MPR News Feature; Organic farming promoted

Health ins on springs from the natural creative process in the soil and I always did have apprehensions about using artificial stimulants which are designed to make a big pile without regard to the quality of the organic farmer Earl Cunningham's words sum up the feelings of a number of southwestern Minnesota farmers who belong to the Minnesota Soil Association. They're meeting in what Basle last night drew about 40 people from as far away as 100 miles. Most are practitioners of what they call natural farming or low energy use farming. Agribusiness interests view these farmers as a barb in their side because of what they don't do in their operations. They don't use nitrogen fertilisers for example. They don't use chemical pesticides herbicides or fungicides. They DO YOU minimum tillage which they say consumes less fuel. They do use more cultivating than chemical type farmers and they use more crop rotation. These organic farmers say their results show better

quality crops that ripen faster and keep better. Also less livestock disease improved family health and higher net profit. They also probably point to the improved condition of their soil and claim they lose a lot less of it to erosion. Perhaps the main criticism of organic type farming practices is that yields per acre can not to be as high as when chemicals are used. Minnesota Soil Association president West rep contends that the drop offs in yields are only a temporary part of the transition from chemical to non-chemical farming. I feel that can be the same as before or even higher. I know people farmed this way for 10 years ever hire the chemical farmers and I feel this way it is. If you do any testing for protein content on your all we have done a

little bit but we haven't done it and not particularly research in protein over the last many years. The average protein content of corn I think this indicates that again the net energy value of produce is not keeping up. The energy factor mentioned has drawn considerable attention recently some humanitarians have suggested the United States should help other nations raise their food production by teaching them American agricultural methods. Others like Southwest Minnesota State College Physics Professor Charles Reiner disagree with exporting energy intensive methods of farming. Professor Reinert who is

also on the governor's Environmental Quality Council spoke at the world Basso meeting on the topic of energy and agriculture. He cited a Cornell University study. In his remarks if. You try to feed everybody in the world with Minnesota culture. And if you use all of the petroleum reserves in the world only for agriculture only for agriculture agriculture gets every last barrel of oil in the in the world reserves. Then you find that the total oil reserves of the world. Will last about. Twenty four years. It's that bad. So it looks pretty clear to me anyway that you can begin to to try to feed the people of the world with the type of agriculture that most people are using in this country. Apparently in fact if you look at the overall situation in agriculture as indicated by my Michael Perlman's article what you find is that if you look at

the corn and soybeans and Wallin everything including beef production and fish all of the types of food that we produce it takes us 5 units of energy input to get one unit of energy output. The average for the entire country. So we're at a five to one disadvantage. And these various authors make the point that what you really should expect out of Agriculture is that you ought expect to get more out than you put in in terms of energy because you're really supposed to be trying to capture the energy present in the sun. But the evidence suggests that you only get one unit out for every five that you put in on the average for the country. Professor Charles Reiner of southwest Minnesota State College Reiner suggested that in view of energy shortages more and more farmers may begin looking to the type of low energy input natural farming practiced by members of the Minnesota Soil Association as an economically and ecologically sensible

alternative. Earl Cunningham articulated the thoughts of many organic farmers at the well Bassam meeting last night when he said. I think it's lamentable that some say if we don't use conventional farming practices we'll have to decide which millions will starve because I doubt that's true. I believe we can feed a lot more people with a lot fewer bushels if those bushels have integrity. This is Stephen roll.