In a nutshell, here is my confession: I had compacted the
soil. Fed it artificial food. Removed organic matter without
putting any back. Laid the ground bare. Disrupted the soil
community of microorganisms by use of tillage. Poisoned the
soil with chemicals. And dumped my commodity on the market
and wondered why I got a dump price. I had broken the law.
I was a criminal. Not in the legal sense, but in a much more
vast, universal sense. I had broken the law of the land.
Our farm seeks to follow natural laws governing the relationships
between grazing animals and the grassland. Why? Laws bring
order from chaos. They operate at all times, in all places
whether or not we are aware of them or believe in them. Some
laws may not necessarily be apparent but disobeying always
leads to predictable consequences.
There are physical laws, like the law of gravity. There are
civil laws, which bring order to society and govern our relationships
with each other. There are moral laws like "Don't lie"
and "Don't kill". And there are several laws that
apply to farming.
The law of
compaction: The heaviest impression on the
soil for millions of years was a hoof, not a tractor track.
What happens to a soil that is compacted? What are the consequences?
Water runs off instead of percolating in. Soil moisture
wicks out. The soil can't breathe. It suffocates. There
is no exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Physically
there is less room for the roots to grow and less room for
soil biota -- microorganisms, worms, bugs, etc. Would you
like to raise your family in a single crowded bedroom?
The law of
fuel: All life, soil or otherwise, runs by
consuming fuel and burning energy. Carbon, in the form of
sugar, fuels our bodies. Carbon, in the form of gasoline,
fuels our cars. And carbon, in the form of organic matter,
fuels the soil. Weeds can refuel soil with organic matter,
a job at which they are well suited, but what farmer wants
weeds in the field? We till to burn up those weeds and other
organic matter.
Take away the organic matter, including weeds, and you
take away the soil's ability to feed itself. Now you have
to feed it. So you start with annual doses of commercial
fertilizers to replace the food--the organic matter-- that
has been taken away. But commercial fertilizers are an inadequate
food replacement. If you ate only a vitamin pill, a glass
of water, and a bag of potato chips every day, would you
survive? Probably. Would you thrive? No.
The law of
collecting energy to be stored as carbon:
Farmers are solar energy harvesters. They use a green leaf
to capture sunlight and turn it into usable energy either
for human and animal consumption or for soil consumption.
If the soil is laid bare, sunlight is wasted and falls to
nothing. Modern farming leaves the soil bare for at least
part of the year or a whole year in the case of summer fallow.
The law of
maturity: Adults are better able to handle
stress than youngsters. Soil with a mature plant community
above ground and a mature soil biota community below ground
is better able to produce in times of drought, flood or
other stress. Most cultivated crops are less than a year
old and are youngsters.
The law of
plant balance: Whatever you cut above the
ground, you cut below the ground. If you take all of the
top growth, the bottom growth is also taken. Most western
continuous-grazing practices remove as much top growth as
possible. This takes away the plants' ability to feed themselves.
The law of
long term health vs short term gain: Doing
the minimum required to get by is usually more costly in
the long run. Yet most of farming today is geared for the
short term: the next operating loan payment, next equipment
payment the next commodity check in the mail.
The law of
diversity: All life requires a rich diversity
of food for best production. But "modern" agriculture
focuses primarily on three fertilizer nutrients. Nitrogen
(N), Phosphorous (P), and Potassium (K). It may come as
surprise to many that these elements are not lacking at
all but are unavailable to the chemically dependent plant/soil.
The question is not "How much should you apply as artificial
fertilizers?" But, "How do I set up the conditions
where these elements are made available to the plant when
needed and in their most stable and usable form?" These
are the very conditions modern farming manages against.
How ironic! Diversity is nature's strength. Mono-cropping
is modern agriculture's weakness.
The law of
cover: The soil is meant to be covered. The
only barren place on nature is a desert. The earth will
do anything to put her clothes back on once she is laid
bare. This is one reason why weeds exist. If you don't cover
her with plants of your own choosing, she will use plants
of her own. Often times, if we observe how and where the
weeds emerge, we may learn something of what the soil's
needs may be.
The law of
wounds: The soil surface is very much like
our skin. When you scrape or cut yourself, you bleed. When
the soil is cut, life bleeds away. Water, nutrients, and
soil wash away. What is left behind is raw, unproductive,
dry dirt.
The law of
scabs: When you are scraped or wounded you
form a scab, an ugly protective covering, until healthy
skin can grow again. Weeds are the scabs of a wounded soil.
They may be unsightly, but are absolutely necessary to aid
in the healing process. Yet most farmers - including me,
in a previous life - have a zero tolerance for weeds. So
weeds are eliminated with herbicides. What we should be
asking is: "What were the conditions that brought the
weeds in the first place?" Herbicides are a band-aid
that masks the wound. They do not, indeed cannot, cure the
ailment. The healing can only come from within.
The law of
time-tested success: If it worked that way
for millennia, it's a good bet it will work that way tomorrow!
Decades of machines, technology, and modern practices cannot
necessarily replace millennia of successful genetic and
cultural evolution. Some evolutionary traits may have come
into existence by accident, but they remained because they
were successful. They remained because they could naturally
reproduce and were efficient users of energy, nutrients
and space, and could out-compete other species or outlast
the predators.
The law of
balance: In the physical world it is well
understood that if there is equal pressure on all sides
of a focal point, balance is present. The needs of plants
and the needs of animals on the soil, our focal point, are
perfectly balanced and complimentary. The wastes of the
one are the food of the other and vise versa. Separating
this most basic relationship leads to unbalanced soil.
We remove foraging animals from the land and wonder why
we have a fertility problem with our soils, and then we
concentrate our animals in a confined feeding operation
and wonder why we have environmental problems. Besides,
instead of buying all that equipment and spending all of
that energy swathing and bailing hay to transport it to
the cattle, why not just allow the cattle to graze it where
it grows?
The law of
giving back what you take: If you take life
from the land you must put life back. There is no known
substitute for the real thing -- artificial fertilizers
or otherwise. This means no more harvesting alfalfa and
sending it to feed someone else's cattle. Build the soil,
don't deplete it.
The laws
of good business: By letting someone else
sell for me, I never knew or developed a relationship with
the people who would ultimate purchase and eat the food
grown on my farm. One of the laws of good business is asking
"Who are my customers?" and "What do they
need?" I had no idea. I had never asked these questions.
Instead of researching our customer base and creating a
marketing plan, most farmers', myself included, marketing
strategy consisted of phrases like, "Well I guess it's
time to get rid of the hay now." Yes, I was as guilty
as anyone in breaking the laws of business.
Also, all business begins with the premise that you must
have something to sell or offer at a profitable price. (Without
a profit, any notions of helping the environment or others
cannot be realized, since a poor man cannot look past his
own needs.)
The law of
forgiveness: Finally, the most important law.
All living things have, at some level, the capacity to "forgive"
-- to start over, to begin with a clean slate, to waken
to a new day. God has the capacity to forgive man. Man has
the capacity to forgive his fellow man. A pet has the capacity
to forgive its master for a wrong. And the soil has the
capacity to forgive man for his inadequacies. 
