How did our forefathers ever grow anything?

SL3

SL3

I constantly have to ask myself how the old farmers of the past ever got a crop. Today many of you are probably surrounded by asphalt and concrete. Most before you pretty much eradicated many of the pests you might be dealing with had you lived in what use to be country many years ago.
 
I for one, live in a community where most houses are on large parcels of dirt surrounded by 1000 of acres of hills and boulders of untouched land. I have to ask myself, is this why I have battled every garden pest known to man? Many friends in their homes and condos just a few miles away rarely encounter the numerous pests I seem to fight weekly. Oh they may get the occasional pest, but run to the garden store find their cure and that’s the last of it.
 
These friends’ yields are four times larger than mine and they only have a few plants. Yet they do nothing to encourage such growth. No AACT, no special soils, foliar sprays or fertilizers. They do nothing but water their plants. It has been enough to make me want to buy a place in the city just to do my gardening.
 
Recently my co-worker who lives in the City brought in a very large batch of Anaheim Peppers. These things were three times larger than mine and looked too perfect to even be real. They have less than 20 square feet in their backyard and most of that is concrete and a small Koi Pond. While back at my place I have 50+ plants and have so far battled Aphids, Spider Mites, Thrips, Leaf Miners, Little Green Worms, Big Grasshoppers, Tiny Grasshoppers, Mildew, Bacterial Infections, Odd Deformities and Plant Wilt. I rarely go an entire week without finding the next plague.
 
Last night I got a double dose. Due to not having many bees on my property this year, I decided to let my basil bloom. For some reason the basil flowers really brings the bees in. What I did not realize is that it seems to attract baby grasshoppers too. I went to water the basil last night and hundreds upon hundreds of tiny green grasshoppers jumped out landing all over my pepper plants.
 
If that wasn’t enough while chasing down a couple of these mini-hoppers I discovered my entire Jamaican Hot Chocolate plant covered from top to bottom with a new type of aphid in my garden. These one are colorless and much larger than the black or brown ones I have battled in the past.  I made quick work of them with the neem oil, and so far can’t find them on any other plant, which is amazing seeing how many of them there were.
 
I always wondered with all the land out here why so many homes in my community opt for plastic covered green houses. I always thought they were either foolish due to the heat in this area, or they were just hiding their cannabis crops. But I’m betting now they were all forced to take their gardens inside.
 
So it begs the question. How did our forefathers ever eat off this land when pesticides and even new scientific organic cures were virtually unknown? I mean surely they couldn’t have sprayed acres of land with Neem Oil, right? 
 
In my opinion, our forefathers didn't have the pest issues because there was more of a natural balance in the ecosystem. Plenty of predators and prey. I am sure they still lost the occasional crop, but they kept it simple, and simple works best. Since I switched to all organic methods, added more insect predators to my environment, and stopped worrying about fertilizing all the time, I have had amazing harvests. I totally understand getting out the "nuclear options" when things get drastic, but anymore, if I see aphids on a plant (outside the greenhouse) I leave them be for a few days or a week and come back. At that point, if they are impacting the health of the plant, I go to war. Most of the time, when I come back a week later, nature has already remedied the problem, the predators take care of them for me. If you constantly go to war with every pest you see, the natural predators will stay away because there is nothing for them to eat, which leads to an imbalance and more spraying.
 
You would be surprised how advanced ancient horticultural techniques were.  Many culures understood the concept of feeding the soil... research terra pretta.  Some cultures had techniques that used symbiotic plants which detered pests and encouraged populations of beneficial insects to thrive.  Also, people ate the food crops that already flourished in their environment... and, in many cases they ate a great number of plants and di not rely on mass cultivation of mono crops like we do today.  This leads into another major point... because of the practice of large scale monocropping... the pests that thrive upon a particular plant have actually increased in number...  and at the same time the predators of those pests are dimishing in population (amphibians)  so over-all there are more pests.  This problem has been compounded by the fact that, for one, chemical companies such as monsanto and dupont have been making pesticides, which, over time, actually make the pests into super-pests becasue trhe weaker genes are selected out of the gene pool in the evolution of those species.  Secondly... there is a genetic bottlenecking as hybridization of food crops cinsists in the inbreeding of a diminishinlgy small number of parents.  As the genetic variation decreases there is more of a chance that the introduction of some new environmetal stimulus (super-pests in this case) will result in the extinction of the species... because the sub species which would have possibly had a defense within its genes have already been selected out by genetic engineering. 
 
So... in summary, ancient horticulturalists had very nice soil... so they wouldnt have problems with nutrient defficiencies (of course what happened in africa as a result of extensive monocroping of grain is an exception)... and they also grew foods which thrived in their climate... and they had fewer and weaker pests.  Most of the difficulty in farming these days is a modern phenomenon.  Since the age of exploration, where the world became connected and flora and fauna were translocated here and there... the balance has been thrown off...  From soil compaction due ot machinery, to erosion from plantation famring with land scarification... to prolonged monocropping expending the soil of all its worth... to genetic manipulation resulting in super pests and super weeds (transgenic funkiness)...  to the introduction of invasive flora and fauna, or genetic bottlenecking due to hybridization... these are all modern problems...
 
We over-analyze our plants and end up killing them(and ourselves) with what we think they need rather than letting Ma Nature do her thing.  We decided to grow perfect plants rather than grow plants and the pests adapted to everything synthetic we threw at them.  Natural preds are the way to go and always have been.
 
Well my forefather, had my dad plow and other things to the fields from 5 am to 11pm with only school giving him a brake off the tractor. LOL Back then it was all Organic and lower yields and a lot more work that the hole family help out with. 
 
Well most grew a larger group of plants and more of each type then they needed.  They also would grow food for all of the animals that they kept and used.  Also many would have poultry which are an excellent way to deal with insect problems.
 
All of the waste from crops would be used to feed animals and their waste products would be used to feed the crops.  It works quite well for a long time. 
 
When you just try to grow a couple plants, you need to find/add allot of nutrients, but many buy a bag of soil filled with ferts and are done....   As far as if nature destroys one of the plants you will really notice when your not growing any excess to start with.
 
All great responses, and for me is a lot to think about. I really have gotten to the point of letting nature take care of itself and see what happens. Its interesting to me how only one plant can be attacked by one species of pest with so many of the same plants right next to them. Although they look perfectly healthy, I wonder if they smell out some sort of weakness, so the strong live to propagate, while the weak are eliminated.
 
SL3 said:
All great responses, and for me is a lot to think about. I really have gotten to the point of letting nature take care of itself and see what happens. Its interesting to me how only one plant can be attacked by one species of pest with so many of the same plants right next to them. Although they look perfectly healthy, I wonder if they smell out some sort of weakness, so the strong live to propagate, while the weak are eliminated.
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Plants give off distinct chemical scents just like humans, I can relate as I'm always the one that gets swarmed by mosquito's while no one else has a single one on them.
 
Plants also generally won't show signs of distress until it's gone on for quite awhile, so even if it looks perfectly healthy it doesn't mean it is.  A brix meter is the only way to accurately gauge plant health by measuring the sugar content of it's sap.  Not worth the time for your average backyard gardener though.
 
Breed chickens, guinea fowl, and local species of toad then let them loose in your garden.  That will help with both bug eradication, and some fertilization.  There are a million things that contribute to modern gardening problems, most of them mentioned in posts above.  As an industry, realistically, there isn't much you as an individual can change, but on your own property, if you have the modern problems identified than on your property you can work toward change.  Maybe more natural methods will catch on.  True organic growing (not so much government defined) is getting bigger with more people.  I'm taking little steps, I don't use any chemical insecticides (still use occasional chem ferts, but I'm scaling those back as well).
 
History is filled with tragedies of failed crops.  The potato famine was caused by a fungus.  We read many instances of locusts/grasshoppers destroying entire nation's crops throughout antiquity.  The Boll Weevil nearly destroyed the entire cotton industry word wide. 
 
In the early days of this country, our forefathers would clear a piece of land, burn it, and plant it until it was wasted and used-up.  Then, they would move on to the next piece of land.  Pushing the Native Americans further and further west btw.
 
Many civilizations kept meticulous records of harvests.  The entire world would starve if we produced the pitiful harvests of just 200 years ago!  Much less the harvest of 1000 years ago.  We can hate on the chemical industry but, we'd be begging for their return very quickly if they were to instantly cease production of pesticides.
 
I'm no friend of Monsanto or any of the other chemical giants.  I hate MUCH of what they are doing.  But again, if they were to instantly vanish from the face of the earth, the numbers of people on this planet would plummet!  Quickly!  Sad?  Yes, but true! 
 
Historically, farming has been a pretty tough business to be in. Most years a farmer would probably do just fine, maybe worrying about some yield loss due to birds, mammals and insects. But then sometimes disaster strikes. Some highly contagious disease gets established in the field and yield goes down by 90%. There is an explosion in the local population of some plant eating insect and yields go down by 90%. It doesn't rain for 3 straight months, and yields go down by 90%. Your field is near a river and there is a huge flood a month before harvest, wiping out your entire crop. There is an exceptionally early frost, destroying the entire crop. There is an exceptionally late frost killing most of your plants.
 
Farming is one of humanity's oldest technologies. We have been improving our methods for at least 10,000 years. Irrigation, terracing, crop rotation, fertilization, selective breeding, tillage, apiculture, pesticides, herbicides, etc. etc. etc. Yes, megacorp agribusiness is run by a bunch of greedy blood sucking A-holes, but it takes megatons of corn, soybeans and cotton to keep the world fed and clothed. Without modern factory farming as practiced by companies like ADM, using seed designed by companies like Monsanto and Syngenta, and doused with pesticides and fertilizers from companies like Dow and DuPont, there would be a lot more naked starving people in the world. A few thousand years ago, you and everyone else in your village would probably be spending the majority of every day working to keep yourself and your families fed. Today people grow things mostly as a hobby,
 
I disagree that we need petro-chem agri corps to survive.  The current system is designed to fulfill our wants, not our needs.  Look at the reaction to the UN study that found we should be eating more insects instead of animals to increase our ltprotein.  The idea is abhorrent to us but common in most of the world.  We're surrounded by food, dandelion, lambsquarter or pigweed for instance are highly nutritious and grow abundantly with no cultivation but we view them as "weeds". This video illustrates the problem well and it's only 2 minutes long, http://www.cultureunplugged.com/documentary/watch-online/play/11986/Michael-Pollan-s-Food-Rules
 
The UN's FAO also concluded that organic cultivation could meet our food demands, so it's not an isolated viewpoint.  It would also create a lot more jobs and even the distribution of wealth, not only in north america but worldwide by creating local self reliant economies.  I just saw a documentary today about the introduction of agri forestry to Africa and the incredible effect it's having, everything from creating food security, lowering drought severity, generating bio diesel, creating spin off revenue streams all based on "primitive low tech" solutions.  As none of these methods enrich the corporate powers, they're rarely promoted.  Instead we sell monsanto's bt cotton to India to our profit while farmers struggle to grow a product designed to be properly irrigated in a country where they go from monsoon to drought.  It only makes sense if you look at the bottom line, who's promoting this technology and who's profiting from it.
 
So in my opinion, if we changed our societal values and returned to a more holistic, integrated lifestyle we could address our problems while contributing to the ecosystem instead of depleting it as well as some societal ones.
 
That's right, we'll eat bugs, eat weeds and redistribute the wealth.  God forbid anyone make a dastardly profit!  The UN knows what's right for us.  I mean, after all they are the ones who chose Khadafy's regime to chair the Human Rights division!  Sheesh!!  
 
Bigoledude said:
That's right, we'll eat bugs, eat weeds and redistribute the wealth.  God forbid anyone make a dastardly profit!  The UN knows what's right for us.  I mean, after all they are the ones who chose Khadafy's regime to chair the Human Rights division!  Sheesh!!  
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I'd rather that then create a new desert in middle America, like humans have created in the middle east, morocco, china, africa, etc through unsustainable agriculture that strips the top soil, leaving subsoil not capable of supporting much life.  Obviously no one "knows" what's right, we can just make educated guesses on what  we should do.  When I look at the modern food industry, it doesn't make sense to me. As the above video mentions, we use half our food to grow meat even though the quantity of meat we're eating is causing health issues (issues rarely found in developing countries with a more natural grain/vegetable based diet, supplemented with meat, that is until they adopt a western mentality and diet).  In 2008, at the height of the food "crisis", we grew enough grains/vegetables to feed 11 billion people but we still have rampant starvation even in developed nations.  Like northern Native communities in Canada for instance.
 
I never said anything about farmers not making a profit, just that the current system that concentrates wealth into the 1% at the expense of the 99% is imbalanced and not the only way.  As both of the above sources state, organic methods can meet the worlds needs, especially in developing nations which aren't heavily invested in the unsustainable infrastructure we've created in the developed world (including Europe obviously).  Consider this market gardener, http://lagrelinette.com/, who's grossing 100k on only a couple acres.  Much higher then the typical return of 20k/acre as he's reduced his overhead and increased his revenue through localized organic gardening.  It makes more sense to me to have thousands of small independently run farms providing the majority of peoples needs (while not excluding some imported food for diversity, just making it a small portion of the diet instead of the majority) instead of a few thousand acre farms producing gross profits for a few by shipping food all around the world.  
 
Those "weeds" you're dismissing were imported here by the pioneers because of their value.  It's only in our modern age of consumerism that we've forgotten their importance.  Instead they're sold as "specialty" greens at inflated prices, when they're easy to grow abundantly and really are no different then spinach.  Same as fermented foods, there's more and more research showing that the modern diet of sterilized foods is contributing to the rampant health issues we face (especially mental development).  Not recognizing the dysfunction of society will only perpetuate the problems.
 
The just of my point is it'll be easier to consciously transition to a more sustainable production model, rather then be forced into it because of climate change/peak oil/lack of fresh water/etc.  History is filled with examples of societies that collapse because they aren't sustainable and fall apart once the resources run out, like the Romans.  It brings to mind the quote "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different result"...
 
Monkey Hunter if a few billion have to starve for me to have my ground beef and chicken then so be it. As long as they can't do anything to me and I don't have to see them suffer then there's no problem. Out of sight out of mind.
 
cactusMD said:
Monkey Hunter if a few billion have to starve for me to have my ground beef and chicken then so be it. As long as they can't do anything to me and I don't have to see them suffer then there's no problem. Out of sight out of mind.
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I'd assume you'd be concerned for your children's future as unemployment and the wealth gap gets worse year after year, not to mention that this is the first generation that's predicted to have a shorter lifespan then their parents because of how we're living... To each their own, if you're happy with the state of your nation all the power to ya.  I choose to acknowledge the issues so that I can be part of the push to change before we're, or more likely our children, are forced to because the world can no longer support our hedonistic desire to eat meat 3 times a day, every day, instead of having a balanced healthy diet.
 
cactusMD said:
Monkey Hunter if a few billion have to starve for me to have my ground beef and chicken then so be it. As long as they can't do anything to me and I don't have to see them suffer then there's no problem. Out of sight out of mind.
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Is this reportable?
 
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