“With organic farming, rural men and women acquire tools to analyze and transform their reality by themselves.”
In the same way that the spirit is not exclusive to Homo sapiens, nature is an autonomous reality that surpasses and predates the human. Life is not a linear flow; it is not a monotonous back and forth; nature does not constitute a hierarchical pyramid, where there are dominators and dominated; in it, there is no accumulation, harvest, trap, productivity, advantage, recycling, cycle, or static state, for nothing returns intact to the same place; in nature, there is no inflation, loans, stock markets, higher or lower value, governments and governed, strong and weak, nor premeditated revenge or destruction.
In life, only the natural exists, but we have divorced ourselves from our origins. Therefore, the sixth extinction will be partial and imminent for the human species, which, like other species, had the opportunity to develop its consciousness but did not understand the fortune of a life without greed, money, and oil. In nature, no species conspires, in a planned way, to mistreat, play a bad hand, or eradicate another species; whether near or far, species are interconnected, improving the environment to achieve the best among them and leaving the best possibilities open for the natural evolution of others.
To not recognize our microbiological ancestors, whether extraterrestrial or not, is to burden ourselves with a debt to geo-evolution. Our biological derivation is linked to energy relationships between the sun and minerals; between an anaerobic atmosphere filled with cyanobacteria and algae and an aerobic one filled with mosses and ferns that grew on a mature oxygen layer; between a saline soup still prevalent and one without salt, which, in the form of vapor, has traveled from the sea into the universe, carrying the message of life in the form of distilled water, erroneously called freshwater. Everything that has life manifests itself in continuous spirals, still holding a mystery that we do not know where it leads us.
The attempt to explain life as a descriptive and conclusive species of cycles has been overtaken by narrowness. Life is infinitely open energy systems, where balance is an illusion, and explaining any system in constant motion is a defeat. Biological connections are not definitive; they are temporary, fading and partially rebuilding for more advanced ones to emerge, leading to expansion. Immersed in this uncertainty, we navigate as a species, ignoring the unknown and the beauty yet to be discovered; we lack the patience necessary to recognize that life has established its own rhythms and speed.
Faced with a hidden world, in perpetual motion, like soil microbiology, any attempt to draw conclusions is illusory. Even less so from the micro-academic world, specialized in fragmented parts. The study of soil microbiology is endless and constantly renewed. Every biological act or scene is not necessarily a gradual accumulation of phenomena that we can observe and describe accurately. Studying any biological system can lead to the sciences of change; there is the environmental context, both internal and external, of any micro or macro living molecule studied, and it is the connections between the systems that continue to build the foundations for borderless evolution. Moreover, nothing is tied to the illusion of time; physics and chemistry determine the speeds of biology, and life recreates space and biochemistry.
Of the current array of global meetings and elaborate concepts “to benefit nature and the human species” in the face of what the dominant economic model calls “global warming,” we must dehumanize the concept of life and eradicate the idea that the Earth needs us; now more than ever, it is necessary to naturalize forests, decentralize the Amazonian discourse, and dispel the false notion that forests are global lungs. Lungs do not produce oxygen; they consume it. Above all, forests are organisms committed to the planet’s thermoregulation.
As humanity, we need to take responsibility for the destruction of life caused by industrial activity, rather than relying on global technocratic speeches. Nature needs to be heard and left alone to fulfill its vital needs and to host us once again. If we fail to do so, we will disappear.
All relationships between micro and macrobiology forged both on the Earth’s surface and beneath it are essential for the sustainable transformation of agriculture. Soil microbiology is infinitely small and abundant, and it can only be strengthened by life itself. Everything that resides inside living beings once inhabited the soil; “we are no longer capable of closing our eyes to embark on the path of introspection and recognize how divine life is and how limited our existence is.”
In nature, there are no slopes, extensions, or agendas. Everything happens at the moment it needs to happen; nothing new is invented; everything is the consequence of an infinite domino effect. These phenomena make us increasingly aware of how vulnerable, defenseless, and insignificant we are. They would cause us less anguish, anxiety, and nightmares if we began to internalize and better understand our geo-bio-maternal dependence to respect the Earth. After all, our capacity to reason is the result of a geo-brain that was gestated in an archeo-micro-biological past buried beneath our feet, before we were defined as the Homo sapiens species.
Today, the adoption of some organic farming practices is characterized by a greater demand for information, updated, reoriented, and trained labor, specific knowledge of management by production units or crops, according to the conditions of each place or soil; without losing the systemic, dynamic, functional, and eclectic approach that these new experiences require for implementation in harmony with life. On the other hand, these new techniques may require more time investment from farmers, producers, and technicians, as they involve bringing together all capacities to have a different perspective from the predatory agro-industrial model. The mechanistic way in which this model executed the technological package of the green revolution in the countryside made peasants and producers slaves to false technological expectations. Therefore, there cannot be a new slavery of investments and illusions with organic farming and the replacement of inputs.
The solutions to daily problems generated by the impositional practices of the agro-industrial model in the countryside require the art and techniques of organic farming: wisdom, knowledge, preparation, strategy, calculation of variables, and undoubtedly, a lot of discipline, intuition, logic, and common sense. This allows us to approach current problems in rural daily life with some degree of certainty and understanding. Just as in daily life, knowing each situation in detail helps us live and face challenges with some perspective of success.
With the industrial model, peasants and producers lost their freedom. To decide what to do or what step to take in technical situations or difficulties that arise, they are subject to a system that conditions, subdues, and offers little or no opportunity for independent initiative in finding solutions. With organic farming, all solutions are in our hands, starting from the immediate environment.
Furthermore, the biopower to develop organic farming that is just for humanity and nature does not lie in possessing an inexhaustible universe of technological information, recipes, and formulas; biopower arises from the capacity, clarity, and lucidity we have, from experience, to choose information that includes added human and local development value, to serve new purposes of coexistence, capable of leading the human species back to the paths of reflection and the realization that we are part of the environment and nature.
For each specific situation in the countryside, it is necessary to analyze, discard, organize dreams and thoughts, understand all possible actions that may occur, and seek and prepare the best solutions. At the same time, one must be able to identify and study all possible variations and understand the adversities that need to be faced to turn them in our favor and towards the most sensible path to produce healthy food.
This is what our generous brother NACHO offers us the opportunity to explore in his new publication, with commitment and solidarity.
A brotherly macro hug filled with micro millions of biohopes.
Jairo Restrepo Rivera, January 2023, Pachita, Cali, Colombia.”