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Start with the soil
Maintenance and increase of the long term fertility of soil is a fundamental principle of natural farming. We utterly depend upon a thin, fragile mantle of soil to produce our food but we have been reckless with it. 55% of arid range lands and 45% of agricultural land in Australia requires treatment for degradation. While conventional farmers everywhere are now realising that they must stop the destruction and nurture the soils they have left, large areas remain damaged and are uneconomic to repair.Organic farmers, with their intimate knowledge of soil and the teaming life within it, are capable of restoring soils faster than nature. Techniques which they use include deep ripping, non-inversion tillage, growth of cover crops, mulching, composting, introductions of earthworms and dung beetles and careful study of the best time for any of these operations.
Soil is the foundation of natural farming principles and development of the soil is important to the health and nutrition of every other living thing on an organic farm. Plants and animals are fed via the soil whenever possible to encourage biological cycles and the populations of soil micro-organisms which provide so many vital services, without charge.
