Before describing what agriculture might look like in an ideal world we need to pause for a moment and observe what is happening today because we cannot build a just future if we ignore what is wrong in our present.
We are used to thinking that exploitation is something distant, something that happens in factories in Bangladesh or mines in Congo instead it exists here as well, in the plains and hills of Italy, it is where the food that reaches our tables is harvested by hands we never see, i am talking about agricultural workers, mostly immigrants or poor Italians; these are people forced to work illegally for twelve or fourteen hours a day for a few euros and to sleep in makeshift metal shacks without water or electricity; this shame has a name: gangmastering, gangmasters are men who position themselves between farms and desperate workers living off this mafia-like system of mediation, they recruit workers, transport them crammed into broken-down vans, pay them, and keep a portion of their already meager wages; gangmastering is not a marginal phenomenon, in some regions of Italy more than thirty percent of agricultural labor is completely undeclared.
There is also another invisible and harmful giant: monopoly; in the current capitalist system five companies control more than sixty percent of the global seed market and over seventy percent of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, these companies have invested billions in research and genetic engineering creating seeds that yield more than traditional varieties thereby forcing farmers to buy seeds from these giants; all of this may appear to be progress but it is not, the plants that result are not resistant to diseases and pests, they are specifically designed to produce good harvests only when combined with particular pesticides, insecticides, and fertilizers produced by the same companies that sell the seeds, it is a forced package that pollutes rivers and erodes and impoverishes the soil; because of these companies within a few decades vast areas of the planet will no longer be cultivable.
It must also be considered that the seeds sold by these companies harm those who purchase them, they are patented seeds meaning that the farmer can use them for one cycle but cannot replant the seeds produced by the resulting plants as they remain the property of the company; today being a farmer requires investing a significant amount of money each year to purchase patented seeds, pesticides, insecticides, and chemical fertilizers for this reason in poorer countries many farmers have fallen into the hands of loan sharks and have lost everything because they were unable to repay their debts, in India ninety-three percent of farmer suicides are linked to this phenomenon.
To all this we must add another absurd aspect: in sorting centers fruit and vegetables pass through machines that measure, weigh, and photograph them and those that are too small, too large, misshapen or slightly blemished are discarded because they are not visually appealing, all of this is absurd.
Now let us try to imagine a different world, an ideal world, many would call it utopian but it is not; in this world i believe cities should evolve from today’s anarchic eco-villages; as for agriculture it should be based on four principles: recovering traditional seeds, minimizing human labor, respecting nature, and achieving the highest possible yield in a small space.
Before considering new cultivation methods we must take a step back and recover what we have forgotten: our grandparents’ seeds; for generations farmers in every region selected varieties capable of growing without pesticides, without chemical fertilizers and with only the water available in that environment for example in southern Italy they developed tomatoes that produced fruit without irrigation; instead of buying patented seeds from multinational corporations every year every region of the world should return to sowing its own traditional varieties, only in this way can we build a truly independent and sustainable agriculture.
A valid alternative for food production in an ideal future could be food forests which offer a response to current monoculture practices; imagine walking through a forest that no one has ever planted, we see majestic oak trees, hazelnut trees growing beneath them, further down brambles heavy with blackberries and at our feet mushrooms that no one has ever sown; no one tends this forest, yet everything thrives without fertilizers, herbicides, or human effort, this is an ecosystem; a food forest is something similar, a designed but not dominated ecosystem, to create one we must carefully choose which plants to introduce but then allow them to do their work; if we observe a food forest we see layers of vegetation, just like in a natural forest, at the top grow large trees such as walnuts, chestnuts, apple trees, and tall cherry trees; beneath them are hazelnuts, figs, peaches, and pears; lower still grow blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries followed by aromatic herbs, asparagus and strawberries while small potatoes can be grown underground; food forests also include climbing plants: kiwis climbing apple trees, grapes winding around hazelnuts, and green beans finding support wherever they can; in food forests everything is mixed, everything is interconnected, maintenance is almost nonexistent as is irrigation, fertilization comes from fallen leaves and decaying branches.
At this point, someone might object: What about wheat? What about corn? What about tomatoes and courgettes? Not all crops can grow in the shade of a chestnut tree but their production should not rely on the methods and scale of current industrial agriculture either, instead the concept of polyculture could be applied, organized either over time or in space.
Polyculture over time is based on the principle that a large plot of land should never be used in the same way for two consecutive years; in the first year a cereal is sown, in the second potatoes or carrots which break up the soil with their roots, in the third year the land is left as pasture for animals that fertilize it and in the fourth year a mixture of at least ten different green manure plants is sown, these plants send their roots deep into the soil bringing minerals and nitrogen to the surface; once they have grown sufficiently they are cut and buried using a tractor, allowing the soil to fertilize itself without chemical inputs.
Polyculture in space is even more visually striking; on a single plot different varieties of vegetables are grown simultaneously side by side for example imagine a field where corn, climbing beans, and squash grow together every two square meters; the corn provides support for the beans which fix nitrogen in the soil while the broad low leaves of the squash shade the ground, reduce evaporation and suppress weeds.
There is also extensive regenerative grain cultivation where mixtures of cereals are sown together with legumes such as clover in a single seeder, the legumes fix nitrogen and prevent weed growth.
Another technique inherited from traditional farming knowledge is the mound, a concentration of efficiency in a small space; at the base branches and dead wood are placed followed by organic waste, everything is then covered with a layer of soil using a small bulldozer creating a miniature hill and finally the seeds are sown; the wood decomposes slowly retaining water like a sponge and releasing nutrients over time, in just a few square meters it is possible to obtain an extraordinary harvest.
There are also mobile chicken coops, large lightweight modular enclosures with a small sheltered area for the chickens, these coops are periodically moved across different areas of uncultivated land, the chickens eat harmful insects and weed seeds and fertilize the soil with their droppings, as soon as the enclosure is moved sowing can begin; this system can produce excellent yields thanks to natural fertilization.
Another idea combines pasture, orchard, and vegetable cultivation; an orchard is divided into six fenced sections, goats are allowed into one section for a few days where they eat grass, graze on weeds and fertilize the soil, they are then moved to the next section while in the recently grazed area, among the fruit trees, fast-growing vegetables that tolerate shade can be planted; after harvesting the vegetables the grass is allowed to grow again and the cycle repeats.
Not all soils are fertile, in some arid areas unsuitable for traditional agriculture aquaponics can be used, combining fish farming with water-based cultivation; this method requires a pond with fish, the pond water is pumped into a clay bed where plants grow, the plants absorb nutrients and purify the water which then returns clean to the pond.
Finally the most revolutionary lesson comes from the Japanese farmer Fukuoka, he had the courage to break the old Italian proverb that says, “the garden wants the dead man.”; how many generations of farmers have believed that in order to eat one must work to exhaustion plowing, hoeing, fertilizing, weeding, watering engaged in an endless war against nature; Fukuoka understood that this is a war we always lose and so he proposed his “do-nothing” agriculture, he does not tell us what to do but what to stop doing; here is how it works: take a piece of uncultivated land covered with low weeds, if they are tall cut them with a mower without uprooting them; in autumn spread a layer of straw about twenty centimeters thick over the entire plot so that in spring the weeds will be suppressed then mix clover seeds with sand and scatter them over the straw, the rain will carry them down into contact with the soil; to sow vegetables, such as courgettes, prepare small balls of clay and fertile soil the size of marbles, placing vegetable seeds and a few clover seeds inside, let the balls dry in the shade then place them under the straw in contact with the ground, when it rains the clover seeds will sprout first, breaking through the straw and forming a green carpet, the vegetable seeds will sprout later but since they grow taller they will easily emerge through the clover, in summer there will be a field of clover covering everything preventing weeds with rows of courgettes rising like towers; in autumn the dry plants should be left in place and ten centimeters of fresh straw added; the following year the clover will still be present, so new seed balls can be prepared with different crops, such as watermelons, without adding clover, the balls are dried, placed under the straw in contact with the soil and another layer of straw is added if necessary ensuring a thickness of at least eight centimeters; over time it becomes possible to stop adding straw and sow directly under the clover; the Fukuoka method has no single formula, each place, climate, and community adapts it to its own needs.
In an ideal future city agricultural work should also change, we need comfortable machinery that reduces human fatigue without separating us from the land; we need next-generation tractors silent, electric, and designed to be repaired on site with standard parts and open manuals, there should also be robots for automatic harvesting of two types: selective robots and large machines for mass harvesting; in the first case precise machines use artificial intelligence, high-definition cameras and robotic arms with soft grippers, these devices can recognize the ripeness of strawberries, apples, tomatoes, grapes, and kiwis, picking them one by one without damage, they are slow but ideal for delicate fruit; large machines for mechanical mass harvesting are more aggressive but efficient, suitable for extensive crops such as peas, sunflowers, olives, almonds, hazelnuts, plums, spinach, fennel and lettuce; some shake trees to detach fruit while others cut plants and separate the harvest from the rest.
In capitalist agriculture each company buys its own machinery, these machines are extremely expensive and remain unused for most of the year, a tractor that costs fifty thousand euros may be used for only a week and then sit in a warehouse, this is a senseless waste, the result of the logic of private property; in the future we should do the opposite, tractors and harvesting machinery should be shared among all the cities in a region, a schedule should be established for their use during harvest periods and, if necessary, night shifts should be organized because ripe tomatoes do not wait for human convenience.
My ideas about the agriculture of the future are in some respects similar to those of anarchists, like them i believe in sharing machinery, rejecting profit and respecting nature however i differ on one point: many anarchists, though not all, distrust technology whereas, i believe that robots, electric tractors and aquaponics are valuable tools if they are shared, used intelligently and free from exploitation.
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