[erbdex]

An alternative view based on Energy returns on Energy invested-

1. Most agriculture pumps orders of magnitude more Energy into the farm to make fewer calories of food. Petroleum becoming food is indeed useful as it is fungible for human consumption.

2. As soil productivity is dropping around the globe given pesticides and fertilizer usage, the EROI is dropping.

3. The future of farming, few believe is in making more from less as the hidden subsidies disappear.

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apcnf.in is one of the world's largest natural farming transitions with a few bits of contrarian genius that could be highlighted here:

1. Rather than dumping a lot of nitrogen into field they innoculate it with a microbial power few months before the rain. This 'pre monsoon dry sowing' uses many times less fertilizer and uses time and daily breathing cycles of earth for a few months to spiral in microbes. Look up ghana jeevamruta on youtube for details.

2. They use foliar sprays which urges plant leaves to develop filament like needles on leaves turning them hygroscopic. There is much more water in the air than in rivers + freshwater bodies on every continent.

3. They try to trigger mineral - fungus - bacteria - root rhizosphere - plant synergies rather than pumping nutrition by brute force. These small spirals become larger and larger and are highly highly multithreaded natural algorithms.

4. Science has recently discovered that seeds contain millions of microbes. They coat the seeds with beneficial coating as seed balls and plant them few months before the rains. The day and night cycles of breathing in and out, with rythmic background of dryness and wetness urges them to grow. They also auto deploy at the right time, vs being artificially timed by irrigation.

5. They work on fundamentals of plant immunity which leads to wild grass like resistance and endurance in plants without artificial irrigation. These plants are also pest resistant and the produce has lower perishability in tune of weeks.

6. They discovered that good fungus extends and grows into the plant body like rails that carry microbes. The microbial 'water' is coated with thick cell walls and doesn't dry as easily as irrigation water.

7. They keep the field under 365 day green cover via 5 layers of plants. This might not be equally possible in all bioregions but helps protect the soil from blazing heat.

These are just some of the points I noticed in their attempts to lower the net input cost at farming. Most developed economies do not have to think of this today given financial, logostic and govt subsidies but as inflation grows and supply chains become fragile, I feel this way of thinking has a lot of merit for those trying to make things work under sustenance economics.