The need to grow

Yes, we all find that we need to grow – grow up, grow old, but grow. And it is the same for our soil. We need to grow soil. Sadly, we are losing healthy soil and we probably have only 60 years left of farmlands to grow food on. I learned from this documentary that we are losing soil every day due to bad practices like using too much fertilizers, too much pesticides and too much tilling of the soil.

Before I watched “The Need to Grow,” I came across a news feed on the same evening where our Department of Agriculture spokesperson declared: We need mechanization, scale, clustering of lands, making the farmer more efficient in terms of yields, etc. etc. He probably should first watch this documentary and understand why there is a move to use technology for ancient practices – that of growing the soil. You can read more about the project called “Green Power House” or GPH and its creator, who chose to do something for the Earth with his super high tech knowledge, than making cyber games.

Once we understand why Regenerative Agriculture is the way to correct mankind’s mistake, only then can we start to repair the land which has provided us food. Food used to be more nutrient-dense, but sadly our food production today has been affected by hybrid seeds, chemicals and genetically-modified organisms. Think about that every time you rave about your harvest of sweet Thai green mangoes, or the biggest atis (sugar apple) in the world. Those were not their natural states, but they have been tampered with and re-engineered to give you the taste or size that you gladly pay for. It is NOT NATURAL.

I do not wish to be preachy but I would like to share with you my own experience in tilling the soil. I made the mistake of hiring a gardener who tilled our organic soil and all the worms went away. The tilled earth also exposed all the microbes in the soil, killing the very life of it. Thanks to our Regenerative Agriculture consultant, we immediately repaired the damage by mulching and allowing the soil once again to heal itself and regenerate. That is on our garden merely 300 square meters in size. Now imagine that in acres and hectares of land that is being tilled everyday. And it could be true that our farmlands will now only be available for the next 60 years globally…if we do not act now.

Also not wanting to sound political as I avoid talks on politics and religion, do read up on why pesticides and fertilizers were created after the world war. They had excess chemicals and the war had ended so it was turned to inputs for agriculture use. The rest, they say, is history.

Marketing these products to farmers for increased yields was the next project, which sadly we still believe today. It has become a system, an ecosystem, that sees no end. Until you become more aware of what you eat. And where it comes from.

What is more interesting about this film is the fact that the solution to saving the Earth is in what we do everyday. Where we shop, what we eat all dictate what the farmer grows. If we are OK with the quality of food available, things will not change. So I dare you to pick a pechay from the supermarket and pick one from an organic farm. Put on a blindfold and do a sensory test. Smell each one, taste each one. If you do not taste any difference, then chances are you have been so used to eating chemical-laden food, it becomes your new normal. But once you taste tomatoes grown on vines in healthy soil, versus tomatoes grown under hydroponic conditions and further a commercial tomato that is picked green to withstand travel (and becomes red only a week or so after), you may be able to tell the difference. The problem is, we take what is sold as gospel truth of what a tomato should taste like. And then we completely forget there are sweeter choices.

I remember a lunch hosted by our consultant farmer in Bukidnon some years ago. He gave us a basket to pick fresh greens and the ripest heirloom tomatoes at his little farm. Once we were done, he sliced up the red ripe fruits (tomatoes are fruits) and mixed the greens and drizzled some oil and voila! that was our lunch. Our “ulam” (viand) was beef jerky from his grass-fed native cows. You may think – what a hippie lifestyle of the Age of Aquarius era! But that is how we go back to what our ancestors used to feed on – nutrient-dense food from healthy soil. We need to try what Nature is good at bringing us without interventions from high-yield fertilizers or prevention of leaf damage through pesticides. Nature is smart but we need to help Her by providing an environment where worms can freely grow to mix the earth, where microbes make the soil medium healthy, creating humus and making it living soil. Because healthy soil will give us healthier or nutrient-dense food.

I wonder how much more time it will take until our agriculture officials and the general public become aware that growing food locally, doing no-till agriculture and using heirloom seeds that are open pollinated will be the order of the day. If we buy from local farmers, we can watch what they do to our food. They can grow what we need and they will always be assured of a market. Alas, this is not the way right now but hopefully, with more people being aware, it soon will be the norm.

We all need to grow. We can grow food. We can grow up and we can grow soil.