What else are we missing?

The film “Symphony of Soil” brings a few big topics to light. In the documentary the ideas of sustainable agriculture are discussed as well as our current agricultural problems we have been facing. Although some of our agricultural problems, such as droughts, are the result of climate change in general, there are more specific problems that have conventional farming written all over it. Things like erosion, compacted soil, exhausting undergrounds aquifers nitrogen and phosphorus saturated soil and water ways are some of the environmental issues we are effacing, issues that the film discusses, are all caused by conventional farming techniques. 

The documentary shows us that the things we deem as conventional farming are not the only way of doing things. People were finding ways to preserve water by growing other plants around their crops to prevent runoff. They were also composting and using the newly made, nutrient rich soil as a type of fertilizer that didn’t poison the soil or the crop. Rotating crops is also important as different plants take different amounts of each nutrient. Planting a cover crop such as clover is also important in the off season. All of this just shows us that organic farming, although more tedious and expensive, is achievable and can mitigate or even eliminate the negative aspects that conventional farming exhibit.

While the film just barely brushes on these topics and doesn’t get very technical, for the sake of the viewer, I think they are touching on an issue that is far reaching in almost every industry and field out there. I firmly believe that the way we are built, that is to say the way our minds work, is that when something becomes a norm for us or our culture we define it as the the supreme or even only way of doing something. We don’t often consider other techniques because the current ones have seemed to work (emphasis on the word seemed). Although globalization has changed this a great deal there are some things that aren’t being challenged enough. I believe industry hs driven agriculture to a breaking point where it is not sustainable anymore, but people think it is the only way of doing because conventional farming was once innovative, yielded huge crops amounts and saved money. So now that people rely on this technique for a living, it will be hard to turn to an alternative as it is seen as inadequate in one way or another. Hopefully this changes soon.

This makes me wonder, what else do we not question?