This week's topic of agriculture is a little bit out of my comfort zone, so bear with me. Ideally I'd like to live in a world that has enough food for the populace and be able to grow/harvest everything in a sustainable way. However, after our discussions in lecture this week, it seems as though each beneficial trait of one agriculture system is rivaled by two bad ones :( Either it doesn't create enough yield, creates monocultures which significantly deteriorates biodiversity, or produces more harmful/less nutritious products for us; there always seems to be a drawback. If we go back to what we know is good for us, we know that we want fewer (or no) pesticides and to maintain our biodiversity. Symbiotic relationships form for a reason, so if we study agricultural polycultures and work with crops/organisms who naturally thrive together we can 1) create efficient polycultures supporting biodiversity and 2) profit off of natural symbiotic relationships in lieu of pesticides, placed/invasive species ment to fix a problem. I'm not sure how much this is making sense but my main idea is to use plants and animals the way they naturally/traditionally function rather than how we want them to function. Essentially, how can we possibly think that we know what's better for an environment/crop than the environment/crop itself which has developed its connections/relations over thousands of years. Once we have the foundation of more regenerative agricultural practices, then we can start thinking about how to scale this up to feed the masses #UnleashValues
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Your ideas actually make a ton of sense! The kind of symbiosis you’re describing sounds a lot like the Complex Adaptive Systems we discussed in class, meaning we’d have more resilient and predictable agriculture.
I agree with the ideas you've written in your post Helen! I would love to see less of the agricultural systems that are currently in place and more diverse, polycultures on farms.