Ne Roots For Agriculture (ne Edition) (farming And Ranching) [Paperback]

The plowshare may well have destroyed more options for future generations than the sword, writes Wes Jackson in a review of practices that have brought U.S. agriculture to the edge of disaster. Tillage has hastened the erosion of irreplaceable topsoil everywhere and a technology based on fossil fuels has increased yields for short-term profits, leaving crops ever more vulnerable to diseases, pests, and droughts. Such, says Jackson, is the failure of success. As high-technology agriculture becomes more wasteful and expensive, more farmers are being forced off the land or into bankruptcy.

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Jackson's major solution calls for the development of plant combinations that yield food while holding the soil and re-newing its nutrients without plowing or applying fossil-fuel-based fertilizers or pesticides. His new way of raising crops, by working with the soil's natural systems, would keep the world's bread-basket producing perpetually.