The KInd Life Community Forum

I recently watched a documentary on Netflix called Think Global act Rural and was completely appauled about what I learned... Apparently the on going use of Petro Chemical fertilizers pioneered during the "Green Revolution" have had nasty consequences on the fertility of the soil throughout Europe. It is my understanding that France is losing something like 25,000 farmers per year because it is simply no longer viable to produce food. The whole model is completely backwards. In the past, a Farmer would use the manure from his or her livestock to fertilize his or her fields. Plowing was done to churn up the topsoil and so on. Since World War I there has been a systematic effort to industrialize Food produciton... Effectively chemical companies were attempting to find new uses for the vast quantities of Chemical explosives produced during the war. Yields went up and people thought this must be a good thing. What happened in the years that followed was a global scale transition to industrialized farming. Rather then live off the land and use their own seeds, manure and smaller equipment; farmers were pushed into buying larger tractors (which put them into debt), purchase chemical fertilizers & pesticides to maximize yields and rely on government subsidies when they ran short. Chemical companies went on to become exceptionally profitable... Agriculture was we knew it was swept away. University & College Courses studying the microbiology of soil were all but eliminated... So now we have a generation of farmers that don't even understand the consequences using these poisons has on our fields (not too mention those who eat the food...aka all of us). Now yields are declining, fields are all but dead and farmers are moving to the cities by the droves. It is imperative that people move away from chemical fertilizers and return to family based farming which relies more on elbow grease then big machines.