Contents page 1 — “We run our Toaster and TV with Maize” page 2 — “perennial plants are better prepared for climate change” On a page
read are fed up – thousands of people demonstrate this Saturday in Berlin, the other, a better agriculture. But how should look like? Sebastian Heilmann, give it a try. In a small scale farming operation in the state of Baden-Württemberg, he grows with his Team vegetables for up to 250 people. His greatest care is to the ground.
TIME ONLINE: Mr. Heilmann, they claim that industrial agriculture will feed the humanity. You have to explain.
Sebastian Heilmann: Our oil consumption is bombastic. We generate a large part of the climate-damaging greenhouse gases. We are destroying the diversity of species. And we are losing solid ground. A large part of the surfaces not to be used for the direct nutrition of people. A third of the corn grown in us is converted into energy. We operate our Toaster and TV.
Sebastian Heilmann has a Free training to be a biodynamic farmer and has headed for five years the community supported agriculture at the Schloss-Tempelhof in Baden-Württemberg. © private
TIME ONLINE: And how agriculture can operate, the supply mankind sustainably, without destroying the planet?
Heilmann: The most important is that we take care of the back to the floor. Earlier, the proportion of the nutrient was rich in Humus in it still for five to ten percent, and today it is usually only one to two percent. In addition, we have to fight with the Erosion of the soil, even in Germany. Organic farming is certainly a step in the right direction, but in relation to the ground it is far from it to be sustainable. If our great-grandson, this is to life, we must reach the point that we grow at the same time, food and soil as a resource to build on. The sounds, of course only once after a giant ideal. It is also. But I see no other option if we want to feed us in the long term of our soil.
TIME ONLINE: How should the build go, the ground?
Heilmann: let’s Take the plow. He is the Symbol of agriculture. But actually, he is an enemy of the soil. We need to think of the soil as a house. The plough turns it up and crushed it. And who builds it? We don’t have to tear up the floor. Whether in conventional or organic farming, nowadays there are enough Knowledge and technologies, in order to establish without massive interventions in the soil cultures. An example would be to sow the seeds of cereals directly into the Remains of the previous harvest.
