Jeremy links to LEISA magazine, one of those irritating advocacy rags for peasant agriculture. The current issue has a series of articles about soil improvement. The lede editorial:

Working with the soil’s living processes means using practices that build up rather than deplete the soil organic matter. For instance, continuous use of agro-chemicals to improve the availability of nutrients, without applying organic materials like compost or residues, can deplete the organic matter. Also, while farmers commonly till the soil to loosen it, prepare the seedbed, and control weeds and pests, tillage also breaks up the soil structure, destroys the habitat of helpful organisms, speeds up decomposition, and increases the threats of erosion and compaction. Practices such as burning and deforestation without replenishing the soil also lead to degradation. With time, farmers notice that their soils get “tired”, their yields decline, and erosive processes become accelerated. These soils are more vulnerable to environmental forces such as wind erosion and flooding, with a greater risk of desertification.

So far so good. This might be an editorial from a fully rational magazine dealing with agricultural systems. It doesn't demonize the use of agro-chemicals, it notes that they are one part of a complete agricultural system and that failure to maintain living soil diminishes their value. But that's not what the magazine is about.

the Centre for Information on Low External Input and Sustainable Agriculture promotes exchange of information for small scale farmers in the South through identifying promising technologies involving no or only marginal external inputs, but building on local knowledge and traditional technologies and the involvement of the farmers themselves in development. Information about these technologies is exchanged mainly through the LEISA Magazine . . .

LEISA is the abbreviation of 'Low External Input Sustainable Agriculture'. LEISA refers to viable small scale farming, which is a major part of rural livelihoods and thus contributes significantly to developing economies. LEISA is about finding technical and social options open to farmers who seek to improve productivity and income in an ecologically sound way. LEISA is about optimal use of local resources and natural processes and, if necessary, safe and efficient use of external inputs.

The objective isn't to promote effective ag systems, it is to promote peasant ag. This may seem to be a subtle distinction when applied to the peasant societies of "the south", meaning Central and S. America mostly, but it is an economically and intellectually crippling distinction on large scales over long times since the intent is to keep these societies from developing rather than to produce an adequate food supply and the advantages of developed societies for education, health and human potential. Population increases in coming decades make this an exceedingly important distinction, especially since we already have a shortfall in agricultural production in the world.

Achieving the necessary agricultural increases on limited arable land with limited fresh water means that the focus must be on good ag practices rather than limited external input, especially when external input is defined only as ag chemicals.

The practice of incorporating green leaf manure is different from green manure grown in situ. . . leaves are cut and brought to the farms in bundles. There is a charge for transportation. However, “…the benefits of its use are innumerable” said one traditional farmer. Thespesia is in greatest demand, and is sold at US$ 20-25 per load (a bull cart). Before incorporating it into the soil, Thespesia is allowed to wither for two days. It is kept in the field in a heap and then covered by banana leaves. This helps for partial decomposition, reduces the carbon to nitrogen ratio and makes it easier to apply.

How romantic. Picturesque peasants in native costumes patiently pick leaves, bundle them up, and haul them to the fields in ox carts. How . . . unproductive and labor intensive. It's smart to increase soil organic matter, but dumb to haul it in from elsewhere. They'd be far better off to add a few pounds of fertilizer and grow more green manure in situ. It would make better use of the true limiting nutrient, sunlight, and increase total organic matter production in the area while taking far less labor and, at US$ 20-25 per load (a bull cart), cheaper. When the focus is on the sensible objective of effective ag systems this is obvious, it is only when there is some brain dead anti-inputs and peasant ag ideology that it isn't perfectly clear.

The only way that the world can produce the amount of food, fiber and fuel it needs is to get good at ag, and that means doing cost/benefit analysis. Happily, ag societies that do this will become more wealthy and so have the time and money to educate their children and give them the other benefits of civilization like dental care and condoms etc. It isn't low external input that is needed, it is low cost/benefit ratios. That will improve the soil, increase its organic matter and life, since this is a hugely effective method for increasing the productivity of land, but it isn't all there is to it.

External inputs must be provided since nutrients are being consumed and removed from the land. One way or another you must repay the land for what is carted away to market and the insults inflicted by cultivation. Ag is harmful to soil and those harms must be repaired or there will be degradation. The hunker down approach of low-input/low-productivity can prolong the period before collapse, but not prevent it, and the people who follow such practices exist in some twilight of civilization like their ancestors did for millenia.

We can do better. The combination of effective soil management techniques of the past and new methods for providing the external inputs needed to compensate for crop removal, as well as improved crop varieties that have the genetics for improved ag traits (productivity, efficiency, robustness in adversity, etc.), and emerging techniques such as the production and use of biochar, offer the best hope for achieving required productivity over long time periods while not consuming the environment and bringing collapse.

We need religious reform among environmentalists. They can keep their airy-fairy core beliefs but they need to grasp that the way to achieve them isn't by attempting to revert to the past, it is by embracing the inventiveness of humans that created those past practices and still continue to improve them.

Perhaps a story of part of that inventive past will help. In 15th century Europe there was religious conflict that marginalized some sects. Among them were the Anabaptists - Amish, Mennonites etc. - who were excluded, exploited and dispossessed of their land and wealth by conventional society. Driven out onto poor land they developed new methods of farming. Many were dairymen and observed that pastures with a good percentage of clovers were healthier, and that clovers grew better on "sweet" soil, soil that wasn't as acid. So, they began to sweeten their soil with crushed limestone rock and plant clovers. They prospered, got wealthier again, and were accused of witchcraft by the envious conventional dairymen that had stolen their land the first time. Since they were witches their new land was stolen too.

In the end they escaped from Europe and are now all over the world doing the same things wherever they find themselves. In places where clovers don't prosper as well they used other legumes, such as peanuts. It isn't just that they used legumes, which we now understand harbor nitrogen fixing bacteria in their root nodules, it is also that they amended their land to favor legume growth by bringing in external inputs - fertilizer. The use of other crushed roocks that brought in other minerals and nutrients, such as phosphorous, and the use of manufactured materials - such as potash made from boiling down wood ashes - made poor land bloom and kept good land from declining.

They were technologists, but selective about it. They invented and adopted all technologies that helped them so long as they didn't disrupt their communities. We see that in action today with their frequent acceptance of GMOs but not automobiles or most farm machines. Enviromental religion could steal a page from the Anabaptist book and be selective about technology rather than techno-phobic. Fertilizer? That's fine so long as it is good soil managemnt. It is an adjunct rather than a replacement for good practices such as maintenance of SOM. GMOs? Fine. So long as they bring true value such as better nutrient densities and improved agronomic chracteristics of value such as disease resistance and nutrient efficiency or drought tolerance and such. And they must taste good too! Resistance to herbicides is of little value when herbicides aren't much used.

They can even keep their oppressive communitarian values so long as there is a right of exit. That was the original Anabaptist heresy - only a mature mind could choose to take communion, join the community, and those who did not so choose were free to go in peace to live with the Englishmen. And each community has its own variations on the core beliefs - more or less oppressive - which allows healthy selection and evolution. A modern political theorist might recognize a few of the principles of small l libertarianism in this, though that isn't where they are coming from. They are apolitical, asking only that larger societies allow them to live as they choose within general norms of conduct: no child abuse, no violation of priggish sexual taboos, etc.

Note that I am not recommending that those who advocate romantic peasant ag systems should maintain that advocacy, I'm just pointing out that they can do a better job of it by dropping some of the more nonsensical bits, and that improved ag practices are the best way to enable continuation of those life styles. Neither am I advocating that they go Amish or something, just that this is an example of a more thoughtful approach, one that perhaps shows a way out of the green darkness prevalent among environmentalist posers. This may help those who fund and enable these wackos to direct their resources in more useful directions, or require reforms of existing orgs in order to retain their funding and support.