The ineffectiveness of Modern agriculture

The ineffectiveness of Modern agriculture

The deafening silence shown by politics towards agriculture is perhaps the most evident example of how falsehoods, even technical ones, can be made to pass as widely acclaimed truths. The agricultural model from which all of modern innovation was born is the American one and, looking at the statistics, no one could doubt that we are reading incontestable data. Instead, behind this apparent absolute truth are hidden tremendous lies manipulated by the great multinationals (and by the absence of governments). Energetically speaking, “a farmer with an ox and a plough obtains a better return, in terms of energy employed, than the gigantic mechanized farms of America of our times”… (from Entropy by Jeremy Rifkin). The knowledge of our farmers has been replaced by plant protection products that constantly alter the equilibrium of the ecosystem, with an enormous waste of the system itself to restore it. The final result is that we no longer succeed in “training” young farmers who are able to understand how to behave with regard to the ecological equilibriums of their own business and for this reason the irrational use of synthetic products increasingly destroys the rural ecosystem.

… “Between 1960 and 1978, the employment of nitrogenous fertilizers more than tripled, nevertheless the annual harvest of wheat in 1986 was smaller than in 1974″… (from Entropy by Jeremy Rifkin).
In Sicily, with the introduction of modern wheat obtained by genetic manipulation to get varieties that are more productive and more resistant to some “defects” such as lodging, the total production of wheat has not increased from 1960 to today; on the contrary, it is decreasing gradually as the increase in production per hectare is exceedingly offset by the decrease in the surface that is cultivated or no longer used due to landslides, urbanization, desertification, etc… Let us also mention the rise in the cases of celiac disease, hitherto almost unknown.
The advent of modern education, based on the obligation to attend “Modern Schools”, has in fact taken young people away from the rural districts. The result is that young people do not have any experience in the sector anymore (which is paid at a high price) and the inhabited centres of the rural areas are becoming increasingly depopulated with an environmental and territorial cost (for the social and territorial disorder) that will become unbearable in future years.
In addition, the introduction of the concept of the liberalization of markets is the most absurd issue that has ever been conceived given that the thermodynamic systems of our planet are structured on “models of organized complexity”, which means that it is necessary to have protected forms that guarantee more complex systems. I would like to explain this through an example: if we decided that cell membranes are an obstacle to the “free circulation” of cell nutrients we could eliminate them but we would realize then that by eliminating the cell membranes we would die within seconds. This is what is happening in our complex world where we are exchanging and misinterpreting the concept of globalization with that of liberalization. When we liberalize without membranes we destroy the social and territorial fabric and therefore, in the end, also the economic fabric.
I am not even going to talk about the question of GMOs, it does not even deserve a serious analysis, given that even the official science finds evaluating their real necessity embarrassing. According to the American Council for Agricultural Science, (given that at a European level a blind eye is being taken), “a third of all U.S cropland is suffering soil losses too great to be contained without a gradual but ultimately disastrous decline in productivity (because of modern technologies and the advent of GMOs)”
Instead governments, especially those of the European Union, have built a system of rural Development that is aberrant and destined to an unprecedented socioeconomic failure.
We are replacing a millennia-old culture with a technology that can be considered deviated because it is not produced by wisdom but by economic interests.
We are driving man from his territory, depopulating it and instead foolishly populating urban centres on the verge of collapse (both socially and energetically).
Many of us are tired of listening to the “wise” lectures of professors and economists who, with their deplorable analyses, are demolishing the world of Wisdom. A world built by the patient contribution of tradition. I forgot to point out that it was the culture of the enlightenment that demonized tradition, considering it a “source of error and prejudices.”
I hope that future generations will realize that Wisdom is already present in the world and must not be looked for in directions dictated by economic powers.

Guido Bissanti