boreal, in June. In chestnut, batches recently harvested and plowed, in fallow for the year.

It consists of alternating plants from different families and with different nutritional needs in the same place during different cycles, avoiding that the soil is depleted and that the diseases that affect one type of plant are perpetuated over time.

In this way, the subscriber is better used (by using plants with different nutritional needs and with different root systems), weeds are better controlled and problems with pests and diseases are reduced (by not finding a host they have more difficult to survive).

A legume should also be regularly introduced into the rotation and alternate plants that require a large amount of organic matter, and support it partially or even without fermentation (potato, pumpkin, asparagus, etc.), with others that are less demanding or that they require very decomposed organic matter (chard, onion, peas, etc.).

In this practice, plants of different vegetative types that belong to the same botanical family should be avoided, for example: spinach and beetroot = chenopodiaceae, celery and carrot = umbelliferae, potato and tomato = solanaceae.

Example of crop rotation

They have been marked in color according to the result: bad acceptable good very good

The unwanted effect is indicated literally:

• Insects: Tipulidae, Elateridae, Lepidoptera
• Diseases: basically fungi
• Structure: means structural decomposition
• Quality: loss of quality
• Afternoon: delay
• Others are indicated directly in the box

Association of crops

The association of crops consists of cultivating several different species on the same plot, so as to obtain a synergy between them.

This widespread practice in organic farming can obtain various types of improvements. On the one hand we can put two species that complement each other in their root system (one is deep (melon) and the other superficial (lettuce), or one plant defends the other with its aroma.

History

There are many models of ecological agriculture, which offer technological alternatives for producers by exercising a harmonious practice with the dynamics of ecosystems; these models come from the fusion and appropriation of ideas from various schools or currents that share the same general objectives; We present below the main currents that have been referenced throughout the last century, a time when more appropriately written and researched on these issues. It is important to note that organic farming began from the agrarian reforms that took place in Germany at the end of the 19th century and, in addition, due to the advent and effect of what the so-called Industrial Revolution generated in the agricultural sector.

Biodynamic Agriculture

Biodynamic agriculture, created in 1924 by Rudolf Steiner and called biodynamic agriculture, is based on the foundations and study proposals linked to the philosophical anthroposophy, whose author is Steiner himself.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of farmers who noticed the degeneration of the fertility of the land and the nutritional quality of the food, asked Rudolf Steiner what they could do to remedy this situation; as a consequence, he organized working conferences in Koberwitz, east of Wrocław, in Germany, "opening the way for a knowledge of the living, of the psychic and spiritual in nature, and with it the possibility of conducting the I work with the earth and its creatures towards a "new order" where the natural is elevated and integrated into the human".

Taking this concept to more earthly terms, what distinguishes the Biodynamic current is the use of energized preparations, as an agricultural homeopathy; In addition to this, the idea that rural units are agricultural organisms that are subject to the influence of complementary cosmic factors, different from the influence of light, seasons and climate in general, is developed in this school. «From the conceptual point of view, Biodynamic Agriculture promotes an agriculture that recognizes and uses the energy forces of all living beings and is not restricted to the predominant materialist vision of what was known at that time as "the new scientific agriculture". ».

Organic-ecological agriculture

Another current of this type of agriculture is the bioorganic or biological-ecological method, more scientific, created by the Swiss Hans Müller, his wife María and the German doctor Hans-Peter Rusch, developed from 1951.

Organic Agriculture

This current began in England, in the 1930s, by the agronomists Lady Eve Balfour and Sir Albert Howard; Howard, determined after his arrival in India, that local limitations do not allow adopting the production system based on Western experiences, so he concluded that it was essential to observe the productive processes of nature and learn from it the necessary lessons to favor food production.

His book An Agricultural Testament compiles his observations establishing fundamental concepts for organic agriculture, such as soil protection, the use of permanent covers, the production of compost using the “Indore” system (pioneering methods of controlled composting), the idea of better managing plant health in healthy soils, the importance of on-farm research, and the rational use of local resources, among others.

In 1943, Lady Eve Balfour published her book The Living Soil, in which she promoted the idea that the health of the soil and the health of man are inseparable. Her work led to the formation in 1946 of the Soil Association as a research and information body on organic farm and soil management practices. Since then this association has become a world leader in setting standards and training in organic agriculture.

Organic production systems, called “biological” by the French and Italians and “ecological” by the Germans, began as an alternative movement with greater force in the 1960s in Europe and the United States. Both Howard's and Balfour's ideas were promulgated in the United States by Jerome Irving Rodale, who in 1942 published his magazine Organic Farming and Gardening, with resounding success, selling more than two million copies. in 1980.

Thanks to the popularity of this magazine, the Rodale Institute is founded, which today is internationally recognized for its research and training in organic agriculture. This denomination of "organic agriculture" has been the most widespread worldwide and it has come to form the "Basic Principles" of it, establishing in 1972 the "International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements" (IFOAM for its acronym in English, from International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements).

Soil Association, created in 1946, is an organization dedicated to organic crops, which, in the mid-1980s, saw its number of employees grow, especially from 1995 with the Organic Aid Plan of the government for farmers through the difficult 2-5 year conversion process as a number of supermarkets began offering organic food and this brought new credibility to the movement. However, the number of organic farmers remains small. The number of Soil Association employees then grew rapidly; organic land in the UK represents almost 4% of agricultural land in the first decade of the 21st century. Organic farmers now receive ongoing support in recognition of the environmental benefits they provide and this is encouraging more farmers to treat their land organically.

Natural non-intervention agriculture

Proposed by the biologist and Japanese Zen Buddhist monk Masanobu Fukuoka, since the 1950s. This type of agriculture does not require machinery or chemicals, works with very little weeding, and does not require tilling or fertilizing the soil. Fukuoka's philosophy is based on "practicing agriculture by cooperating with nature, instead of trying to improve it, by conquering it."

In his book The Revolution of a Blade of Straw and the Natural Path of Cultivation, he tells how his technique works to generate favorable conditions for crops, after which he interferes as little as possible about the animal and plant communities of their fields. On the other hand, Fukuoka united his agricultural technique with a philosophy whose essence exposes the fact that healing the earth and purifying the human spirit are the same process. For this, he proposes a type of life and agriculture that allows this process.

This philosophy is also known as the "philosophy of not doing." It starts from the assumption of a question: Why ask what would happen if we did this instead of what would happen if it weren't done? Fukuoka thus reached conclusions that generate the four principles of natural agriculture: do not till, do not plow or turn the soil; do not use chemical fertilizers or prepared compost; no weeding by cultivation or herbicides; and, do not use chemicals. Based on this current, Jean Marie Roger in 1958 exposed his model of natural agriculture to the agricultural community, which differs from the Fukuoka model in that it promotes biodiversity rather than non-intervention.

Organic agriculture or agrobiology

It is the name used in France and Portugal since the 1960s to refer to the method disseminated by the agronomists Francis Chaboussou, Raul Lemaire and Claude Aubert. It stands out for the importance given to biological control, the integrated management of pests and diseases and the theory of trophobiosis.

The idea of integrated pest management is, first, to look for its weak point in each pest insect and attack it there, to look for the enemies of the pest insects and use them, bringing them to the lot; In addition to this, more than one method can be used to control the pests, which provides the best control and in this way, if one control method fails for some reason, the other methods will continue to protect the crop, actually making it a pest. an integrated method. On the other hand, the theory of trophobiosis presented by Francis Chaboussou maintains that the vulnerability of plants to pests is a matter of nutritional balance or poison detoxication. "A well-nourished crop is more resistant to attack by pests and diseases, which will favor fewer pesticide applications and that, in turn, better preserve the soil ecosystem."

When these three concepts are brought together, the idea of sustainable agriculture is generated since nutrition cannot be conceived as an isolated component, but as an integrated crop management since nutritional factors (such as organic matter content, formulas and forms of fertilization and soil management, to name a few) and non-nutritional (including pest and disease control, varietal genetics, environmental conditions, crop management) are interrelated and interact.

Organic agriculture or agrobiology ensures that to the extent that non-nutritional factors are well managed, obtaining quality and productivity is facilitated, pollution is reduced, and costs are lowered. An example cited by Chaboussou was that when there is a very concentrated application of chemical fertilizers, a percentage of beneficial microorganisms are eliminated, such as some species of Bacillus or Trichoderma; as a consequence, soil diseases can develop. This simple phenomenon can bring with it extra applications of agrochemicals to control root rot; This will affect mycorrhizal fungi and other microorganisms that affect the mineralization process of certain elements, negatively affecting plant nutrition.

Messianic Agriculture

In 1983, Mokichi Okada, a Japanese philosopher, carried out studies and research and developed, in Japan, a current similar to natural agriculture, which he called messianic agriculture, which began by alerting people to the danger of consuming contaminated food, due to the abusive use of pesticides.

Okada was sure that there would come a day when there would be excess food, which could not be consumed due to the high level of chemicals contained in it. According to him, natural foods, in addition to providing human beings with a healthier life, make them more productive and able to contribute more significantly to following the laws of nature, producing food that, in addition to preserving its true flavor, do not attack or destroy the environment.

The method of messianic agriculture corresponds to the principles of nature itself, taking it as a model and obeying its laws. Projecting the preservation of the environment and the quality of life of man, the agriculture promulgated by Mokiti Okada, has as objectives, the production of food that increasingly increases the health of man; be economically and spiritually advantageous, both for the producer and for the consumer; be easily practiced by anyone and, in addition to this, have a permanent character; respect nature and conserve it; and lastly, to guarantee food for all humanity, regardless of its demographic growth.

There are other currents that are important because they take concepts from these schools and mix them following the same organic or biological principles, but they are found from a technical point of view, in the currents described above, with denominations such as ecological, regenerative or sustainable, terminology of a broader nature, which seeks to establish a bridge between scientific dialogue and technological transition, concepts that together must be applied to agriculture.

Politics

Logo Bio in Germany.

Most produced from organic grapes (note how to not have authorization in the process, is not sold as an ecological product).

In some countries, organic farming is also defined by law. Thus, in the European Union (EU), organic farming is regulated as of January 1, 2009 by Regulation (EC) 834/2007 of the Council of June 28, 2007 on production and labeling of organic products, which repeals the old Regulation (EEC) 2092/91. It clearly specifies the techniques authorized in this type of cultivation. Organic products must necessarily bear the official seal of organic farming of the European Union, allowing the addition of the logos of the country or region of origin.

The demand for organic food increases every year. About three-quarters of the food currently sold in supermarkets is of this type.^{[citation needed]} However, in recent years, the amount of food Organics sold through farmers markets and independent stores have been growing rapidly as more people care about the freshness of food.^{[citation needed]}

Sometimes a product produced with organic elements cannot be labeled as organic if the production process is not "organic certified". In these cases, only the organic origin of the ingredients is noted.

Benefits, Disadvantages, and Controversies

Studies until the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century had not yet shown that the consumption of biological products had a greater benefit on health. An important review of scientific studies certified by the Food Standard Agency published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition has concluded that there are no significant nutritional differences for health between "bio" foods and classic foods beyond their pesticide content. However, there are not enough quality studies to be able to conclude the long-term effects on the health of consumers.

Controversies

Is the "natural" healthy, safe, beneficial, or safe?

Speaking of food advertising, it is often said that "what is 'natural' is healthy, safe, beneficial or innocuous". According to some authors, it is simply not true. Today the adjective "natural" lightly accompanies too many products for food and cosmetics. The fact is that for a few years now, Spanish legislation prohibits the use of the term "natural" in advertising; does it literally like this:

• Article 4. Prohibitions and limitations of advertising intended for health... Point 13: They use the term "natural" as a characteristic linked to intended preventive or therapeutic effects.

In summary, it is justified to distrust any product that uses the word "natural" in its promotion or advertising. A detailed reading of this article 4 of the BOE 1907/1996 gives an idea of how many times the legality is violated in the advertising of products such as food supplements, cosmetics and an infinity of other products intended to "improve" health or at least our self-perception of it.

"Agriculture is never ecological"

This is an "amendment to the whole." According to the author (J. M. Mulet) the ecological message has permeated public opinion and is being used to sell more, simply. According to him, organic farming is "fashion and posture", that genetic manipulation and selection have always been used in agriculture —for centuries— and that the future of humanity will not be possible without genetically modified foods.

Surface

The increased consumption of agricultural land, together with its corresponding loss of natural habitats, is sometimes cited as one of the main damages of organic farming, ^{[citation required]} which is denied by the greater respect that organic farming has towards habitats, classified as "weeds" and eliminated by agro-extractivism.

Benefits

Among the most commonly mentioned environmental benefits are the conservation of soils, their productivity and their biota (microorganisms), the prevention of eutrophication of surface waters and the contamination of groundwater, the reduction of energy consumption as well as greenhouse gases or the increase in biodiversity, among others. Due to the difficulty of study, each of these potential beneficial effects present, at present, different degrees of scientific consensus.^{[citation needed]} In addition, other benefits for small local producers, who are typically the main producers of organic farming, and on health in avoiding the handling of dangerous chemicals by farmers.