In the morning we waited Arlene brought us hot baked scones, which we ate as we rode with her husband Karl to a rural church in the Rakai district to conduct a Farming God's Way workshop. As we drove, Karl told me the story of how it began.
Farming God's Way was developed by a Zimbabwean farmer named Brian Oldreive around 1984.
Brian was a highly successful tabacco farmer who had won numerous awards for his farming. One day his daughter picked up an empty pack of cigarettes and read the warning on the back: "smoking kills." She went to her father and asked him, "daddy, why are you killing people." Brian was convicted by her question and made a covenant with God to not to grow tobacco any more.
So Brian began farming food crops. Every year his yields got worse. He had to mortgage his farm. Eventually the bank took his farm. So he hired himself out as a farmhand. The farm where he worked was getting diminishing yields. He was tasked to plant a field. When the rains came, they washed the topsoil in which the seeds were planted into the valley. He told his boss. She said, "don't worry; this happens every year." But it bothered him.
Brian began to go on long walks in the woods, asking God to show him how he could stop his crop losses. He felt God tell him, "open your eyes." He looked at the forest around him and noticed how different it looked from his farm. His farm was parched and dry. The forest was still green and lush, even though it was late in the dry season. On his farm, overturned dirt baked in the sun. In the forest, a blanket of fallen greenery blanketed undisturbed, moist soil. It occurred to him that God had been farming much longer than he had and knew what He was doing.
In the forest there is an abundance of life, and minimal soil disturbance. Bacteria in the top 4 inches is aerobic, and below is anaerobic. Bacteria in the soil provides nutrients for the plants. Root channels develop that hold the soil and bring rain into the ground.
Tilling the soil breaks up this soil structure. Without a root structure, the rain makes bricks. The soil becomes dead, and erosion carries it away. A dire example of the destruction caused by bad treatment of the soil is the huge crevices that have opened up in Lesotho. In the space of ten years, the amount of arable land in Lesotho was reduced from 10 percent to 9 percent.
Farming God's way is built on three foundations:
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[There is a tremendous amount that I would like to write about this. This way of farming is a revolution. There is an abundance of information at the Farming God's Way web site, particularly on their Resources page, (which includes a Farming God's Way Field Guide and a more detailed Farming God's Way Training Reference Guide] and their links to the web pages of organizations that have promoted and implemented it.]