In chapter 3, Guzman talks about her research between 31 different small farms. Half that had a single crop and half that had a diverse mix. Her first sign were the bees. She realized that with these squash bees, who exclusively rely on squash, would stick around longer in the polyculture. But in the monoculture, they would run out of stuff to forage.
Her primary interest however was the fungi in the soil. She explained that in monoculture the soil is bare for the period of time in crops which would lead the fungi to then starve. In the farms with polyculture though they had twice as many types of fungi rather than the monoculture. She then states that if we need biodiversity underground then we need it aboveground too.
She then talks about some history of farming. 5,000 years ago when Indigenous Mesoamericans first domesticated corn they knew better than to plant it alone. They would plant it with beans and squash. They found that these 3 crops when planted together helped each other out a bunch. The beans would add nitrogen which the corn would use up and the squash would help with erosion using its broad leaves to smother weeds.
This just shows us that even 5,000 years ago they knew it was better to plant stuff together rather than keeping them separate.
1 comment:
I think this chapter helped us really understand the change we’ve seen from smaller and local polycultures to large scale mass produced food. It seems with all this information and the people who are willing to step up and share their knowledge we would hope to see change. I very much agree with the point of needing biodiversity aboveground as much as below, it’s almost impossible to see any benefit if there isn’t a balance somewhere in the solution.
Post a Comment