Low-Input Agriculture

Low-input agriculture describes farming systems that require and use less purchased, synthetic products to effectively grow a crop. Agricultural inputs include fertilizers, fungicides, pesticides, and herbicides, as well as seeds, irrigation water, and fuel. Though necessary in all agriculture, within the context of the terms low- and high-input agriculture, the additive products are chemical-based or artificial, the irrigation is more intensive and disruptive to underground water tables, and the seeds are hybrid or, more recently, genetically engineered. According to agroecologists, low-input agriculture has numerous ecological benefits in comparison with its high-input counterpart; namely, it conserves and even enhances soil fertility, agricultural biodiversity, water quality, and habitat integrity. As a result of the decreased use of pesticides and herbicides, low-input agriculture protects farmer health and produces less-toxic foodstuffs. Moreover, such farming requires less tillage, thus allowing soil to sequester more carbon, and it consumes fewer inputs manufactured with greenhouse gas emissions. Finally, advocates contend that low-input agriculture relieves the grower of the burden of debt associated with the “treadmill” of annually purchased, technological inputs, and so makes up a central component of food security, food sovereignty, and environmental justice.

Some growers prefer the term low-external-input agriculture, as effective, sustainable farming requires a great deal of inputs—just not synthetic or purchased ones. Low-input farmers rely chiefly on managing on-farm resources to plant, cultivate, and harvest their crops. For instance, farmers may save their seed from a previous harvest rather than buy hybrid seeds—that do not save effectively—or genetically engineered seeds—which are patented such that their saving would be a breach of intellectual property rights, punishable by fine or lawsuit. Farmers increase the fertility of their soils through the application of manures, crop residues, compost, and the cultivation of nitrogen-fixing legumes, planted off-season to replenish the nitrogen lost during the regular growing season. Growers may also extend their growing season through simple-technology cold-storage frames, greenhouses, and hoop houses. Although dramatically lessening the amount of purchased, synthetic additions, low-input agriculture does, however, require a significantly high-input of labor, skill, and local ecological knowledge.

Technically, most indigenous agrarian systems around the world and throughout history have been low-input, flourishing with masterful agribiodiversity results. From the Quechuan region of the Southern Andes to the Luzon Cordilla of the Philippines, locally [Page 291]adapted, low-input agrarian traditions now serve as models for long-term ecological sustainability. The legendary tradition of the ancient milpa system of North and Central America interplants squash, beans, and corn so as to enhance soil fertility (legumes replenish nitrogen used by corn), prevent weeds (squash leaves shadow the ground), foster timely growth (beans wrap up corn stalk), and make up a complete protein.

Though ancient and universal, low-input agricultural practices have enjoyed a revival within the recent environmental movement. Posited as an alternative to the industrialization of agriculture, the green revolution—and its offspring the gene revolution—uses low-input agriculture as an umbrella term for a number of specific agroecological movements. It often encompasses organic food production, following the tenets of British botanist Sir Albert Howard, who demonstrated the correlation of soil health to human health through the detoxifying properties of the composting process. It also partakes of Austrian Rudolf Steiner's theories of biodynamics, wherein the entire farm is understood as a comprehensive, unique organism. The Kyusei Nature farming movement of 1930s Japan introduced the use of effective microorganisms—a low-input strategy—to improve soil, and thus food quality. The Australian permaculture, or “permanent agriculture,” movement popularized the goal of designing a farm or garden that mimicked—instead of combated—natural ecological processes. Each of these endeavors emphasizes the process as much as the products of farming, advocating that the long-term health of the soil, and thus of humans, entails careful attention to and nurturance of the ecological balances and systems already at work in any field.

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