A Natural Farming System For Sustainable Agriculture In the Tropics Sustainable Agriculture Book - Introduction

When you live in the developing world, you start to see things differently. I started visiting this country on short-term visits with Christian groups in 1995. I surveyed the rural areas and worked with people who were trying to make a difference with the knowledge they had. It’s hard to ignore
some of the problems that are emerging on our near horizon, but of course a local community is painfully aware of its own problems. It was sobering to see first hand, the struggle people endure to survive within the rural farming system.

It was sobering. Entire food growing communities are nominalized due to the high cost of production. Chemical fertilizers have increased four-fold since I moved here in 1998. The lowland farmers have no heritage to pass on to their children. The old system of slash and burn, shifting cultivation is no longer sustainable due to encroaching development and outside pressures. The tribal groups practicing this technique have little to show for their efforts.