Embed Doc
Copy Link
Readcast
Collections

CommentGo Back

Download

The Lomandra Manifesto

Why there must be an ecology-based agriculture

Agriculture is the interface between the Earth and people, who utterlydepend on the soil for their survival.Done poorly, as it has been for much of history across many landscapes,agriculture is destructive—not because farming is inherently a destructiveact, but due to ignorance, poor decisions, and flawed notions of the rights of land ownership.Done well, agriculture is regenerative, a process that can operate parallel tonature in delivering fundamental human needs while contributing to thehealth of the planet.“Industrial agriculture”, since WWII the dominant technology-driven farmingculture of the North, works within a curious paradox. In the creation of food,a core human necessity, it degrades air, water and the soil that food is grownon. All of these areas are interlinked, so that in harming nature, industrialagriculture is progressively reducing its future capacity to produce food.“Ecological agriculture”—a catch-all phrase for agricultural methods that arelife-enhancing rather than life-suppressing—is based on the idea that foodproduction that degrades other natural necessities is inherently self-defeating.Ecological agriculture aims to align food and fibre production with naturalprocesses. Farm management becomes less focused on minimising nature’svariables and seeks instead to work within natural cycles; the farm producesnot only food, but clean air, clean water, and progressively more fertile soils— all of which contribute to the welfare of plants, animals and people.History is full of individual farmers, and a few cultures, who have envisionedand created a truly integrated agriculture; farming systems that are not onlyproductive and profitable, but which complement and extend the naturalworld. The world today has thousands of such farmers, with a uniquehistorical perspective: the breakdown in the perception that there is adifference between “agriculture” and “the environment”.

Agriculture

the environment, and always has been. How agriculture isconducted determines water quality and quantity, the extent of habitatavailable to plants and animals, air quality and the beauty of landscapes,among other things.Nevertheless, agriculture has always been thought of as separate to “theenvironment”, demanding different political portfolios and different policies.That false distinction has been erased by global warming and climate change.These events demonstrate that there is no part of the planet untouched byhumans, no fenced-off “environment” that is somehow separate from farms,or suburbs or CBDs. Preserving our environment depends on changing howhumanity everywhere interacts with the Earth. Agriculture provides the most powerful tool for environmental change thathumanity has at its disposal. Most of Earth’s land surface is influenced byagricultural activity. Creating an ecology-focused “agri-culture” thatacknowledges humanity’s need to sustain ecological health is the single mostimportant step we can take as a species.There is a growing recognition that the agriculture of the past cannot be theagriculture of the future. Fortunately, this understanding is dawning at atime unlike any other in history, when new knowledge can be broadcastacross the planet in seconds.The Lomandra network was established to foster this communication.Lomandra provides a framework within which creative, regenerativeagriculture can be discussed, refined, re-thought and built upon.This document attempts to explain why, and how.

The different faces of Lomandra

Lomandra was formed to connect people with the land that sustains them.This isn’t an original idea. Many individuals, and the philosophies they havefounded, have been aimed at a better relationship between people and thesoil.Rudolf Steiner founded Biodynamics in the early 1920s, because he believedthat the new agricultural practices then emerging were destroying thecapacity of food to aid people to higher spiritual insight. The Biodynamic

movement is still growing, largely because of the peerless quality of the foodthe method produces.The organic movement began in the 1940s, in reaction against “artificialmanures” which, the founders of organics (correctly) argued, werediminishing the taste and quality of food. Organics burgeoned in the 1980swith accreditation systems that gave consumers the ability to identifychemical-free food.Holistic Management had its origins in Rhodesia in the 1960s. Allan Savory,a game ranger, and later politician and educator, found that rangelandsresponded to management that mimicked the migrations of the great Africanherds. Savory subsequently realised that most land management isperformed reactively, in response to circumstances, when it could only beultimately successful if conducted proactively towards “holistic” goals—goalsthat balanced social, economic and environment outcomes. He developed aframework for making decisions that asks that the ecological, social andfinancial consequences of an action be accounted for. His philosophy hasbecome widely known as “triple bottom line” thinking.Permaculture was developed in Australia in the 1970s, in reaction againstthe monoculture systems that have defined post-WWII agriculture. Thesystem, now taught across the world, uses landscape engineering and plant“guilds” to mimic natural ecology that requires a minimum of humaninterference while being productive.More recently, the work of Peter Andrews, a naturally-gifted reader of the Australian landscape, has begun to attract attention. Andrews argues thatpre-European Australian landscapes functioned more effectively becausewater was stored year-round in the soil. Using what he terms “naturalsequence farming”, he has demonstrated, among other things, that water isbest stored in the soil profile, where it can restore year-round flows andhealth to waterways and underpin much greater productivity from farm soils.New lines of thought have sprung up in the past few years.Biological farming emphasises a living, fertile soil as the necessary basis forsuccessful agriculture. Management practices revolve around maintaininglife within the soil. Unlike organic farmers, practitioners choose to usechemical solutions, if necessary; but biological farming recognises that soil is