Zero Impact Farming Manifesto

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WRITER:  Pang, Yiu Kai (´^Ä£¶¥)

June, 2017.

 

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Lacking Of Systems Thinking

It doesn¡¦t need detailed explanation as nowadays people with some common knowledge all know the mainstream industrial type of farming is harming the global environment as well as consumers¡¦ health. One basic most thing we all must recognize is that no particular species growing on the ground exists independently of other living species and physical environment around it. Rather, there are very complex interactions among any one species and all else on earth in systems enclosing sub-systems or as sub-system within other larger systems. This is why Ecology is the first systems science ever developed by scientists. So, when you treat your crop as existing independently, pumping in nutrients most relevent for it¡¦s specific growth, sooner or later you will have depleted or flooded nutrients needed by a plethora of other entities in the soil and vicinity that are also responsible for providing readily absorbable nutrients to your crop. Although your crop may look nice, growing fast since you¡¦ve pumped in directly related nutrients, but it¡¦s real health has already been affected and the crop has become more vulnerable to contracting diseases.

 

The War Between Humans And Nature

Going on with the systems negligence, you spray pesticides, fungicides to control diseases, it works! But it also works in further damaging the systems balance of bugs and micro-organisms, much more bugs /germs appear later to attack your increasingly unhealthy plant. Then you have to pump in heavier and heavier doses of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, more and more often, and still works. But  those bugs/germs turn to let you know why they live a short life cycles, that¡¦s to let their spray resistant mutants can undergo enough generations of multiplications to evolve a mainstream strain quick enough to attack your crop again. By then you have to develop new types of chemicals to keep them under control. You continue to succeed, but the war between humans and Nature has escalated.

 

Releasing Soil Carbon Back Into The Atmosphere

Improper nutrients together with pesticides/herbicides/fungicides kill all living beings in the soil, which in turn releases the carbon stored in their bodies or maintained in soil back to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide or methane. This quicken the global warming process. Don¡¦t forget that cellulose, fats, and proteins are not only carbon containing compounds, their main constituent is carbon, they form up the main body of all living beings. This is why roughly two-thirds of the earth¡¦s surface carbon is stored in the soil, letting this stored carbon loose into the atmosphere is simply mass suicide. Therefore one of the main tasks for combating global warming is to stop this sort of carbon release, or better still,  work towards getting the atmospheric carbon back to the soil.

 

Incessant Exploitation of Forests and Biodiverse Places

Soil deterioration not only harm the bio-productivity of farmland, when farming bosses find the output of a piece of field has become too low to be profitable, they will clear another field of environmentally valuable tree coverage, that means the world needs to develop new farmland every year. According to United Nation¡¦s Food And Agriculture Organization¡¦s projection released in 2012, in the next 30 years or so, every year humans need to develop more than 10,000 square kilometer of new farmland to fulfil the increasing food demand, and population growth,  and the most important of all, to replenish farmland that¡¦s become far less productive.

 

When farming bosses look for new farmland, they of course will not consider low bio-productive places, this usually results in the clearing of highly biodiverse forests. The mass burning of tropical rainforest in Indonesia and large scale clearing of Amazon rainforest in recent years are but some of the classic examples. But if the existing farmland can all be used in a sustainable manner, the need to develop new ones can be diminished by at least 90%.

 

Damaging Regional And Global Ecosystems

The harmful effect of what we may call farm drugs is not restricted to farmlands, orchards and farm products alone, these drugs do not stop at the fenses but impact surrounding insects and animals in the wild as well. The honey bee is a classic example. People began to be bewildered at the shrinking of bee populations throughout Europe and US in the first decade of the 21st century. At first scientists doubted the mobile phone signals may have interfered the bees¡¦ direction finding mechanism, so that they lost their way home. Subsequent detailed studies found this is not the case. What should be responsible is the newly developed neonarcotinoid pesticides, a kind of insects¡¦ neurotoxin that causes the so called CCD(colony collapse syndrome), the finding led to European Union¡¦s banning of certain neonarcotiniod pesticides in her member countries in mid 10s.

 

Emergence of Organic Farming

There is much that has been realized about the harm of mainstream industrial farming, and those who are aware of these must be overwhelmed by such foolishness and we need not exhaust exploring all the harmful effects one by one. So what about organic farming? If we can switch the mainstream practice to organic, can all the problems be solved? The answer is, part yes. However, there remain two main environmental problems, i.e., habitat loss and continental hydrological cycling obstruction that are waiting to be solved. As long as your crops occupy farmland, you create these problems no matter you are organic or the first three zones of permaculture.

 

Habitat Loss From Farming Land

Experienced farmers all know about this, once a piece of farmland is abandoned, in a few years¡¦ time things growing there will no longer be their crops, but many different kinds of mosses, lichens, grasses, shrubs and young pioneer trees together with lots of insects, worms, bugs. It is these plants who have the natural right of abode on that land , not your crops.

 

 

Continental Hydrological Cycling Obstruction In Land Occupied By Farming

Looking down upon forest or scrublands from above, you cannot see the exposed ground or soil, layers of plant leavies above have covered it completely, whereas exposed soil can be seen on agricultural land from above or any angle. When it rains, a large portion of the downpour hits the soil of the farmland directly and drains away without hindrance, leaving only a small portion sticking on the leavies and stems. This also applies to vegetable fields, for the short lived vegetable roots do not spread wide, grow deep and last long, leaving the farmland soil easily infiltrable. Instead of running off as surface water, this farmland rainwater filters down into aquifers and so cannot benefit the fauna and flora of the surrounding ecosystem. Not only so, as the stem and leavies can only hold a small portion of the downpoured rainwater, the amount of which can be evaporated back to the atmosphere is also small. Careful studies indicates that on average only about 20% of the downpoured rainwater can go back to the sky, as compared to 80% of natural forest, and it¡¦s this difference which causes shrinkage in continental hydrological cycling.

 

Deep inside continental hinterland, surface evaporation cannot provide the inland air enough moisture for ¡§enough¡¨ precipitation. To have enough rainfall, the water vapour has to come from the oceans. When the oceanic air mass flows inland, it brings along a lot of water vapor evaporated from the ocean surface. However, as these air masses moves inland, most of them precipitates on coastal regions, if 80% of the downpour can go back to the sky, they can retain 80% of it¡¦s water content as they move deeper into the continental hinterland. But if the non-hinter continental land mass has mostly been developed into farmland, then only 20% of the downpour can go back to the sky, the same air mass will move inward with a much drier water content, leaving the continental hinterland without enough rain to keep forests growing. Deforestation in hinterland can kick off a vicious cycle. Without forest cover, sunlight hits the ground soil directly, which heats up the top soil and thus heats up the surface air mass relatively more, making the air temperature in the local area a lot higher than when there was forest. This higher temperature makes rainfall more difficult as higher temperature can hold more water vapour without condensing into water droplets. After the forest is gone, rainfall becomes more scarce, plant growth becomes more difficult, the area downgrades to savanah, and if the process goes on, it further downgrades to grassland or even desert.

 

 

Historical Evidences

Inferring from these mechanisms alone we can already conclude that massive land clearing farming causes deforestation and desertification, Factual evidence can be found in the recent geological history. Geographically, Iraq and her surrounding desert are now nearly soil free, yet was historically called ¡¥The Fertile Crescent¡¦. This was the region in which human first settled 8 to 10 thousand years ago, establishing farmland for wheat and barley. This could not have happened unless there was sufficient rainfall without original forests. We can surmise that it was those thousands of years of wheat and barley farming that turned those fertile lands to desert, thus leading to the downfall of the Babylonian Empire around 2500 years ago. Another classic example of land degradation is Inner Mongolia of China. According to the ¡¥Classic Of Mountains And Seas¡¦ compiled some time between 2000 and 2500 years ago, that area was covered by forest. Today it has been deteriorated to largely grassland. a Hong Kong Geography professor of The Baptist University attributed the cause of this land degradation to thousands of years of farming in China.

 

Organic Farming Only One Factor In The Farming Solution

Isn¡¦t those traditional farming in pre-industrial times the equivalent of organic farming? If such kind of farming still led to the disruption of continental water cycling, causing desertification and habitat loss, what then is the use of the latter? We may say although it¡¦s not a long term farming solution, It¡¦s still useful as an interim measure for organic farming is a far lesser evil comparing to the prevalent type as far as the environment and consumer¡¦s health is concerned. Especially in facing the urgent most global warming crisis, organic farming does not release soil carbon back to the atmosphere so much like the prevalent industrial type. Not only so, if organic farmers compost farm waste, the practice can store carbon taken from the atmosphere back to the soil through soil regeneration. Since the carbon in the crops or kitchen waste is taken from CO2 in the atmosphere during the process of photosynthesis, composting the farm waste and then putting them back to the soil as fertilizer means CO2 from the atmosphere becomes a part of soil texture, adding up the soil mass, i.e., a process of Carbon Sequestration. Of course, we should bear in mind that not all organic farming has the carbon sequestration effect, only those that compost farm waste or kitchen waste do.

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So, before humans can find out an ultimate farming solution, organic farming should still be promoted and developed as an interim  mainstream farming practice.

 

Permaculture

Having understood all the main evil and merit of organic farming, those who are looking for the way out for all life on earth know that they still need to develop new farming solutions which can be free of all the evil mentioned above. Attempts have been put forth by certain farmer-ecologists since early twentieth century, and some years later two Australian ecologists, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, together propounded the theory of Permaculture in 1978. In the broadest sense we may say the permaculture theory consists of two parts, one mental and the other material. The mental part deals with the mindset of farming practitioners, while the other part deals with farming arrangements and techniques. We may say permaculture tells people not only how to farm, but also how to think together with an attitude guideline towards farming, or a set of farming ethics.

 

Why Permaculture Can Solve The 2 Universal Farming Harms?

Many claim this to be the ultimate farming solution for our troubled world. Needless to say, farming ethics directs the behaviour of a farmer, thus her/his farming practice, therefore an ethical set of farming ethics is essential. When asked about how a good motive necessarily lead to a practice which can solve all the farming problems, as permaculture already provides farmers with concrete techniques and arrangements to follow, the chance should be small that a good motive would lead to undesirable results. All we need to ask is only whether a permaculture farmer will follow the farming ethics especially when their farms is situated in highly competitive markets.

 

It all sounds nice. If so, the rest is only in spreading the idea and practice. However, permaculture can be a farming solution depends largely on zone 5, usually a farmer¡¦s self gazetted wilderness; and a part on zone 4, a mixture of native trees together with artificially planted ones and with free range cattle and or poultry kept inside for money making and usage purposes. Zone 1 to zone 3 makes nearly no difference from organic farming, and so bear the same problem of continental hydrylogical cycling obstruction and habitat loss if zone 5 is too small or even absent, otherwise, when most farms in a place can all be planned according to permaculture principle, their zone 5 will then be connected together and turn the place from non forest farmland back to largely natural forest with lots of zone 0 to zone 3 islands situated inside.The natural forest thus created becomes the restored natural habitat of that place, it can at the same time overcome the hydrological cycling problem caused by the farmlands to a certain degree. Right from the theoretical stage, we can¡¦t be certain if the 2 main problems caused by organic farming can be overcome completely, but it should not be any doubt permaculture can lessen the 2 problems at least to a large extent.

 

The Reason Permaculture Farms Is Still Very Rare After Half Century Of Development

So far so good, it seems permaculture can no doubt be a farming solution in theory. However, after decades of promotion and practice since mid 70s, so far still nearly no permaculture products can be found in the food market, inspite lots of permaculture schools and courses have been opened in most developing and developed countries, many ecovillages have employed permaculture to plan and run their ecovillages, yet genuine permaculture farms are still rare. Why?

 

The culprit is zone 5. A farmer can hardly get useful yield from this zone, yet he still need to rent or buy this piece of land, thus the land cost of zone 5 is added to the cost of the other four zones¡¦ yields, making them more costly and less competitive than other organic food. Customers are willing to pay the much more expensive organic food for their own health¡¦s sake, but are they willing to pay a even higher than organic food price simply because permaculture food is more environmentally friendly than organic ones, especially when the average people mostly have a misconception that organic food is already environmentally friendly enough?

 

Another reason for permaculture¡¦s non popularity is that it has a lot more diverse farming items which would have to be grown or raised in a permaculture farm. In zone 4 you need to have many kinds of fruit trees together with timber, soap and other utility trees. Some cattle and or poultry are better kept underneath as well. Not only so, you need to have a fish pond with many kinds of fish and frogs inside in zone 3¡K¡Kfarmers simply find this ineffective and too troublesome.

 

But the most influential point of all is still permaculture products are not so fit into the competitive market economy. Nowadays most farms in the world are function under just such an economic system. Even granted we can educate the public into buying the more expensive than organic permaculture products, under strong competition permaculture farms will have to search through every corner of their farms for rooms to cut down the cost, zone 5 and even zone 4 are just too pronounced an item for the cost not to be cut there. They will proceed to dwindle the sizes of zone 5 and even zone 4. When the majority of the surrounding farms act likewise, the forest in the place restored through establishment of permaculture farms will be thinned out to such an extent that the restored natural forest can no longer function to remedy continental hydrological cycling and restore lost habitat.

 

Apart from those well-resourced Permaculture Educational establishments, only those farms functioning independently of existing markets, such as private and community gardens and the genuine Eco-Village, are currently able to employ Permaculture. However, for most farmers, being able to fit into the existing competitive market is an essential production strategy for economic survival. For the majority of farms to switch to a permaculture model of production, a complete change of mindset, agricultural practice models, skill sets and markets would be required. In the short term, that Permaculture might be a feasible farming solution is very much in doubt, unless we can change the current global economic model from existing competitive markets to a resource based, globally collaborative and sharing model. This doesn¡¦t imply that fervent farmers should abandon Permaculture; by no means. The Permaculture campaign should continue, as must organic farming. My aim is that we must not develop a false confidence that there is a solution. Not yet!

 

"Natural" Farming:

There are other farming methods, which I would rank as ¡¥better than organic, more feasible than permaculture¡¦ and classify as ¡¥low input farming methods¡¦. However, I decline to call them ¡¥natural¡¦ , as most other farmers do. A piece of land dedicated to growing crops is not natural at all. Even though the farmer¡¦s touch on the land may be no more than planting the crop for later harvest. The natural process of the land, even with crops planted, will be that after a few years natural succession processes will replace most of your crops with grass, shrubs and pioneer trees of local species. If those crops persist there for years with more or less the same number, then it must be seen as ¡¥unnatural¡¦ i.e. the result of the farmer¡¦s effort. So, to be honest we had better call similar methods ¡¥low input farming method[TM1] ¡¦. As the name implies, such methods usually input little to no fertilizers, require only a little man power to do the weed trimming instead of elimination. Thus the planted crop co-exists with other herbs and shrubs in the field, and the mutual check and balance of various bugs and germs. It is realized, in this effective species co-existence, that no input of pesticides and fungicides are required. Even so, such farmland still cannot be regarded as restored habitat land, for natural succession still cannot take place there. If habitat restoration is not allowed, the problem of habitat loss is still present. So is the continental hydrological cycling problem, unless the crop is fruit trees, the co-existing herbs and shrubs are simply too small to cover the whole farmland surface and provide large enough canopy to hold enough raindrops.

 

 

Returning Farmland Back to Natural Forest?

Most people have a thinking that returning farmland back to natural forest must be a net gain to both the global and local ecosystem, yet upon in depth analysis such conception crumbles at once. One must bear in mind that the amount of global farmland needed is not dictated by the will of farmland owners, but by the global population as well as the type of food they eat, their eating habit, farming methods employed, etc..For example, if the global population increases, more food will be needed, farm owners will develop more farmland to fulfil the increased demand on food and vice versa. If people eat more meat, even though the demand on food remains the same by weight, the demand on farmland will still increase as meat needs far more farmland to produce per unit weight, ......So, suppose a 1000 acre of farmland is turned back to natural forest, as the global food demand won't change because of such practice, it only results in decreasing the amount of food originally produced by the 1000 acres of farmland, thereby increases the demand of food by the same amount, other farm owners will quickly develop 1000 acres more of farmland to fulfil the need in other places, thus render the returning farmland back to wild forest useless.

 

On the other hand, if the returning of farmland is not just back to an idle piece of wild forest, but can still have food yield as well, the result is going to be completely different. Suppose the abandoned 1000 acre farmland can still have 20% of food yield it originally had, farm owners of other places will only develop roughly 800 acres new farmland to fulfil the increased food demand, not 1000 acres, as the abandoned one can still yield a 200 acre equivalent amount of food. This argument sounds convincing, but how can an abandoned piece of farmland, or rather, a plot of wild forest can still have food yield just seems not possible.

 

The Evil And Sufferings Come With The Transition To Agriculture

Farming¡¦s harm does not rest in damaging the earth¡¦s life support system alone, there¡¦s nothing exaggerating if we say  farming works in pushing humans into a purgatory like situation. Paleopathological studies reveals that right at the onset of agriculture the earliest farmers all suffered from mulnutrition and it¡¦s deficiency related diseases and physique. This phenomenon is prevalent among the earliest farmers in different places in the world, while the same studies on pre-neolithic hunter gatherers show no sign of similar problems.

 

 

Health Deterioration

Health deterioration is prevalent among the earliest farmers but not among the latest hunter gatherers right before the agricultural transition. Modern city dwellers find this difficult to digest as they have been soaked in the overwhelming information of three eras of human ¡§progress¡¨:  The development from hunting-gathering to agriculture and to industrialization. However, on the other hand, health deterioration conclusion can easily be found to be reasonable upon pondering as farm yield contains far less complete protein and B complex than a  meat-fruit mixture, and neolithic men¡¦s knowledge about nutrition has to be very limited, they had no idea that depending on grain as their main food could lead to complete protein and B complex deficiency.

 

Non-Reversible Transition, Day Long Hard Labour

Health deterioration is only small matter comparing to the end of the lifestyle without long hours of annoying labouring. Farming has to involve a lot of daily hardwork: soil tilling, weed clearing, ¡K, all are kinds of time consuming repetitive labour, completely not comparable to the fun of game chasing and fruit collecting of the hunter gatherers. Even worse, the matter was not easily reversible. The earliest farmers who found the farming life not worthwhile quite often could not revert back to hunting gathering. Once the natural growth forest had been cleared to create farmland, gaming animals and wild fruit dissappeared, even the earliest farmers later had abandoned using the farmland , game and fruit could not come back within a few decade¡¦s time, you had to migrate to other places if you wanted to. Not only so, the remaining hunter gatherers would also find livelihood much more difficult when the neighbouring tribes had taken up farming. Since the surrounding wild forests were cut down, the remaining barren land could no longer support the game animals and wild fruits they need. The same thing happened again in the post WW2 Tanzania Haksa hunter gatherer tribes.

 

Crumbling Invaluable Social Values

Daily repetitive hard labour is still small matter comparing to the crumbling of hunter gatherer social values. Decades of recent in depth anthropological studies reveals that nearly all existing mobile hunter gatherer tribes exercise equality measures strickly, from the distribution of food and necessities to political power over the tribe, i.e., they exercise a kind of direct democracy. Only stationary or farming tribes are different. At first sight such phenomenon seems incomprehensible, some may have practiced direct democracy by chance, but how can they all realize the social values that people in the mainstream agricultural and industrial societies have fought for centuries and still cannot realize? But if we can employ a little systems thinking and have some understanding of how the tribespeople live in the wilderness, we should be able to find out why.

 

Basically an individual hunter gatherer can live by himself or his family in the wild, they voluntarily join the tribe for more secured food supply, more play mates(hunter gatherer tribespeople mostly like playing collective games), and more secured old age etc., should they find the tribe treat them not fair, they can simply go away, turn to live by himself or his family in the wilderness. So a particular tribe cannot maintain it¡¦s member if they don¡¦t treat everyone equally, this explains why nearly all mobile hunter gatherer tribes stick to equality principle so strictly. Non-mobile ones not necessarily follow the equality principle may be because stationary ones have turned the surrounding Nature far less food supportive due to a change in their food getting and population practice. The pre-requisite they can become stationary must be because they can produce food themselves, such as cattle or poultry rearing, or planting food crops, etc., so that they don¡¦t have to move away when the game animals in the region has been dwindled. This ability also enables them to settle down , enjoy living in bigger and more complex houses and owning more matter, tools and wealth. Their ability to produce food also allows them to grow in population, not having to abide by the food constraint of the surrounding regional ecosystem, which also ends up in a tribal population much larger than the surrounding Nature¡¦s game, fruit can support and thus leads to over hunting-gathering. This¡¦s the very reason why stationary tribes do not necessarily exercise full equality among all members. When a power and privilege seeking leader suddenly emerges in a tribe, the deprived ones may want to leave, but are detered by the fear that they may not be able to make a living in the wilderness, in the end they choose to stay, swallow up the inequality or even exploitation.

 

 The transition from mobile hunting gathering to stationary type is also irreversible for reasons mentioned above. This may also be the very cause humans switch to argriculture economy from hunting gathering, at least anthropologists can find no good reason that our ancestors should make such a transition, but there should have been arbitrary changes, if the change by chance is irreversible, then an all out transition to agriculture is possible.

 

What Price To Pay For?

What is the lure of agriculture? Or better we first ask what is the price to pay for switching to agriculture instead. The price are of two kinds, manifest and hidden ones. The manifest ones are daily mechanical repetition of manual labour, humans usually find this kind of work annoying and hard to bear if they have to do that for whole day every day. The second manifest one is longer working hour and so less time for friends, family, and group activities. The third manifest one is less tasty food. In mobile hunting gathering tribes, tribesmen all know that the amount of food they can get has to be what the surrounding Nature can give them, so they usually maintain a stable population. But in agricultural villages, villagers usually think more people also mean more hands and so more food yield, so they usually have a much larger population than what the natural surrounding food yield can support, which unavoidably has lead to insufficient game animals and wild fruit for the village to consume, wild tasty food has become uncommon in their daily meals.

 

The Hidden Price:  Social Hierarchy, Brutality, War, Empire, Slavery, Banishment From Eden

However, hidden prices cost the earliest farmer even much dearer. The first hidden one is their worsened health. Agriculturists¡¦ diet has to be mainly vegetables and grains, without sufficient complete proteins and B complex, overpopulation also tightens their food supply, these two effects together make the earliest farmers malnutritious and illness prone. The second hidden one is ecosystem deterioration. The earliest farmers have to clear forests for farming, overhunt and overgather the surrounding regional ecosystem, causing ecosystem deterioration and habitat loss over long periods of time. As farming depends on healthy regional ecosystem for good harvest, this also means the place will be poverty strickened. The third hidden one is farming begets barter markets, barter market begets money, money begets wealth amassing, wealth amassing begets greediness, exploitation of natural resources and other people, emerging of social hierarchy, power differentiation, fraternal society, army for conquering other peoples, kingdoms, enslaving peoples in other defeated places, humans have fallen into a purgetary state, and global environmental condition has dropped to an unprecedented low.

 

The last hunter gatherers and the first farmers¡¦ health have been examined by physical anthropologists, while the last hunter gatherers¡¦ regional environment and the first farming villages¡¦ surrounding environment have been examined by archeologists, the effects of transition upon human health/nutrition and global environmental conditions can thus be found out.

 

In the abstract of the thesis jointly prepared by the Isreal Antiquities Authority, the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, the Department of Anatomy of Tel Aviv University, and the Department of Archaeology of University College Cork of Ireland: ¡§Paleopathology And The Origin Of Agriculture In The Levant¡¨, the authors summerize that ¡§¡¨The comparison of the health profiles of pre-Neolithic (Natufian hunter gatherer, 10,500 ¡V 8,300 BC) and Neolithic (agricultural, 8,300 - 5500BC) population based on the study of 200 Natufian skeletons and 205 Neolithic skeletons reveals a higher prevalence of lesions indicative of infective diseases among Neolithic population, and an overall reduction in the prevalence of degenerative joint disease. These results indicate that in the southern Levant the leolithic transition did not simply lead to an overall deterioration in health but  rather resulted in a complex profile which was shaped by 1) an increase exposure to disease agents, 2) changes in diet, 3) population aggregation in larger and denser settlements, 4) changes in activity patterns and the division of labour, and 5) a higher resistent immunological system and response capacity to environmental aggressions (mainly infections). ¡§¡¨

 

The awful consequences of transition to farming does not end here, yet it¡¦s worthwhile to examine the emergence of empires and slavery in more detail as it¡¦s also a common mis-conception that war, empire and slaves are elements of history since earliest human ancesters roam the grasslands and forests of Africa, Asia and Europe. Empires and slavery are the necessary outcomes of war, to suppose slavery was common since the onset of  human pre-history, we have to first conclude that war was rampant since the earliest ancesters emerged. Yet the recent scientific studies of the hunter gatherer tribes before and after the transition to agricultural ones reveal us that war was not common before the transition, but turned rampant only after that. One such representative studies was held by Douglas Fry and Patrik Soderberg of Ado Akademi University in Finland. Their study in the US journal ¡§Science¡¨ suggests that the origins of war were not ¡Vas some has argued¡Xrooted in roving hunter gatherer groups, but rather, in cultures that held land and livestock and knew how to farm for food.

 

 

In facing the various global environmental crisis, we are bewildered at the unshakable human greediness, firmer than rock indifference to impending total collapse, desperate grasp of money, power and social status¡K¡KModern people all tend to believe this is human nature, but upon close examination of neo-lithic hunter gatherer culture as against the agricultural ones, we quickly find that this¡¦s not the case, greediness, money, power, matter, status prone is only the byproduct of agricultural and industrial civilizations, not inherent nature of humans.

 

Zero Impact Farming As Repentance Of Human Sins Towards Nature

Zero Impact Farming Experimental Zone, jointly held by Lotus Valley Ecoop Farm and Yi O Farm. Located on Lantau Island, HK., Headed by Pang, Yiu Kai, writer of this article.

Smart Nature roamers are always bewildered that it is very difficult to see any food they usually buy from the market growing naturally in the wilderness, you can never see wild padi, wild wheat, wild potato etc.. Some may think this must be the result of human intervention, tasty edible plants and animals must have all been either cleared or caught by people, so little of them can still survive in the wild. This is partly true, but not the complete story. Another main reason a Nature lover do not know is that their favourite food¡¦s natural habitat had largely been cleared long ago for farming, the remaining wilderness are not so suitable for them except some isolated smaller scale habitats, as they are broken down into smaller isolated ones by farmlands, towns, or other human establishments, which makes the plant and animal species unable to spread to the places suitable for their growth. So most isolated habitats all suffer from species deficiency. In Hong Kong, larger streams¡¦ lower courses are usually suitable for natural banana growth, but we cannot see wild banana in Hong Kong, all that can be seen are planted by farmers.

What then is the evidence that these locations had wild bananas before Hong Kong was first inhabited? The answer is in Guangdong Province' nearly uninhabited deep mountains. The longest mountain there is the Lotus Mountain Range. It begins in Southern Fujian Province and extends south southwestward through the middle eastern part of Guangdong all the way down to Hong Kong. Hong Kong is situated in the southern most tip of the Lotus Mountain Range,--- the obsolete version of the Pacific Ring of Fire active in the Jurassic Period. In the section of the mountain range around 120 Km north northeast of Hong Kong, we can still find a hundred plus square kilometers of mostly uninhabited high mountains and deep valleys, it¡¦s also there we can still find wild banana thickets growing along stream bank mudflats in deep mountain valley. Hong Kong streams¡¦ lower course mudflats in fact are more suitable locations as the latter has a warmer winter. So if Guangdong¡¦s deep mountain valleys can have wild bananas, the more so should be the fertile stream bank mudflats in Hong Kong.

 

The above three points are enough to let us know, when our ancesters were first roving the furtile wilderness on this earth, they could gather food and hunt for animals fairly easily, they don¡¦t have to suffer from daylong hard labour to get their daily meals, the present day human situation is only the result of wrong(yes, wrong!) civilizational development, the transition to land occupying farming is the culprit. The development has been wrong as we have already found solid evidences the development has brought more suffering, poorer health to humans, as well as worsening natural environment, although agriculture has a systems advantage in knowledge, craftsmanship, art development, but at the same time it also has a systems disadvantage in humanist ultimate social values: brotherhood of man, equal right and liberty . At a time of serious habitat loss and biodiversity deterioration because of encroaching desert and farmland, the writer of this article wonders is it possible to get food from Nature without impacting Her? The writer started to have such querry 16 years ago, set out to develop theory and do experiments according to this idea. Until now, the answer is a definite yes!