What are the standards for ecological agriculture? Jiang Gaoming explains it this way
Due to work reasons, the author is often asked what kind of agriculture can be called ecological agriculture? What is the difference between ecological agriculture, traditional agriculture, and organic agriculture? Is ecological agriculture a return to primitive agriculture? Because of a lack of understanding of the connotation of ecological agriculture, plus some people deliberately misunderstanding it, ecological agriculture, in some special contexts, has become synonymous with backwardness, low yield, and low efficiency, and the only thing they acknowledge is that ecological agriculture is environmentally friendly.
If agriculture is developed merely for the sake of environmental protection and cannot meet the needs of a growing population, such agriculture obviously has no need to be promoted. In fact, ecological agriculture is a type of environment-friendly agricultural model that builds on the wisdom of traditional agriculture and uses modern ecological principles and scientific and technological advances to improve it. Ecological agriculture covers a very wide scope, involving farming, forestry, animal husbandry, sidelines, and fisheries, but in every link there is the contribution of species, and there is the contribution of farmers engaged in that industry. Several typical characteristics of ecological agriculture are: a beautiful agricultural ecological environment, harmonious coexistence between humans and nature, regeneration of elemental cycles, ecological balance, diverse species, greatly reduced or even eliminated use of pesticides, chemical fertilizers, antibiotics, and synthetic hormones, with most chemical fertilizers absorbed by crops rather than polluting the environment. Ecological agriculture has the following nine major advantages:
Advantage one, the agricultural ecological environment is protected, with zero non-point source pollution. Without a healthy agricultural ecology, there is no point in talking about ecological agriculture. Major agricultural pests and weeds are actually normal species in nature. Those that can be controlled by physical methods of interference should, as much as possible, not use chemical methods; those that can restore ecological balance without causing obvious impact on yield should, as much as possible, reduce human intervention, which both saves labor costs and protects the ecological environment. Ecological agriculture can use a small amount of pesticides, mainly for emergency use. It can use a small amount of chemical fertilizers, but the fertilizer use efficiency is high and the amount used is small. According to our previous research, if ecological agriculture is developed, stopping more than 90% of current pesticides and more than 50% of chemical fertilizers would have little impact on yield.
Advantage two, high quality, good taste, little pesticide residue or zero pesticide residue. Because the chemical substances invested in the earlier stage are very few, and biodegradable biological pesticides or low-toxicity pesticides are used as much as possible, combined with nature's self-purification capacity, and with a large amount of organic fertilizer as the main input, the taste of such agricultural products is good, namely the taste many people born in the 1950s to 1970s remember from childhood. The final products can withstand pesticide residue testing. If agricultural products are later detected to contain multiple pesticide residues, then they simply cannot be called ecological agriculture.
⟦NL> Advantage three, high economic benefit per unit of land. At present, because extensive chemical methods are used to farm, although yields are relatively high, prices are cheap, and sometimes when the market is bad the produce rots in the fields, causing serious waste of resources. There are two ways to improve economic benefits: either continue to expand the scale of land, but if quality is not improved and prices do not change, make it profitable for operators; or improve product quality and raise prices, and since ecological agriculture does not reduce yields, the benefit of one mu equals that of several mu. In that case, it is good for both consumers and producers. The former buy safe food and protect their own and their family's health, while the latter increase their income and are more willing to invest high-quality labor in the land.
Advantage four, combining planting and breeding, diversified planting, intercropping and relay cropping, and three-dimensional planting. This is the greatest advantage of ecological agriculture. A large amount of the fertilizer in ecological agriculture comes from the system itself; only when the six livestock flourish can the five grains be abundant. On a small area of land, a large variety of food types can be provided. Intercropping and relay cropping of legumes and grasses can directly use nitrogen sources from the air, and three-dimensional planting can also be achieved. The food diversity of ecological agriculture is unmatched by other agricultural methods. With rich species diversity, the system is stable and its ability to resist risks is high. According to the author's rough estimate, in a northern village of about one thousand people, nearly one hundred kinds of food can be provided, whereas under the American agricultural model, within hundreds or even thousands of square kilometers only one or two kinds of food can be produced, either corn or wheat. Not to mention intercropping and relay cropping, they cannot even manage sequential cropping. Their agriculture simply has no human presence; within dozens of square kilometers one can hardly see a person.
Advantage five, ecological agriculture has high yields. The yield of ecological agriculture is not low. Because the land is used and nourished, the nutrients taken away are replenished through organic fertilizer or a small amount of chemical fertilizer. More importantly, because there are few chemical substances, soil animals and soil microorganisms are abundant, and these organisms indirectly release minerals in the soil for plant roots to absorb. Under this model, if long-term fixed plots are maintained, yields increase steadily. Through 9 years of practice, we have successfully transformed low-yield fields into high-yield and stable-yield ton-grain fields, and we achieved this without even using pesticides or chemical fertilizers.
Advantage six, comprehensively improve the efficiency of water and nutrient use, save resources, and produce no waste. Because ecological agriculture respects the growth laws of animals and plants, adapts to local conditions, and arranges planting and breeding according to agricultural climate characteristics, with emphasis on consistency with natural laws and compliance with the farming seasons of the 24 solar terms, its water and nutrient use efficiency is high. In addition, with raised animals, rural food scraps and crop straw can all be used, increasing resource use efficiency. To achieve all this, human presence is necessary, and people play a very large role in it.
Advantage seven, it increases animal welfare, letting animals be happy, get sick less, and use less medicine and fewer antibiotics. Ecological agriculture rejects intensive farming and lets animals grow as much as possible in a good ecological environment, stay as close to the earth as possible, play with each other, and grow happily. This increases animal welfare and reduces or even eliminates the use of veterinary drugs and antibiotics from the source. For example, chickens raised on grasslands rarely get sick, and they also help control grassland pests.
Advantage eight, achieving carbon sequestration in cultivated land, reversing from carbon emission to carbon absorption. According to our research, under the modern agricultural model, each hectare releases 2.7 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, while organic agriculture releases 8.8 tons. That is to say, reducing chemical fertilizer use and increasing organic matter in cultivated land can bury greenhouse gases underground. This function is a by-product of ecological agriculture.
Advantage nine, ecological agriculture can comprehensively boost farmer employment. Because of high quality and good prices, plus a beautiful ecological environment, it has a strong appeal to urban people. Agricultural elements easily become commercial elements. From breeding to planting, from harvest to processing, from processing to sales, from dining to sightseeing tourism, from health care to wellness to elderly care, rural areas can achieve urbanization on the spot and attract second-generation farmers, second-generation college students, and even urban elites to work. In this way, if the 4 million villages across the country develop ecological agriculture, they may become a new point of economic growth.
Of course, does ecological agriculture have disadvantages? Of course it does, namely that it requires a lot of labor, and during busy farming seasons the work is heavy and tiring, so many farmers are unwilling to adopt it. We are researching some methods to reduce labor input, such as basically stopping the work of spraying pesticides, and using machinery for sowing and harvesting. More importantly, as long as the comparative benefit is high, farmers will invest labor. If going to the city to work does not earn as much as working the land, they will be unwilling to go to the city to work.
The following agricultural models, because they seriously violate ecological and even biological scale, are not ecological agriculture:
First, off-season vegetable greenhouses. This type of agricultural model separates crops from nature, and the internal high-temperature and high-humidity environment becomes a stress environment for plants. It cannot do without pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and herbicides, and is not a model proposed by ecological agriculture.
Second, intensive monoculture planting. This is the American-style large family farm model, where each farmer operates thousands or even tens of thousands of acres of land, but planting diversity declines, and although the machinery, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides invested are few, the environmental cost is large, the product taste is poor, and the surrounding birds have all stopped singing. This is agriculture with no human presence, suitable for producing feed for animals. The United States mostly uses grain produced under this agricultural model for export, feed, or industrial raw materials, though of course they also eat it themselves.
Third, agriculture with plastic film mulching. Plastic film cannot degrade, adding to environmental pollution. This model produces food while also growing carcinogens, and is an agricultural model that must be stopped. At present, many European countries have long stopped this short-sighted agricultural model of “killing the goose that lays the golden eggs”.
Fourth, genetically modified agriculture. Genetic modification seriously violates biological laws, seeds are monopolized by people, and it is bundled with special pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and herbicides. It is incompatible with ecological agriculture, so genetically modified agriculture simply cannot be called ecological agriculture. Some entities hastily announce that the genetically modified crops they developed are green and ecological just because pesticide use was reduced for only the first few years, which really defiles the word ecology.
Fifth, factory farming. This includes intensive livestock farms, engineered greenhouses, and soilless cultivation agriculture. Although these pesticide-based models can reduce a little labor and achieve rapid reproduction, they seriously violate animal welfare, the food produced is poor in nutrition, high in pesticide residue, and high in antibiotics, and they cause potential pollution to the groundwater environment. This is obviously not ecological agriculture either.
Finally, let me briefly discuss organic agriculture and natural farming. Organic agriculture is ecological agriculture that does not even use pesticides or chemical fertilizers. Its standards are stipulated by the state, and the environmental protection function of developing organic agriculture is more obvious. In various places there are also natural farming methods or natural agriculture. Ecologically, they are certainly very ecological, but if yields cannot be greatly increased, their practices deserve further discussion.