I came across this great article from The Hindu, “Neyyattinkara municipality turns to natural farming .” As I read into the article I realized that this method is something that I have never heard of before and after reading a bit more about it, it seems like a no-brainer. I mean why wouldn’t a farmer, especially a poor farmer, want to use resources that he/she already has in abundance to fertilize his/her crops? Even more so when this usage would reduce the amount spent on commercially prepared (expensive) fertilizers that have to be brought in from outside the farm!
This article tells how a province in India is planning to implement this method across its agricultural areas in the near future. Below is an excerpt from the same:
“ZBNF is an emerging trend in agriculture that propagates use of natural manure and nutrients for farming instead of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Unlike organic farming, this method of farming focusses on using things that are naturally available inside or around the farm so that nothing is purchased from outside.
“Most prominently, it focusses on the use of dung and urine of local breeds of cows that are considered to be the best source of nutrients and microbes for cultivation. This method has been successfully tested in Palakkad district and has proven to give high yield in vegetable cultivation,” Neyyattinkara municipality secretary G. Sudhakaran said.”
Once again I am struck at how it seems that much of the agricultural production in this country (USA) is focused on the production of food and grain crops not for the food value, but rather for the commercial benefit of producing, and then selling, the industrial fertilizers and pesticides and other chemicals that fuel the system in the US. I bemoan the failure of the FDA and the USDA that now say specifically that any “food” grown where animal waste has be used as fertilizer is considered tainted and possibly not safe for human consumption……
Some more resources about Zero Budget Natural Farming from the web:
I personally thought that this way of farming was already popular. It is known that manure is a good fertilizer. By using natural resources it produces healthier food and cuts down on cost, oppose to buying pesticides and fertilizers. I agree that it is a no-brainer to use what is already in abundance around you. Who wants to eat something made from something that wouldn’t originally produced in the wild?
Mercedez is right, why wouldn’t people want to eat something made originally in the wild? I mean that’s where we get food from, or at least we did, from the wild. Whats better artificially Made food VS food made from recycled resources?
My first reaction to this article was like Merecedez’s, I thought it was already a common practice. I know that manure is a good fertilizer so I don’t see why farmers wouldn’t want to utilize what they already have. The more i thought about it though i did get kind of freaked out when I imagined my lunch growing in a pile of poop somewhere… I don’t know that the cleaning requirements are for processed fertilizer but that sounds a little less gross than untreated manure. I think that if the farmers were able to produce natural manure with what they have that would be a good idea as long as it is safe for the food.
Catherine I agree with you completely. The idea of my food being produced in poop is kinda sick nasty. I know manure is a good fertilizer but even when I am walking in the spring time and i smell manure on peoples lawns i get grossed out. But, as catherine states, as long as the manure fertilizer is safe for our food then ME and many others are going to need to get over the disgustingness of it. The long run of the manure fertilizer is way better too, farmers are using their natural resources for producing food which is a key component in an environmentally sustainable world.
I knew that dung and urine are great fertilizers, but for many American farmers, they would prefer to just throw away the animal waste and buy chemical fertilizer. I think that if it could be proven that dung and urine are just as good or better than the chemicals, then farmers would be willing to switch, but until that happens they are reluctant because of the risk to their crops. If the animal waste could make crops grow faster, it would be used, so my guess is that it does not do quite as a good a job. The agricultural market is all about making the most crops the fastest, so it is understandable that if dung does not make the crops grow quickly, it is not used. While I see that it would be a great way to reduce the chemical fertilizers put on crops, I can also see why the farmers would be hesitant to switch.
Great point Cameron! I agree that farmers are only thinking economically and not environmentally as too how to grow their crops. Most people will think about money before the environment any day so we need to find a way to make the environment and economics positively correlate.
I agree with Cameron in the idea that farmers are not very willing to take a risk using dung and urine as their fertilizers. They are already used to buying and using chemical fertilizer. However, that does not seem reasonable to go out and buy chemical fertilizer when farmers can just use dung and urine fertilizers. So there must be something about the dung and urine fertilizers that farmers do not favor. If farmers did favor these fertilizers, then they would not still be purchasing and using chemical fertilizers. It is a good idea for farmers to use urine and dung fertilizers, however I see why farmers prefer the chemical fertilizer more.
It’s a shame that farming has come to quantity over quality, but it seems as though commercial farmers are only concerned with the amount of crops they are able to grow in order to substantiate the needs of the consumers. In other words, it’s about money and the rate at which farmers are able to grow crops, not the quality of the product. Organic fertilizers such as the dung mentioned in this article seem like a great idea, but to farmers, chemical fertilizers make the most sense because they work faster. However, what some farmers may fail to realize is that chemical fertilizers break down the soil and strip it of some of the natural, necessary nutrients. As a result, more and more fertilizer is needed and eventually it becomes hard to manage. In the long run, natural fertilizers make much more sense, but commercial farmers are only looking to satisfy the present demand of consumers.
Allie I have to agree with you. Too often today people care more about how much they can produce rather than the quality of what they produce. I’m glad you brought that up. This is a problem that goes beyond using chemical fertilizers instead of natural fertilizers. Its hard to find any company that truely cares about the quality of their product to the benefit of the customer. Americans have lost that personal business feel.
Allie you have a good point! Chemical fertilizers do break down the nutrients of the soil which in the long run will effect the farmers for they will have to buy more and more chemical fertilizer to maintain healthy soil which will cost wayy more than just using manure fertilizer and having their crops not grow as fast. The way farmers work nowadays is quite sad for if they are wanting to use chemical fertilizer that will make their crops grow faster then how do we know what all they are using for their production to increase?? This can eventually get worrisome because for farmers they are looking at, how allie states above, the present demand for consumers not the longrun. This is a buisness for farmers and buisinesses can screw people over. That is kinda scary!
I agree with Bri’s statement that there must be some reason that farmers prefer about chemical fertilizers over cow dung and urine fertilizers, otherwise why would they waste their money? I also agree with Allie that it is pathetic that farmers now focus on quantity of crops rather than quality to meet the needs of consumers. Because quantity is their main focus, farmers choose to use chemical fertilizers instead of natural fertilizers to speed up the process. I disagree with the FDA and USDA’s statement “that any “food” grown where animal waste has be used as fertilizer is considered tainted and possibly not safe for human consumption..” because I think it is just as unsafe to grow what is supposed to be naturally- growing food in fertilizer filled with chemicals.
I agree with Allie that it is very unfortunate how farmers care more about quantity than quality and choose to use chemical fertilizers instead of natural, which can be harmful to our health. Even though it is more efficient to use chemical fertilizer it does not pay off in the long run. It amazes me how so many people including me are not aware of how our crops are grown and of the unhealthy chemical fertilizer that is being used.
I think that Teal is right in saying that people are much too uneducated on their foods and their effects on the environment. It is definitely important that people learn more about how their food is raised, processed, and cleaned before it reaches our homes.
I agree with you all i wish that farmers would be more conciencious of the people they are catering too because it will end up benefitting them more than harming them. The use of chemical fertelizers could be potentially damageing to even them and i dont think they are aware of the full extent of the damage they are causing by making that choice.
I think your right in the fact that it could benefit themselves financially and maybe production wise too. However I don’t think it really will damage the farmer themselves. If they uses these chemicals they harm the cattle not so much the actual farmer, the farmer probably does eat from there own farm so that would effect them but they should probably be focused on that they buy foods that are also infested in chemicals. I think this whole process should be looked at using natural waste as a resource is very smart and ecological
I think that this is a great idea to use animal waste available in abundance at farms to fertilize crops. It would greatly reduce the amount of money spent of fertilizers that are made commercially and that are expensive. I agree with the FDA and USDA that it might be dangerous to use the animal waste as a natural fertilizer. But, I think that they should agree to test the animal waste and see exactly what is in it and that they should also test the crops grown from the fertilizer using animal waste.
I think that it’s very unfortunate that a lot of farmers are more concerned with how much they can produce rather than how healthy it is. I understand that in todays time, especially with the economy, that wanting to make as much money as one can is essentially the main idea. However, in this circumstance, I don’t think there should be this sort of relaxed outlook on what one is selling. Because this is dealing with food and the health of potentially millions of people…there isn’t room to make a bad product for more money. The effects are much to dangerous if something were to go wrong.
Personally I think that the idea that using manure as fertilizer is hazardous is just a myth built up by our culture. For thousands of years people did not have chemical farmers and they obviously did quite well because, well here we are today. As unappetizing as it may seem I think it is most likely healthier to eat food grown in natural fertilizer rather than chemical fertilizer. However it would be interesting to see and compare the health benefits/liabilities of both natural and chemical fertilizers.
A few people mentioned here how ludicrous it is for farmers to follow the idea of quality over quantity. Really, though, farming is just another business. Business works for profits. If it’s cheap to use fertilizer and pesticides and whatnot, than companies are going to use it because it’s a viable option. Natural waste from animals doesn’t function as a pesticide, meaning that if companies that control massive farms follow this ZBNF practice, there’s a possibility that they’ll lose money, meaning they’ll choose not to do it. None of use are going to be able to stop them from doing what’s right for business.
This ZBNF is more suited for small scale farms; for farms that don’t carry the weight of a conglomerate on their backs. What we can do, as economic consumers, is to stop buying from the big farms, and begin buying from the small farms. What do you think the big companies will do when they see all their profits going straight to farms that use ZBNF?
But this also begs the question “how long can a small farm keep up the business when in competition with a large farm?” I think that in order for ZBNF to truly succeed, many people would need to make a commitment to buy the produce that these farms produce.
Isn’t Zander saying that they want to get rid of the big companies? If that is the case, then there would be no reason to raise the question of how long, because everyone would be purchasing from the small farms and the big companies would eventually not make enough money to survive and those companies would die out. ZBNF would work work because everyone would be purchasing from the small farms.
Well, in my opinion, due to the cheapness of the food that the large corporations produce, more people will still buy from them in the long run. Many people do not care about the health quality of the food or how it was produced, they just want a cheaper meal. Because of this, the large food manufacturers will probably never cease to exist. However, we can make a difference, a little bit at a time, by buying from smaller ZBNF farms rather than processed food from the large companies.
Cameron is right. People want cheap things and some don’t care how it was grown if they can save a few dollars. But, the ZBNF farms could grab extra business if people came to learn of the environmentally conscious aspect of it as well as the fact that it may be healthier in general. And to build on Connor’s point, if big companies actually were beaten by small farms, then whose to say that a small farm would expand and look for new innovations. If the small farmers held true to the ZBNF standard then it would be great. But, in the face of a chance to expand to a large scale operation, would they take shortcuts to keep up with the expansion? That’s the question.
Well, apparantly you can’t respond to third tier responses…
But, @Jackson: Nothing, technically, would stop the small farms from seizing an opportunity to grow. Ideally, their moral basis for the original opening of an ecologically healthy farm would be enough to regulate the tools and processes they use. If that’s not enough, than regulatory organizations could be created.
Also, if we managed to keep these ZBNF farms small, it could open up significant job opportunities. As the main farms use so much automation for their farms, as they are far too large to maintain by hand, so small farms would be able to be worked with small groups of people instead of machinery.
I agree that it is easier to use resources at hand and question the nutritional benefits of chemical fertilizers vs. natural ones. However, if the nutritional benefits are the same between organic and natural fertizliers, I would rather have organic. Seems to be the safer route since there’s no concrete data on the natural fertilizers.
This reminds me a little of what our speaker had talked about. I think its a great idea to look at how each country can locally grow and produce their own resources. If every state or town could make a sustainable farm the amount of unhealthy food would be limited. Outside sources would be cut down and in turn this would lead to a better life as Jamie Oliver was talking about. We need to produce a environment that is healthy for everyone.
I think that it is smart for each to country to look at the local growth of their own resources because it would be very beneficial to a lot. It would allow people to see what they are actually producing so it can diminish a lot of the unhealthy foods. If this becomes successful, then it could eliminate the other sources that are producing food. This would help our environment to become healthy.
I read somewhere that it is actually cheaper these days to have produce shipped from foreign countries than it is to have it produced within your own community. Where is the logic there? It just really shows how screwed up business has gotten. The idea of picking locally grown crops seems much, much more logical.
I feel that is a much better idea to use a natural resource rather then something produced with chemicals in it. Like Elianah stated, it is a much better idea to take a look at how each country can grow their own resources. Think about the possibilities in the farming area if only natural resources were used. If there is nothing wrong with chemical fertilizers then I say go for it. But my number one idea would be to go natural and have less of a risk of causing danger towards others.
Mason is Spot on in saying that we should think about the possibilities because they are really so much better than what they are now i think that if everyone made a conscious effort to rid farming of those harsh chemicals i think that it would benefit the people so much more. If farmers used natural fertilizers maybe the food we eat would make us feel better and help our bodies more and make our bodies work better. I would so much rather help than harm
I know that my great grandmother who is 93 grew up on a farm that grew all the food for their entire family of 10. I have heard many stories from her and the life on the farm. In her descriptions I know that they used manure for fertilizer and it kept their crops healthy and producing regularly. She is super healthy now, living on her own still and thriving. My mom and I always discuss that it is probably because of the home grown food her family ate for most of their lives. It’s people like my grandmother that can be the inspiration for our generation to want to grow naturally and sustainably. quality over quantity. quantity wouldn’t be an issue is some people in each society learned to grow and produce food for their community.
Your grandmother is 93. I would have to agree that using natural fertilizer does not seem harmful to a person’s health. And you also bring up and interesting point that if people were to grow their own food then there would be no need for chemical fertilzers to grow more and more crops. However today it would be close to impossible for every family to grow all of their own food because there are so many people in the world. Also not everyone will have the time to farm when they must also have jobs.
Wow Mercedez thats a good example! Your gma is an inspiration for future generations but also you have to think the life your gma lived in when she was younger..and the life we live in now. Lots have changed, and although i completely agree with using natural fertilizer instead of chemical I do believe that not all people will be able to manage and live on a farm. We have grown up with too much just given to us (city life) and for us to start farming would be very difficult. Also the cost of land, crops, labor was much cheaper then than it is now so that also factors in. I do believe eating foods with natural fertilizer will be better on our health and that farmers should stop taking the idea of growing more with less quality but rather growing more with better quality, but that is going to be difficult for farmers to understand and apply to their lives.
When it comes to fertilizing, it comes down to the farmer. Each rancher and farmer has their own way of doing work and getting it down. Some still round up cattle horseback while others use 4-Wheelers. Some dig irrigation ditches and routes with heavy machinery and others use naturally made ditches where its obvious water is meant to flow through. Fertilizing is no different. The fertilizers with chemicals obviously work well and make a profit, why would you change that if you don’t have to? But using manure is just as popular and a whole lot cheaper. While spreading manure for a couple hours might not be the most enjoyable thing for some, it gets the work down with the same results.
Zanders comment stuck the most with me. Farmers these days are going to use the method that works the fastest and gets them the most money. Larson, who has worked on a farm almost every summer, knows first hand why they would do this. It’s just easier for them and a lot more enjoyable then working with manure. It all really comes down to how much work the farmers want to put into keeping everything natural and the way it is supposed to be. I understand though because it’s their business and if they chose to slow down then they will lose money to other farmers who stuck with the fast pace chemical fertilizer.
The idea of using manure to fertilize makes sense. It saves money and has results that are comparable to that of chemical fertilizer. Why wouldn’t farmers want to uses ZBNF? It is very cost efficient because it cuts out a supplier for certain things. The idea makes a lot of sense. Larson is right about the fact that nobody wants to take extra time to spread manure, but that it is just as good as store-bought fertilizer. If you have have it around, you might as well use it even if it takes you extra time.
This is all about the life cycle, and definitely worth saving money on. Using manure as fertilizer is all-natural and guaranteed to work so using it effectively should be a no-brainer as Mr. Cohen said. Trying to get American farmers and even farmers around the world to convert their fertilizer would save them emense amount of money. But if this did happen, what about fertilizer companies? How would they make enough money to stay open for business when farmers could easily produce their own form.
Also, the FDA and USDA should maybe take another class of biology. Maybe they should learn the digestive system a little better and realize what nutrients that cattle would get from eating naturally produced grass, which would, in return, decompose and be absorbed into the earth. These nutrients came from the earth, grew into grass, and went back into the earth, so I don’t see how something so organic could be considered tainted.
ZBNF is a great idea where the natural resources are used to produce crops in a natural process. The natural farming helps the fruit and/or crops taste better than what would be found in a supermarket. The downside is how long it takes for the farming to occur when it is possible to ship items halfway across the world in a day. I think that the United States should try to use a natural (meaning no pesticides, artificial enhancers, etc…) approach to farming. It doesn’t have to be ZBNF but it needs to work in a way where the food tastes great and is grown with care.
@Holly: I agree with your point about how the FDA and USDA are being ignorant to what farmers and food industries are releasing into the environment. I think there is a growing split between the working farmers who know how to farm in a way that leads to little impact on the environment while the bureaucrats have only the mindset of profit.
Yes it seems very apparent in the Food Inc. video we watched in class as well. All these farmers are so concerned with monetary profit that they are slowly degrading the earth’s natural resources through pollution and waste runoff. We can also see how farmers are producing food through unsanitary conditions for chickens and cows who have no room to walk around in and when they can it is through their own feces. Allowing manure and the natural life cycle to take place would create much more healthy feeding and growing of livestock which would lead to the more healthy meat we can eat from this.
Today’s world seems so wrapped up in the idea that technology will solve all our problems. What we sometimes forget is that people lived just fine before we invented all this “stuff” that in reality has only hurt our environment. This successful example of going back to the basics should hopefully show people that technology is not always the answer. Sometimes the answers are right in front of us we just have to stop and look around every once in a while to see them.
Like I said earlier, I believe farmers should use natural resources for the reason that they are natural. But after reading Zander’s post I really do agree with the statement that farmers will use whatever resource is easiest, cheapest, and most effective. If that is a chemical resource then so be it. No I dont agree with the logic consisiting around cheap and easy, but I can see why a farmer would use that logic. After watching Food Inc. We really need to re-evaluate the way we produce our food and the choices we make to make our food as healthy as possible.
It will always be the cheaper offer for any type of business. I wish it wasn’t so, but the cheaper option will always win.
Not always. All it takes is a change. If an entire community -and a large one, not just a neighborhood or city, but rather an entire state or even larger- were to stop buying processed foods, than the large companies will have no option but to change as well. If they don’t cross over from processed foods or modified foods to ZBNF foods, than they would lose millions in profits. Because each business’ focus is just money, than they would do almost anything to avoid the loss of profits.
If that were to happen, than the cheaper option would not always win. It would lose, in fact, and the slower, healthier, more expensive option would win.
I agree with Cathgreg. I don’t think many people would like to buy something that grew on a pile poo. Even though it’s safe and and cheaper than chemical fertilizers, cow manure is not commercially attractive, and many food industries might be reluctant to buy food from those farms. As well, I don’t think that there is enough cow poo to fertilize all the land. Although I think it is great idea and a good solution to healthier food, I don’t see this happening in developed countries.
Growing up around my grandpa’s farm, I always saw him scooping up manure with a shovel and putting it in a wheelbarrow. He used the cow patties to give nutrients and moisture to the soil, especially in his cornfield. My grandpa always had great crops and I figured it was from the cow manure. I have never heard of using cow urine before- how do they even collect that? Doesn’t sound like a very appealing job… But hey, if it works thats great!
This is how farming should be! Natural. Yeah….i don’t know about the urine either, it doesn’t sound like it’d work as well as manure but I guess it does! When you would go visit your grandpa, did you ever help him farm??
I am a natural farmer in Japan and I am quite surprised to read the reactions to this post. In Asia the use of manure in farming has been standard practice for thousands of years. Its use was well documented in the book ‘Farmers of Forty Centuries’ by F.H. King. Just mull on that title for a bit…Forty centuries! In North America, Australia and New Zealand (where I am originally from) it has taken just a couple of hundred years to strip the soil of fertility and now huge amounts of chemicals are required to get anything to grow. Chemicals that destroy the microbial and fungal make-up of the soil compounding the problems of diminishing fertility.
People are icky about food growing in animal manure? It is how almost all of our food was grown (in Europe too) until the second world war when there was a massive shift to chemical use in agriculture. Human manure is what has historically been most used in Asia. It closes the nutrient cycle and thus we don’t keep losing fertility. It is perfectly safe (Forty centuries have proved that) as long as it is done properly and the human waste is not full of pharmaceuticals.
Natural farming is much more than using manure. I encourage you to look up the work of the late natural farming pioneer Masanobu Fukuoka. Particularly his books ‘The Natural Way of Farming’ and ‘One Straw Revolution.’
I looked up Masanobu Fukuoka and here is what I found: He was a proponent of no-till, no-herbicide grain cultivation farming methods traditional to many indigenous cultures in Asia and Japan. His method is commonly referred to as ‘Natural Farming’ or ‘Do-nothing Farming’ of which he is considered to be the originator. So, basically, he started the practice of natural farming in Japan in the early 1930s and it has stuck. He is truly an inspiration to natural farmers today and we can apply what he learned to attempts at ZBNF.
It is true that Fukuoka was an innovator of natural rice farming but his main commercial crop was mandarins. His orchards were beautiful wild looking places that produced very good yields. He grew all his vegetables using natural farming methods too. Not only was he not tilling and not using chemicals he also championed the use of “weeds” and green manures to improve fertility. He understood the farm is part of an ecosystem that could remain fertile and crop well if the ecosystem was kept intact. Whereas scientific agriculture, developing its methods for increasing yields in sterile conditions, must turn the farm into a sterile site to reproduce its “improvements.” Then you are on the chemical treadmill. A bad thing in the first world, a devastating thing in the “developing” world. When it takes 10 calories of energy to grow 1 calorie of food you better hope you’ve got a constant supply of cheap energy. And only countries with big armies can even hope for that!
Unfortunately Fukuoka’s methods have never really taken hold in Japan.
The number of natural farmers is always increasing but the vast majority of the farming uses heavy inputs of energy intensive chemicals.
I agree with your observations. Iam a farmer practising zero budget natural farming. The principle of this method is that only 1.5% of plant’s requirement is taken from soil. 98.5% is received from water and atmosphere. Any soil is rich in these elements but are present in an unavailable form. These elements are made available to plants by symbiotic activities of micro organisms and earth worms. In tropics,micro organisms can be inoculated in an acre of land with 10kgs of dung and urine of boss indicus cows. I feel that farming will fetch its past glory once we change into this method.This truth is first developed by Mr Subash paleker, a scientist in India
i still feel it is important to think about the people the farm is catering too, just because it is easier doesnt necessarily mean it is right or good. I think its awesome that people all over the world have been using natural farming for thousands of years! Mercedez i think you bring up a great point about how your grandmother has lived so long and is still so healthy i think that just proves the point even more!
I hope more people decide to use this rather than harmful, chemically dangerous pesticides and fertilizers. I believe that soon people will prefer these products over the harmful ones, causing a lot more farmers to use this method.
After I read this article, I thought as many of my class mates did, that this was already a popular method. The use of natural resources is much healthier, than the use of pesticides and fertilizers. This method is way more cost efficient too, considering things from the environment are free. It is hard to believe why people wouldn’t do this in the first place.
The weird thing is dung and urine are suppose to be the natural way the earth should be fertilized. Now saying dung and urine are fertilizers is not very satisfying, but if more people looked into the history of it then minds would changed. The other reasons minds would change is because of the harmful pesticides and other chemical fertilizers that could be dangerous for people in the long run.It would be in a farmers best interest to be natural in his or her fertilizing techniques
I agree with Johne and George i think that harsh chemicals are just so dangerous later on maybe there is some natural mix of something that does not involve pesticides or other chemicals. Maybe someone can invent a natural way to do this without using dung or urine. I think that would be alot better than what is going on now.
So i was thinking about it and the sound of dung and urine being apart of my food is not something i really want to put in my mouth. I think there should be either a better way to fertilize crops without any sort of harm or thought of it. Even though dung is the natural way ever since decades ago it still today is not something a consumer wants to hear. The farmers should come up with the solution of finding a more distinct and proper way to handle their crops
If farmers don’t stop using harsh chemical fertilizers then we will soon see how it will become the norm to do so. Stopping this from happening should be a main priority for organizations who fight against using fertilizer so that we as consumers of their products don’t have to worry about any of those harsh chemicals being transferred to us in tainted meat. Focusing on this mission could hopefully stop all future farming with these harsh chemicals.
Wouldn’t using natural fertilizer such as dung be cheaper for farmers to use than fertilizer that you purchase? I would think its cheaper- however, the collecting of the dung and urine may take a lot of labor so it could be easier just to buy it. Either way- if your willing to work hard, you can fertilize your land for cheap by using this natural method. Plus, the natural way is better human consumption. If I were involved in farming, I would create a machine to collect the dung and urine- that would be very efficient.
This use of materials is very innovative, in the fact that not only is he reusing what he already has, but he is saving money and time. He saves the money of buying the sometimes harmful fertilizers, and the time of having to order and pick it up. I think over all that he is benefiting himself, and I would think that his crops would be better as well. It seems that going all natural is all the rage in the food industry so why not use natural resources, in growing crops?
Personally, I had no idea that using maneur as fertalizer was so popular in farming. I was under the impression that most farmers used gmo’s and other nasty things to make the ground fertile. However, I agree with Mercedes in the fact that we must continue to use things that are in abundance around us.
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