Only Reconnect - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 114

periods, and can also be ploughed in as a green manure. Green manures
not only provide a readily available source of nutrients for the growing
crop, but also increase soil organic matter and hence water retentive
capacity, further reducing susceptibility to erosion. Low-lying grasslands
that are managed as water meadows, and that provide habitats for wildlife,
also provide an early-season yield of grass for lambs.
In Europe, about one third of the farmed landscape, some 56 million
hectares, is still under relatively unintensive agricultural systems. 30 These
traditional systems are typically highly diverse, and are closely linked to
particular ways of life for rural communities. They include the high
mountain pastures of southern and central Europe, characterized by
transhumance and summer migrations of livestock; the valley farms of
the Carpathians, almost entirely under traditional management, with hay
meadows rich in flowering plants; the diverse wood-pasture systems of
Portugal and Spain (the montados and dehesas ), characterized by species-rich
grasslands, mixtures of cork and holm oaks, sheep, pigs and cattle, and
a remarkable abundance of rare birds; the 3-4 million hectares of
traditionally managed fruit trees, olives and vines in Greece, Italy, Spain
and Portugal that are also good for wildlife; the mixed farms of Hungary,
Poland and Ireland; and the wet and dry grasslands of France and Italy.
Sadly, almost all of these systems are under severe threat from both
modern farming methods and rural abandonment.
In contrast to these traditional systems, organic farming represents a
deliberate attempt to make the best use of local natural resources. The
aim of organic farming, also known as ecological or biological agriculture,
is to create integrated, humane, and environmentally and economically
viable agriculture systems in which maximum reliance is put on locally or
farm-derived renewable resources, and the management of ecological and
biological processes. The use of external inputs, whether inorganic or
organic, is reduced as far as possible. Recent years have seen a dramatic
increase in the adoption of organic farming. In Europe, the extent has
increased from just 100,000 hectares in 1985 to more than 3 million
hectares, managed by 120,000 farmers in 2000. In the US, 550,000
hectares of land managed by 5000 growers were certified under organic
production in 1997. The important thing for most organic farmers is that
it represents a system of agriculture rather than simply a set of technol-
ogies. 31 The primary aim is to find ways in which to grow food in harmony
with nature. The term organic, as Nic Lampkin of the Welsh Institute for
Rural Studies has put it, is 'best thought of as referring not to the type of inputs used,
but to the concept of the farm as an organism, in which the component parts - the soil
minerals, organic matter, micro-organisms, insects, plants, animals and humans - interact
to create a coherent and stable whole'. 32