Entry #9 Agroecology for the Win


I recently wrote a persuasive essay that talks about why Agroecology is needed for the future of our society. I am very passionate about sustainable living in general and especially farming. I was raised vegetarian and we farmed with nature. What I mean by that is we didn’t have chemicals to feed our chickens to make them grow and we didn’t use pesticides to keep our crops healthy. Instead, we rotated crops and use the chickens to help get rid of pests and fertilize the land. By doing things around the farm with that in mind, my family was able to grow just about everything we needed to eat for the entire year. My mother canned or dried some of the harvest for use during the harsh winter months when nothing could grow.





Our crops were always producing more than we could eat. I can remember my dad would have us kids put a bunch of veggies into baskets and we would drive into town and donate them. Even when it was a rough growing season, we would always seem to have at least a few foods grow really well, enough to make up for some of the others that didn’t do so well. 

It was only after I became an adult that I realized that how I was raised wasn’t quite normal. I thought everybody lived off the land up until I graduated from high school. When I was in my late 20s I asked my dad how he knew what to grow and how many rows we would need of each thing in order to feed a family of 6 and he just told me he let the land speak to him. I guess nitrogen rich soil has a certain taste to it. Yuck I know, but that literally seems to be the secret. My dad credits his parents for passing down secrets like that and the fact that his parents owned a restaurant in which he helped cook the food for knowing when to plant and how to rotate the crops.

My dad barely finished high school and had no formal education past that. He just knew through experience how to live off the land. I hope to fill his shoes one day and start a small farm of my own. We as a society can live sustainably, we just have to want to try, do you?

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