16. Soil Fertility and Cultivation
Our primeval Mother Earth is an organism that no science in the
world can rationalize. Everything on her that crawls and flies is
dependent upon her and all must hopelessly perish if that Earth dies
that feeds us. Viktor Schauberger^1The crisis in intensive farming
When there was great enthusiasm in the 1930s for the much publi-
cized glamour of industrialized agriculture, Viktor Schauberger was
very aware of its pitfalls, developing a number of field tests which
demonstrated the fallacy of the new technologies. Though he did
not live to see the dramatic agricultural catastrophes of the 1990s,
to a large extent he predicted them.
Intensive farming developed first in the Americas, where the
limitless vast open plains could be cultivated or grazed in only very
large units. At first in North America, and then on the South Amer-
ican plains, this meant enormous herds of cattle or highly mecha-
nized crop cultivation. Because of the inevitable depletion of
minerals and, as a consequence of monoculture, intensive farming
of this kind soon leads to the widespread use of chemical drugs or
artificial fertilization with animals, and herbicides with cultivation.
By its very nature intensive agriculture is unsustainable, but it is a
big and profitable international industry and, as we all know, we are
living at a time where big profits count for more than human or eco-
logical values.
There is a growing interest in sustainable cultivation, and
there are many books on the topic. It is impossible to grow crops
without a loss of fertility in the soil. We shall be examining differ-
ent methods of fertilization from the inorganic to increasingly
higher organic and energetic processes. Viktor Schauberger's
whole research was deeply committed to improving food quality
and soil fertility. He had original ideas about fertilization, but his
most intriguing ideas were concerned with amplifying the subtle
energies of the planet to bring about higher quality in the plants
themselves.
- SOIL FERTILITY AND CULTIVATION