tim_tools

"The problem is not so much that the scientific way of thinking has in some way been misapplied to agriculture, it is more that the scientific way of thinking is inappropriate when it comes to agriculture."
The Hoe, No-Dig, and Using One's Common Sense

The question of how one should prepare one's soil, how much one should prepare it, and what one should add to it, has become quite an emotive issue over recent years. Mainstream agriculture has taken the course of ploughing to a greater and greater depth with the aid of bigger and bigger machines. This technique buries all the weeds, and also aerates the soil, which would otherwise become compacted due to an absence of organic material – and by being driven over by large machines. The deep ploughing means that the topsoil is buried along with the weeds, and contributes to soil becoming depleted in the nutrients that are essential to plant growth. In terms of bulk of material produced, however, this has not proven to be a problem; scientists have developed ways to analyse the soil, and to work out which minerals are missing, and industry has worked out how to mine and process those minerals, and supply them to farmers. The result has been a steady increase in yields, and a relatively small number of farmers being able to feed an ever-growing world population. From one perspective, this has been a triumph for scientific thought working in tandem with global capitalism.

However, there have always been dissenting voices, and they have been getting steadily louder over time. This type of farming depends on fossil fuels, and fossil fuels are causing global warming; farming in this way is causing a mass extinction of insects, birds, reptiles, and small mammals; food produced in this way is not good for the health; this sort of farming requires the use of pesticides which get into the water system and poison the water, etc. All of which is quite cataclysmic, and has led to an increasing number of people, perhaps a majority, including experts, to conclude that modern farming methods work in the short term, but only at the expense of long-term sustainability, and that, at some point, the system will collapse, leading to catastrophic consequences, unless something is done to establish an alternative.

We are a long way, however, from there being any sort of common understanding of what that alternative should look like, how radical it should be, and how many techniques from the agricultural revolution of the past three hundred years can be retained.

My personal view is that we need to be very radical. The problem is not so much that the scientific way of thinking has in some way been misapplied to agriculture, it is more that the scientific way of thinking is inappropriate when it comes to agriculture.

Instead of analysing our soil to find out which minerals it is lacking, on the assumption that we already know what the correct mineral balance should be, and that it should be uniform across all agricultural soils, we could view our soil as having a complexity beyond our ability to comprehend. From such a perspective, the gardener's (or farmer's) role changes from being a dictator, i.e. forcing the soil to behave in a certain way, to being a nurturer, helping the soil to develop in its own way.

This automatically leads to a no-plough/no-dig philosophy, involving minimal soil disturbance, and helping the ground to generate its own layer of topsoil by carefully recycling organic material produced by the land itself.

Working with a hoe falls under the no-dig/no-plough umbrella. It only disturbs the top few inches of the soil, mimicking the activity of animals that eat roots and worms, etc. The seeds of many of the plants that one wants to grow are designed to germinate after the passage of a wild boar, or similar animal, through a woodland clearing; working fertile soil, rich in organic material, with a hoe, is therefore creating the ideal conditions for such seeds.

Given that hoe farming has been practised for thousands of years by billions of people, the no-dig, minimal soil disturbance approach to farming need not be seen as experimental, untried, or excessively modern, but it does require a different mindset from modern tractor farming. An important difference is that there is no specific approach that will work consistently across different areas, year in, year out. Each field has to be treated differently: how much hoeing is required, how much mulching, how much compost, how the compost is worked in, which crops are grown, the timing of sowing and harvesting, etc., all varies from place to place, and evolves over time. If there is a set method that works for everyone, it is that each gardener or farmer uses their own common sense, and follows their own intuition. That, perhaps, would be the radical alternative to the current farming system for which people have been looking.
tim_hoeing
tim_croc_rake
Feedback & Questions: The Hoe

What is the Compromise?

What is the compromise here? Nobody can dictate the way that things are organised, but people will starve without modern agricultural methods. Then you have human conflicts like Ukraine which further threaten human food dependence. Is self sufficiency the only survival philosophy? You allude to the principle of co-operative ventures. This is what I think we should be investigating, especially whilst we have an internet.
Paul Ace

Personally, I don't see self sufficiency as being a viable survival strategy. Human beings are not equipped to be self sufficient. On the other hand, from what I have seen, for cooperative ventures to work, everyone involved has to be taking a lot of responsibility for taking care of their own basic needs. Which is quite a challenge for those of us who have been raised in developed economies. GL

The Simpler Way

At 80 I’ve spent the last 30 years or more growing a significant portion of our food. I agree that a hectare is more than enough land, and, if well worked, could support at least 2 families, or more. 

You might be interested to read the writings of a fellow Australian, Ted Trainer, who looks at the big picture, and suggests that this move needs to be undertaken with urgency. He can be found at www.thesimplerway.info
Doug Blackwell, Australia

The Industrial Mind

The industrial mind is unable to escape from its own imaginative confinement. Having “freed” itself from its connection to soil and to food, except as a consumer, it has effectively enslaved itself. It is the mind which asks, “How could we possibly feed the world without our modern technology and science, i.e., without bigger tractors and larger doses of chemicals?”, and never thinks to ask, “How could I feed myself if there were no bigger tractors and larger doses of chemicals?” And with the dependency of the mind the body follows, always having to rely on someone else to sustain it, whether it be an employer or a grocer. And so, we have Chesterton’s “poor man”:

“All but the hard-hearted man must be torn with pity for this pathetic dilemma of the rich man, who has to keep the poor man just stout enough to do the work, and just thin enough to have to do it.” G.K. Chesterton

And how could we live another day without the government to tell us that raw milk is dangerous? It is only a psychotic mind that will mandate the labeling of raw milk as “dangerous,” while requiring no such labeling for all the foods on a grocer’s shelves which are proven to have adverse health risks. I, myself, agree with Benjamin Franklin who once said, “I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.”
Kerry Brown, USA

The Ruth Stout Method

Could cereals be grown using the Ruth Stout method?
1. Cut grass in cereal plot area 
2. Spoiled hay 6-8” deep 
3. Overwinter (nature prepares the ground)
4. Separate the hay a bit in rows and plant crop
5. Move hay back into place
6. Harvest
The hoe prepares the furrow for the seeds.
J.P. Lapeyre, USA

Sharing Working Animals

I believe that in Medieval times people would share a team of oxen to plough the ridges in the common fields. Each commoner would supply an ox, or two, to the team (up to eight oxen), plough their furlong, and hand the team onto the next commoner, until the whole field was ploughed.

The landlord had his own land, also worked by the commoners.

In this system the serfs produced a surplus by division of their labour between their common land and the landlord's land, rather than by the payment of rent or tax to the landlord/government (they also paid a tithe to the church).

However from your writing, and my experience of using a hoe on an eight rod-allotment, a serf could easily have worked enough land to feed themselves, and have had time to work the landlord's land – though in the Medieval period more grain would have had to be grown, as the root vegetables we have today have displaced some grain consumption. Ground preparation with a hoe is so much quicker than digging. For a finer tilth I go over with a Dutch hoe, and every couple of years or so I rotate through the allotment a deep forking with a broadfork which remedies any compaction. For grain production I have tried many, but stick to sweet corn and popcorn, as they yield the most grain per square meter of my limited allotment space.
Phillip Hardy, England

Feedback always welcome, send to: info@hoe-farming.com