Organic Farming and Permaculture
Organic farming uses natural sources of nutrients such as compost, crop residues and manure, and natural methods of crop and weed control to produce highly nutritional and pollution-free food and other plants.
Conventional farming is unsustainable and unhealthy for several reasons. It causes loss of soil fertility due to excessive use of chemical fertilizers and lack of crop rotation. Nitrates run-off during rains contaminates water resources. Use of poisonous biocide sprays to curb pest and weeds. Soil erosion due to deep ploughing and heavy rains. Loss of biodiversity due to Monoculture. All the poisionous, cancer-causing chemicals that are put on the plant and ingested through its roots are in the food that humans eat.
There are several different methods of organic farming that we have come across.
A variety of crops are cultivated simultaneously providing crop diversity in imitation of the diversity of natural ecosystems. Unlike, monoculture, in which only one type of crop is cultivated in a particular location. This practice reduces susceptibility to disease. It also increases biological diversity.
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Biodynamics is a holistic, ecological, and ethical approach to farming, gardening, food, and nutrition. Biodynamics is rooted in the work of philosopher and scientist Dr. Rudolf Steiner, whose 1924 lectures to farmers opened a new way to integrate scientific understanding with a recognition of spirit in nature.
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Permaculture is a system of agricultural and social design principles centered around simulating or directly utilizing the patterns and features observed in natural ecosystems.
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Vermicompost is the product of the composting process using various species of worms, usually red wigglers, white worms, and other earthworms, to create a mixture of decomposing vegetable or food waste, bedding materials, and vermicast. Vermicast is the end-product of the breakdown of organic matter by earthworms.
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Aquaponics refers to any system that combines conventional aquaculture with hydroponics in a symbiotic environment. In normal aquaculture, excretions from the animals being raised can accumulate in the water, increasing toxicity.
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Hydroponics is a subset of hydroculture, which is a method of growing plants without soil by using mineral nutrient solutions in a water solvent. Terrestrial plants may be grown with only their roots exposed to the mineral solution, or the roots may be supported by an inert medium, such as perlite or gravel.
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