When we learn about the Industrial Revolution as youth, the plough is attributed as a tipping point for industrialization – enabling farmers to work more efficiently, producing more in less time. This allowed them to have a surplus that could be traded for other goods, and it also freed up labor to work in factories to produce even more goods to consume & trade.

But just the other day, as I was listening to BBC radio, the plough itself was turned up. What we thought to be the mode of innovation, was in fact a mode of destruction. Each time we plough the earth, we expose tender, rich soil to the elements – heat, wind, pollution. Topsoil that took millennia to form, can be washed away in mere seconds by a fierce rainstorm.

Testing remedies to save the topsoil, a small group of farmers have essentially let their fields run wild. By working with instead of against nature, farmers allow crop waste to linger and decay on their fields long after the precious grains have been plucked from the stems. It looks unkempt and messy, but it is in fact some of the healthiest matter on earth. The “waste” is a natural fertilizer because as earth worms break it down, the soil is left rich with phosphates. New equipment has been deveoped to plant these unkempt fields by injecting seeds into the ground – and sure enough, the tender green sprouts emerge from the heaps into healthy stock.

Discovering that the plough is no longer good for our needs today, and that instead, we should return to how nature designed processes is certainly the cry for basics resounding in my introduction of Social / Economic Theory 1. We are a society fretted with processes, control, and instancy – and as we see them betraying us in this Recession it’s tough to admit defeat. And as we untangle the mess of policies, debt, and depression – reverting to simplicity certainly has a ring of relief.

The hippies, vegans, vegetarians, and greenies – have been preaching this for years: lose the additives, go natural, reduce-reuse-recycle, etc. – but they have generally been dismissed as radicals. As history shows, these radicals have actually form the new smarter norms – we just resist. When we do accept, and make the change tour ways – we’ll move forward intelligently and in harmony with natural design.

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To learn more about preventing soil erosion, visit the UK’s Soil Association
To learn more about the radical phenomenon, check out Hayagreeva Rao’s book Market Rebels.