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<\/a><\/p>\nComparison of large and small-scale agricultural systems used in various countries throughout the world indicates that current large-scale production methods used in the United States, Canada, and most developed countries work well if the landholder can afford the cost of high technology, labor, and scarce capital. The expanding world population and dwindling resources only serve to make this problem more complex. Likewise, the poor farmer in developing nations, does not have access to such a system, which is why I worked on it for so long \u2013 until it was successful where, as I mentioned, it is successfully operating in more than 12 Latin and South American countries.<\/p>\n
Internationally, especially in developing countries, small-scale, labor intensive, and capital scarce agriculture is practiced by about one billion farmers-it is how many survive. Why? Because unlike those in the U.S., the economy and jobs in these countries is dismal and we now seem to see a flattening of these issues around the world where once prosperous communities and people are struggling to survive for a variety of reasons.<\/p>\n
It is estimated that 65 percent of the world; s farmers operate less” than 5 hectares and 35 percent less than one hectare of land-one hectare is 2.5 acres. Small-scale agriculture in developing countries is generally considered to be ten hectares or less. Why? Because these small farms have been a mainstay in supporting people around the globe. Reflecting on U.S. history, small farms used to be everywhere, but today these farms are almost non-existent either due to lack of money or they have been regulated out of business and replaced by large, mono-culture farms owned by corporations. Nutritional values of many foods have decreased as a result, but that is another story.<\/p>\n
Think about having your own garden and enlarging it to support 5 or more people \u2013 that\u2019s what\u2019s been going on for eons of time. Thus, small landholders need to produce or to have access to “a high-quality food supply without expending large amounts of capital to procure needed nutritional requirements for the family. And, if we had another dust-bowl in the U.S., which is looking increasingly likely \u2013 the ongoing-decade-long drought in California serves as a constant reminder, you and your entire community could be facing the same consequences and problems as many of the worlds small farmers. For the past 50 years, doubts became widespread about the ability of poor agrarian nations to feed themselves in the future and about the capacity of developed nations to fill the food deficits. Now, this has been born out in countries like Somalia, Niger, Syria, and many others for various reasons.<\/p>\n
As early as the mid-1960s, a rapid increase in food aid needs to developing nations and the ability of the U.S. to meet those needs was projected and we have witnessed this. Today, more than 130 countries obtain food from the U.S. Midwest Corn Belt. When this prediction was made, the average distance from food to table was 10-50 miles; that distance today is more than 1,500 miles in the U.S.<\/p>\n
Advertisement: Don Tolman International (click on photo for more info)<\/em> World food needs were projected to exceed the productive capacity of the U. S. before 1985 and they have. Brazil, China, Japan, Russia, and other countries also now struggle to feed the world\u2019s population of over 7 billion. Thus, improvements in agricultural technology have postponed, but not eliminated, the- fulfillment of this prediction. Current agricultural production and population growth trends suggest a vital need to modify existing technological systems used in developing countries and to inject into underdeveloped countries an agricultural system that is both easily understood and readily grasped by the local, often uneducated farmer of any given area. But now, the threat is even more real as individuals within developed countries, potentially in the U.S. and Europe, can face the same situation. All that would be required is a large natural hazard such as the San Andreas going off, which could affect an already weak job market and economy to cause dire circumstances for an individual, family, or larger group.<\/p>\n What I\u2019m talking about for you, is a system to grown a better garden that is larger, more effective, and more efficient with better quality foodstuffs than you can obtain in the local supermarket. The successful system must be labor intensive, low cost, and at a technological level that can be readily transferred from one area to another and one group\/individual to another. Another requisite is that each locale has environmental conditions adaptable to the technological level of the agricultural system to be transferred.<\/p>\n You may be thinking now about the logistics of this process thus, let\u2019s set up a scenario. The stock market has fallen and jobs are almost non-existent; resources at the store now only arrive once per week so that there is a huge wait for supplies of any kind, including food. This would be like the depression of the 1930s but far worse due to integrated financial systems and vastly increased populations. Therefore, while some scientists and individuals are aware of the hazards of agriculture and the problems of adapting small-scale systems for undeveloped countries or small groups, most are generally concerned with either production, consumption, or economics, but seldom all three simultaneously. Likewise, most do not approach the situation with a simple or realistic enough model to effectively solve the problems discussed above.<\/p>\n Given the current water-food-energy situations in every country, research in such a system as I will lay out for you has become a pressing priority. Depending on your individual circumstances, it must be met with decisive action to help curb potential food and or nutrition production deficits. Additionally, agriculture requiring large inputs of energy will produce expensive food giving little relief to an already deficient budget of the needy and the diets of these same people will continue to be made up of the cheapest and most easily accessible food, whether nutritious or not. This will be of concern should one find themselves in the circumstances like those described above.<\/p>\n One thing that you need to also be aware of before we move onto part 3 is that those who have particularly limited land resources will need to generally, multiple-crop your land, especially if you have limited scale, i.e., square feet of growing area. This will help to minimize the risk of a single crop and to assure a stable supply of income (even if through bartering as in the opening statement) and nutrition. There is sometimes the choice of multiple or continuous cropping. The International Rice Research Institute found that one acre continuously cropped can produce calories for 29 people and protein for 53 by appropriate crop sequencing and inter-planting. This assumes a tropical climate. If you lived in a more temperate climate such as Colorado, Kansas, etc., the number would be about \u00bc that amount. The system I\u2019ll be showing you has also confirmed this.<\/p>\n One thing to understand is that if you were forced to grow only a garden, without access to food supplies from the store due to a natural disaster or other hazard is that production of calories or protein is not enough. The integration of crops and small animals is essential to close the food gap and limit dependence.<\/p>\n
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