Biological farming - Soil Essentials: Managing Your Farm's Primary Asset - page 83

Summary
Biological farming is a blend of the art of farming and science, and is gaining in
popularity because the extent of the environmental damage caused by chemicals
and pollution is becoming too serious to ignore. People are trying to develop
systems of farming that will produce the food and fibre needed to feed and clothe
the global population in a sustainable way. The reliance on fossil fuel energy and
chemicals is clearly doing immense environmental damage, and the system
primarily used at present is running down food producing resources globally.
Often with the current system of farming, it costs more energy to produce food
(energy inputs) than the energy in the food produced (energy output). This is
clearly not sustainable.
Countries such as China, for example, have been producing food from the
same land for thousands of years using the cycling of nutrients method, without
the use of chemical inputs, or even fossil fuel energy. This has been made possible
because of the very large labour force available, and their willingness to recycle so-
called waste products.
Before the Spanish invaded South America, the native South American Indians
had a well-developed system of soil management based on addition of carbon
(charcoal) and bacterial cultures, the remains of which are still evident today in
Brazil. There is evidence where the leached tropical soils of the time have been
converted to deep (10 metres) rich black soil capable of growing excellent crops
that fed their very large population.