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Mhm

Hello, my name is Maya grim,

and I'm advocating for more education on biologically integrated farming.

So what is biologically integrated farming?

Well,

it's a system of agriculture where we try to

work more with nature rather than against it.

We look at the systems that already exist in nature and we ask ourselves,

how could we integrate those systems into our own agricultural systems

in order to make them more efficient and more sustainable?

So an example of this would be creating closed loop systems and

farming where we use our waste products to grow something else.

So this comes from the idea in nature,

that if a plant grows and herbivore may come and

eat it and then that herbivore will produce manure,

which can make certain nutrients more bio available to the plants

that wouldn't have been available before.

So that same plant that got a chunk bitten out

of it might actually benefit from that herbivore being around.

And if it doesn't survive, getting that piece bitten out of it,

its offspring may survive.

And that herbivore when it passes away,

its body will also return to the soil and again

enrich the soil

so we can ask ourselves,

it does our current agricultural system work that way

in some respects.

Yes, but a lot of the time, no,

a lot of the time these useful products are just thrown away,

they're treated as waste.

So, for example, um

manure produced by animals is often put into man made

ponds in order to try and contain this manure.

This can lead to all sorts of problems. It can cause pollution.

It can destroy waterways and kill fish,

make wildlife sick. It can get into our drinking supplies

and it causes

farmers too need more fertilizers,

artificial fertilizers than they would otherwise.

The same happens with crop waste.

A lot of the times if a fruit ends up kind of malformed or fruit or vegetable,

it doesn't look quite right, it won't be accepted at grocery stores

and it will just be thrown away

while these products can be turned into compost, which again

can be used to fertilize plants.

So that's something that we can pull from nature and see, yeah,

nature reuse is pretty much everything we should try to do the same.

It would save us money, it would save us from pollution.

It would help all kinds of different factors in

our agricultural system that right now are not great.

Another thing we can learn from nature is how to control pests.

So how does nature control pests

and what is a pest?

Are all insects, pests? No, definitely, definitely not. Insects are great for us.

They might be annoying, but I don't think we could survive without them.

They break down organic material so they clean up our environments.

They pollinate many plants. So these are not the only pollinators.

There are many, many,

many pollinators and our fruits and vegetables largely rely on pollination.

We need pollinators in order to have fruits and vegetables. And then along with that

insects are a very important food source for many animals, some of them being birds,

amphibians, all kinds of animals.

And so there are very important pillar to our

ecosystems and we need to take care of them

right now. A lot of the time if there is a pest problem,

the way it's treated is that the whole field will be sprayed with an insecticide.

This insecticide not only kills the insect that is considered a pest,

but can kill all the beneficial insects in the area as well that do not eat the crops.

So why is that such a big issue? Well, because the pesticide and the insecticide

doesn't only stay in that crop area, it can leak into waterways, it can damage

the forests surrounding the area, the grasslands surrounding the area,

it doesn't just stay there

and it can also cause problems within the field itself. So

perhaps this insecticide ends up killing all

of what are known as predatory insects.

So predatory insects can be very, very beneficial to us because they can eat

the pest insects.

So if you kill off all of these predatory insects, now,

you're mostly just left with the pest insects,

they may have grown an immunity

to the insecticide

and then

they'll grow at an even more rapid rate

after

their population starts rebounding because the

predatory insect population didn't recover.

So instead of using

insecticides,

what could we do?

Well, I mentioned predatory insects,

this is something that more and more people are doing,

they're introducing predatory insects to target certain pest insects.

So for example, aphids are a very big pest insects.

They eat tomatoes, they eat all kinds of crops,

while ladybugs can eat thousands of aphids throughout their lives.

So people are starting to take advantage of this.

They will raise ladybugs and then they'll release them

and then

the lady bugs

will eat the pests

and this is

more beneficial than pesticides because they don't pollute the

waterways and they can co evolved with the pest.

So like I mentioned before, a pest can grow an immunity

to an insecticide through natural selection,

but

a predatory insect will co evolve the pest.

So if a pest becomes quicker to try to get away from a predatory insect,

the predatory insects can also evolve to become quicker to catch up with the pest.

Mhm.

So there are many, many,

many things we can take from nature and we can learn from from nature.

And this is supposed to be a short video.

So I'm just gonna give those two examples for now and I want to cover a little bit,

why should we be focusing more on biologically integrated farming?

Like what is really wrong with the things that I've mentioned? They seem kind of bad.

But

what kind of issues can they cause.

So one of the main issues with our modern agricultural system is soil degradation.

A lot of people

think of soil as being dead, dead as dirt, you know, it's not now,

what's fascinating is a lot of scientists are actually

starting to consider soil to be a living entity,

not just to have living things inside of it.

So I want to read this from the USDA itself. They say

soil is a living thing, It is very slowly moving, changing and growing all the time,

just like other living things,

soil breathes and needs air and water to stay alive. So it's very important

that we take care of our soil.

Many of you may know about an event in the past, in the United States,

around the midwest west area, the Great plains called the Dust Bowl.

This was a horrible event that caused many people to be without jobs without food.

There was dust that got kicked up into the air,

These giant storm clouds of dirt everywhere.

What, what caused this? It was bad agricultural practices.

People didn't realize that they need to take care of the soil.

Top soil is extremely important.

So they were growing

some of the wrong crops out there.

They were telling too often

they were not fertilizing in proper ways.

So what do I mean by, they were growing the wrong crops.

If you look at those grasslands,

they typically grow native grasses that have very extensive root systems.

They sometimes go grow down to 6 to 12 ft. They really anchor themselves

down very far and why is that Well? Because that area doesn't get a lot of rain.

So that's how they're able to have access to more water.

They can cover more area and get more rain water that way.

Yeah.

Well when people were planting,

they were over planting and they were telling too

much because they were planting what are called annuals.

So they only last for one year.

These native grasses out there grow for many,

many years and they anchor the soil down.

But if you're growing these plants that only grow

once a year and then you cut them down and

then you till the soiling and you're disturbing the soil,

you're disturbing all the root systems and

you're disturbing something called micro rising,

which is a symbiotic relationship between fungi and plants and this actually helps

plants absorb more nutrients and they actually can communicate with each other,

they can send nutrients to one another.

When you tell too often you destroy those connections.

So part of biologically integrated farming is figuring

out what plants are better for this area.

What are our soil contents? Like what are our, how much rain do we get?

You know, what are the pests that are in this area? What are

the, what's the climate like? What should naturally be growing here? How often

will we have to tell our soils and how will that affect other things.

So unfortunately since I have to keep this video relatively short,

I can't go into too much more detail,

but I can say what I would like to happen is

for more school curriculum to come out talking about agriculture,

the history of agriculture,

the bad things that have happened as a consequence of not paying enough attention to

our ecology and what we could do to better integrate with our native ecology.

I would like for people to have more access to classes like this,

not only in high schools, but in colleges there should be more courses,

there should be more classes for farmers to take

and I think we need to figure out ways to create funding for this.

So I think a good place to start would be like farmers markets,

there are many local farmers who would probably be interested in these concepts,

but don't have the time or the money to really dedicate themselves to it right now.

So something like this could be started on a local level, we could see

how we could do it successfully on a local level,

work with farmers at farmers markets,

try to raise money at farmers markets and then get

buy equipment and resources through that and do fundraisers,

letting people know what biologically integrated farming is,

why it's important why we need to conserve our soils, conserve our waters,

protect our waters from getting contaminated, protect our wildlife.

Um why do we need to do all of that?

And then

as it grows,

it would be great if we could learn how to get more state funding because if this,

if this is something that could be incorporated into school curriculum,

I think it would be beneficial.

I think people would like to know more about where their food comes from,

what kind of impact it has on the environment, how they could live more sustainably.

And so

something like that,

I would have to be done at at least the state level and

I am trying to learn more about that process now.

Um if you have any questions for me or any input to

give me any direction that you think I should be moving in,

something that would be helpful for me, please let me know and um thank you.

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