Public Chamber - I'm pleasantly surprised

On June 27, he was invited to the Public Chamber for a round table “Ecological agriculture and ecotourism: development prospects.”

I thought that the Public Chamber is not such a useless idea; in any case, negative selection, unlike the civil service, has not penetrated here.

To be honest, I was pleasantly surprised by such a high intellectual and professional composition of the participants. Frankly speaking, I have never seen such a level of discussion in recent years on a topic that is very close and even dear to me. Special thanks to the director of the Institute of Sustainable Development V.M. Zakharov. and vice-president of the OPTIMA company A.S. Baranov.

I consider myself a good expert and even an apologist for this dynamically developing area of ​​the global agricultural industry.

According to its philosophy, organic, natural, landscape farming is not intensive, but extensive agriculture. And here we have a number of obvious advantages that we will be able to realize upon joining the WTO and the global system of division of labor, if, of course, we abandon the catching-up path.

Agriculture of Russia.

Competitiveness strategy.

The last one is the first one in the other direction.

The idea that humanity is running “in the wrong direction” in agricultural strategy arose at the beginning of the last century. Before this, a mechanistic idea of ​​how the replacement of mineral substances carried away from the fields along with the harvest should be carried out. The chemicalization of agriculture was started by Justus von Liebig. Quite rightly, he noted that “By selling produce from the field, the peasant sells the field itself.” Having proved that long-term, and even more so monocultural, exploitation of the land reduces its productivity, Liebig proposed to replace the mineral substances carried away with the plants by an equivalent amount of necessary minerals. In 1836, he was the first to produce mineral fertilizers, having done a lot of work to study how much and what kind of mineral substances are carried away with a particular crop.

The mechanism and undialectical nature are especially clearly visible in retrospect. We are wise only through the experiences of troubles, illnesses and mistakes. At the beginning of the last century, the work of Rudolf Steiner, and later in the thirties and forties of Hans Müller, Albert Howard, and Masanabu Fukuoka, could well have been perceived as outright renegadeism. For, at a time when they were preaching about the need to introduce biodynamic farming and talking about the advantages of ecological farming methods, humanity, on the contrary, in Michurin style, was not going to wait for favors from nature. Accelerating, it moved towards the intensification of agricultural production. More and more mineral fertilizers were produced, sold, and applied to the soil. The situation was fueled by lobbyists from the chemical industry, nurtured by the World War. There was a kind of competition in the world: to evaluate the achieved perfection of agriculture by the amount of mineral fertilizers applied per hectare.

Humanity cannot be suspected of being completely myopic. Of course, the fact that as a result of intensive exploitation of the soil, its structure deteriorated, symptoms of erosion appeared everywhere, and fertility was depleted, did not go unnoticed.

An integrated indicator of soil fertility is its humus content. This complex composition of organo-mineral components is like the skeleton of fertility. It takes centuries to form, but it can be destroyed and washed out of the soil by careless handling of it in a matter of years. So if you brought the organic content in the soil to 2%, we can say that you broke the backbone of fertility and made the soil disabled. No matter what fertilizers, in what quantity you pour in after this, everything will be to no avail. After the rain, the earth will turn into a hardened crust that does not allow water, light, or air to reach the plant, which it needs no less than you and I.

However, involved in the intensification race, manufacturers only increased the volume of active substance addition, expanding the range.

Pesticides occupy a special place in the agricultural strategy. The so-called “plant protection products” involved just an attack. Pesticides and herbicides, selectively, in accordance with the continued reigning paradigm of “harmful” and “beneficial” plants and animals, destroyed some species, providing non-evolutionary opportunities for others.

Sobering up came slowly.

Environmentalists were the first to sound the alarm. Excessively introduced chemicals, along with melt and rainwater, ended up in rivers and lakes. The lakes were blooming and overgrown with algae. The birds stopped singing in the fields, the forests became silent. Crayfish, the most accurate indicators of pollution, have disappeared from the rivers. The destruction of trophic chains made itself felt: entire species of flora and fauna disappeared without a trace.

It turned out that the monstrous increase in diseases of the immune system in the world, intestinal and liver diseases, widespread allergies, diabetes, and most importantly, the rapid rejuvenation of cancer diseases are nothing more than a consequence of the use of chemicals in food production!

For some time, the vanguard of humanity tried to solve the problem with the help of refrigerators that detect the presence of nitrates in food, and toilets that automatically analyze the contents. But it seems that the time for jokes and half-measures is in the past. Realization has come. Today, those whose wealth allows them to say “no” to chemicals have moved into a group that bears the shameful name: “golden billion.” Others who are not included in this lucky cohort are invited to benefit from the fruits of another victory of man over nature, whose name is “GMOs” (Genetically Modified Organisms).

There is no doubt that a tomato with a piece of DNA from a fish integrated into its genome is impressive. Just imagine: “Frost-resistant fish tomato”!

But, since the tomato, belonging to the nightshade family, is a cross-pollinated plant, it must be pollinated by flying fish. And when this happens, we will certainly witness an explosion of the hybrid power of heterosis from crossing such distant alleles.

It is also of interest what will happen to those who eat these hybrids?

The unstudied interaction of the genetic chains of the earth's flora and fauna in the process of mutual exchange, mutual absorption in nutrition cycles does not even allow us to theoretically predict the consequences of this Promethean theft - good deed.

The key to the current experiment with genetically modified products is the whole world - all of us. Because no one today knows what the consequences of eating a frost-resistant tomato with a fish gene, or a strawberry that does not rot because a scorpion gene is built into its genetic code. As Bulgakov’s Woland said: “In order to manage something, you need to have a more or less decent plan, for about a thousand years. And even better - two..."

Nature has this plan. It was not in vain that the Lord, who formed all the diversity of species, placed fish and tomatoes at different levels of the evolutionary ladder, and in different habitats.

Ichthyander is a guy with gills, a hero, of course, a positive one, but it’s better if he remains a hero of cinema.

Although, it seems, this time we won’t be able to get by with self-closing refrigerators and talking toilets.

One of the friends with whom I shared my anxiety consoled:

- Why are you worried? Interested guys will take care of everything! Each can of cloned beef stew will come with a small file so that the buyer can file down the horns that are growing on him.

Now a new cinematic hero with sawed off horns - Hellboy, also a good guy, by the way, is walking across the screens.

They write that von Liebig, dying, suffered morally, said that he misunderstood the laws of nature, and asked God for forgiveness.

One way or another, humanity has a desire to return to the original plan, the one that was written with millions of years in mind. Realizing that they were running in the wrong direction, humanity began to turn in the other direction. Organic farming is the most dynamic area of ​​world agriculture today. The volume of environmental production is growing at an unprecedented pace: 20-30% per year. No industry in the field of material production can compare with this rapidly developing trend.

In ecological farms, crops are grown without chemical fertilizers, pesticides, drugs, growth accelerators, etc. They are replaced by natural, natural, organic and mineral substances. Pest control is also carried out using nature's own products. These farms have a well-thought-out crop rotation that takes into account the impact of predecessors, organic fertilizers based on composts, which not only compensate for the loss of organomineral substances, but also improve the structure of the soil.

They are characterized by the formation of a closed cycle of energy and nutrients circulation. The basis of this balance is the harmonious relationship between crop production and livestock production. In this case, we can talk about a real increase in fertility.

Let's name the main features of organic landscape farming:

- production of environmentally friendly, high-quality agricultural products;

- creation in the management system of closed cycles that are in dynamic equilibrium, allowing to maintain and even increase soil fertility;

- reduction of relative energy and material costs, transition to renewable sources;

- the desire to preserve the wealth of nature in all its diversity of forms. Compliance with the principle: “Do no harm”;

- conducting cattle breeding in conditions as close as possible to natural ones. Not a cow chained in a concrete compartment being fed stinking silage, but a peaceful animal in a meadow;

Let's return to Russia.

In many sectors of the economy, our country has lagged behind world leaders forever. Including in agriculture.

But, if the position of outsiders in radio electronics or the automotive industry does not give us any advantages, then the lag in intensive agricultural production has its advantages.

Organic, natural, landscape farming is essentially extensive agriculture. Our advantages here are due to a number of obvious factors.

Firstly, the presence of huge areas of agricultural land. 434 million hectares. Of these, arable land – 126 million hectares. Almost a hectare per inhabitant of the country. At the same time, half of the arable land is classified as black soil. Thus, the humus content in which exceeds 7%. It is not without reason that in the chamber of weights and measures of French Liege, a cubic meter of Voronezh black soil represents the world standard of fertility.

Another advantage is the large-scale farming inherited from the Soviet system, which makes it possible to introduce organic farming technologies without coordinating agricultural practices with a wide range of small owners and producers.

And finally, third: in Russia, during the crisis, the use of chemical agents was significantly limited. For example, the application of mineral fertilizers since the beginning of reforms has decreased by almost six times. This simplifies the international certification system for organic farming.

There is reason to believe that this direction of development of world agriculture will continue in the long term. Indirect confirmation is the policy pursued by a number of countries of the European Union. Brussels is changing its subsidies to the agricultural sector, encouraging organic farming. This makes it possible to solve not only some political problems - environmental issues, for example, but a number of economic problems, in particular, the problem of overproduction.

Russia's upcoming accession to the WTO will inevitably entail a reduction in protectionist opportunities for tariff and non-tariff protection of domestic producers. Therefore, organic agriculture, ecological - landscape farming, allow us to offer a competitive product that is in demand both on the foreign and domestic markets. In the next twenty years, Russia, due to the undeniable competitive advantages that were mentioned earlier, has a real opportunity to claim 10-12% of the global production of organic products. And Russia’s position in the negotiation process for joining the WTO should be based, among other things, on the interests of protecting this export potential of national agriculture.

In the long term, this will allow:

- radically change the structure of Russia’s traditional, flawed raw material exports;

- reduce total dependence on the global energy price environment;

- enter global markets with a renewable resource, as opposed to gas and oil;

- export goods with a high level of added value;

A hundred years later, already within the framework of the global division of labor, Russia has a chance to return to the ranks of the leaders in world agriculture. One of the greats said: “Hope is the ability to negotiate with the future.” It depends on the skill of the ruling class and society whether this hope will come true or become another deferred disappointment.