a long one on *deep* organic farming

[Guest guest]

not exactly vegan, but....

http://www.rakemag.com/features/detail.asp?catID=61 & itemID=19847

 

A groundbreaking essay by the nation’s foremost organic grower and writer.

 

Thor Heyerdahl’s classic adventure story, The Ra Expeditions, has a lesson for

agriculture. Heyerdahl wanted to prove that ancient Egyptian sailors could have

reached the New World in traditional boats constructed of bundled papyrus

stalks. He and his crew studied fresco paintings, three to four thousand years

old, on the tomb walls of pyramids for instruction on the size, shape, and style

of the crafts. In the paintings there was one rope represented, from the

stern’s curled-in tip down to the afterdeck, for which they could discern no

purpose suggested by modern physics, and in the ensuing construction it was left

out. Ra I collapsed in mid-ocean for lack of that rope. Their second attempt, Ra

II, with the newly appreciated rope in its assigned place, completed the voyage

without a hitch.

 

In the story of agriculture’s transition from the traditions of the past to

the realities of the present, there is a missing element that is the rope’s

equivalent—an unappreciated detail without which the worldwide agricultural

system will eventually fall apart.