Chemical aided agriculture Vs Natural ecosystems

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For decades now factory produced fertilizers have been praised as the
greatest gift to farmers.  But the negative after effects of such artificial
interventions by men are being felt now.  Krishna  created this earth with
a natural  self-sustaining ecosystem, it is pure genius, and even though we
throw as much garbage as we do, it sustains and recovers. Only a matter of
time. I was surprised to see a documentary on how the earth had recovered
after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Russia, nature always comes back.
It is a more powerful force than the six billion pollutants and destroyers on the
planet.

The question, however is, why fight with such a powerful opponent? In the end it is far better to concede defeat and work in harmony with Krishna’s system(s), then there can be peace and prosperity.  In this article we find out about artificial unnatural systems and their undesirable effect of giving less production…this is what is called  ” Natures Failsafe Switch” which is what Krishna put in to chastise the wayward. For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction.  One of my favourite quotes in regard to the environment is from the American Indians “We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children”  It means that you must take care of it for the future generations, amongst so many other profound meanings.

tractor1Please read the following interesting life experience of Mahaksa Das below; (Edited in Article format)

I have visited many European ISKCON farms and none of them use chemicals
because of better understanding and education/progress of the  European
green movement which revealed the danger of chemicals.  We, in Europe, have
great experience of bad long-term results with chemicals,  so in  general
there is no devotee who would like to use them on their land or on ISKCON
farms.

In India I saw people are expecting great miracles of golden
treasury falling on their head just from clear sky.  And many of them think
that miracle is from American chemicals. In Europe there is huge public
movement what I believe  is due to Srila Prabhupada’s books. The green
movement focuses on health and danger issues of human behaviour in relation
to the “mother” earth, as they call the earth our mother and these people
spent a lot of money and time for educating the general public in so many
ways, and one important thing mentioned is chemicals in the earth.

There are many people who come to the temple and during the feast put forward questions like : “Oh, youtractor2 still use white flour?” not to speak
about white sugar as it is already considered among educated population as
very poisonous thing what greedy manufacturers imposed on us. And it is
already proved it is poison. So if you want to attract high and middle class people in Europe there is no way to utilize white flour and
definitively not white sugar. We use to buy Cane Unrefined Sugar (it has
brown colour and nice taste). And if one uses chemicals on the field he
will be condemned by public as a non-monk. Because how a monk may harm the “mother” earth.

If you need an official record from Czech Farm transition better to write to them directly at vandeham@gmail.com. You may mention my name. Priya
Kirty Prabhu will surely be interested in answering your queries.

Another example is Hungarian Farm led by Sivaram Maharaja, they bought 600
acres of land after the chemicals growers. They had built many houses and
every and each has its own well, but soon they realized the water is not
drinkable. IT TOOK 15 YEARS before the water was purified! The ground was
massively polluted. You can ask them as well they will confirm it.

earth1The problem with chemicals is not only are they poisonous but for the
ground they destroy the micro-organic organisms live in it which is
required for growing. These micro-organics are fed by dung or urine then
they flourish and plants take advantage. The chemicals at first destroy it
then the plants become dependent on the chemicals as no more nutrient is in
the ground. To rebuild the micro-organism in the ground takes years. It is
already confirmed by EU government. According to EU law if farmer wants to
transmit from chemicals to BIO production he will receive special subsidy
and for five years he is not allowed to sell the products from that
transitory field as BIO unless the biochemical department will by tests
prove the purity.

Tractors or oxen for many farm leaders is a complicated issue, as most
of the western farms choose to use both according to type of work, where
there is possibility to easily use animal power they do as to save the cost.
But for chemicals there is no question about the negative effect.  It is
possible to utilize bulls/oxen to the maximum for example at Bhaktivedanta
Manor in London uses only oxen power even for flour grinding. They use
them for plowing the farm, for transportation, and even for a pleasure transport of guests. In the whole farm there is only one very little electric truck. They use to milk the cows by hand. And we are speaking about middle of UK, very famous farm and Temple and this year the leaders won the political election on public town. At the ISKCON Hungarian farm, they are also like that and highest politicians coming in to see it as working example for economy because European economy getting really poor and 1/3 of population have no bread yet this Hare Krishna communities flourishing. So they come to learn.

oxen7And two years ago the leaders of the farm voted to the local town leadership. Village next to Hungarian farm had problems with sewerage treatment yet devotees had an impressive ecological reed savage
plant completely self-sufficient.

Srila Prabhupada said at Vrndavana, March 15, 1974, conversation, that if in India we will employ people with oxen and make agricultural programs where locals will hugely benefit, they will vote for us in political matters. And see when we asked permission for a land for Planetarium we did not receive political approval. Many people may not like us in Mayapur because we took bread from them by engaging tractors. Well if it works so great in EU why should it not work in India where you have all things ready for it? Do you know what amount of efforts in EU it is to achieve some ox power? In order to have land it cost millions so to achieve the land whole family must live renounced like sannyasis, then you must train people to care about oxen, then one must train oxen and it takes ten years of  hard labour.  In India you have very
skilled cheap workers they know exactly what to do and they want to work,
in Europe cheap worker means drunkard worker and skilled worker means 5
times more money. Everything is complicated by government bureaucracy/ rules and for anything one must have ten permissions at least ,yet devotees go ahead despite the challenges. Why do we Indians follow the wrong model which will be proven to be an inevitable failure after time?

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