Primates! We Keep Sabotaging Sustainable Development Goals & Do Not Realize Our Crime Against Our Humanity!

I remember myself spraying 2-4D against weeds in our ricefield and enjoying, yes, enjoying soaking those broadleaves until the liquid poison ran off their surfaces – an innocent beguiling himself.

(upper image from UN.org, lower image from BusinessWorld)

Technically Feasible, Economically Viable, Environmentally Sound, Socially Acceptable – Which of these criteria did we ignore to allow us to promote & pursue modern agriculture that violated Sustainable Development in its true sense?

In the Philippines, the massive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides came with the introduction and popularization of IR8 (dubbed “Miracle Rice”) in the early 1960s (I was a student of the UP College of Agriculture (now UP Los Baños) at that time – the instructions were so many bags of nitrogen (N) fertilizer per hectare. In one trial by IRRI scientist SK De Datta, the yield was 5 tons/ha without fertilizer and 10 tons with 120 kg N; that was 10 times the usual harvest (Living History Farm). WithN, we were innocents beguiled!

Miracle Rice – The Miracle was in the Fertilizer! And that is how The East Was Won – By N. And so, we should not be surprised that we have been ignoring the scientific fact that chemical fertilizers, especially N, produce greenhouse gases (GHGs) – meaning we have been ignoring the required environmental soundness of growing rice for 50 years!

In plain language, our farmers are the ones who are causing much of the climate change by contributing much of the GHGs. We have been looking at the wrong direction in search of the Enemies of the Earth – everyone should have been looking into the mirror in his/her own home.

Now that we have identified The Enemy, and it is US, what do we do now?

Organic Farming is a good Primate Change, because the organic fertilizer that you make or buy and apply is all-natural, no fossil fuel necessary, even as you can make the fertilizer yourself.

My own preference is mixed sciences, what I call Regenerative AgriForestry, Agriculture plus Forestry. AgriForestry is more than your Agroforestry. We compare:

Thus, World Agroforestry says (Worldagroforestry.org):

Agroforestry is defined as ‘agriculture with trees’. However, it is so much more. Agroforestry is the interaction of agriculture and trees, including the agricultural use of trees. This comprises trees on farms and in agricultural landscapes, farming in forests and along forest margins and tree-crop production, including cocoa, coffee, rubber and oil palm.

I say: AgriForestry is similar to Agroforestry, with 2 crucial differences:

(1)   AgriForestry requires growing food crops interspersedwith significant species & amounts of wood crops for protection against stormy weather.

(2)   AgriForestry requires that the original richness of the soil be returned intentionally. My preference is trash farming via what I call “Mulching Matilda” – shallow rotavation of the surface of the whole field with all the crop refuse (if possible) and the weeds. Other methods are green manuring and organic farming.

Now is the time for Primate Change in Agriculture and Agroforestry – that is how we can Change Climate in Mankind’s favor!@517