SCENES FROM SCIENCE
Alternative agriculture
IT'S a pity that the word 'alternative' should come to us now overshadowed by the hangover from its hippy usage 20 years ago, in appellations such as 'the alternative culture' and 'the alternative society', which seemed to designate what was left over when conventional culture and conventional society had been rejected by eager young persons in the universities — sometimes it appeared that 'not much' was left over. Yet that sort of stricture has no applica- tion to the title of this piece. I can do no better than report an official document issuing from American researchers on agriculture, who have done detailed studies on current 'alternative farming practices', their report having been welcomed by the US Department of Agriculture: The hallmark of an alternative farming approach is not the conventional practices it rejects but the innovative practices it includes.'
That's the stuff! It tends to give the impression that a thoroughgoing kind of agricultural revolution is, or soon will be, under way. The first revolution brought the introduction of machinery into agriculture: the second the intro- duction of fertilisers, pesticides, new high-yielding crops. Now, in the third revolution we are to have an emphasis on biological relations — their sustain- ing and enhancing, rather than a routine and crude handling with chemical subst- ances and the like. There are several suggestions put forward for the alterna- tive approach:
i) Genetic improvement of crops to resist pest diseases and drought, and to make better use of nutrients in the soil.
ii) Diversity of crops and crop rota- tion, again to reduce weeds, diseases, pests, and to make less requirement for fertilisers.
iii) Prevention of disease in animals rather than constant dosing with anti- biotics.
iv) Methods of pest control which make effective use of surveying and reconnoitring; integral methods over appropriate areas.
There is, however, a major fly in the ointment, in the shape (in the United States) of so-called 'commodity prog- rams', designed to shield farmers from fluctuating prices, but in effect tying them to the previous conventional prac- tices. The solution, since commodity programmes can't readily be got rid of, is to re-structure them in more flexible terms, encouraging farmers to open their minds to the innovative practices now to hand.
William Cooper
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