There have been many universe-jarring advances in agricultural technology over the past 100 years, but sometimes being more sustainable means going back to the way things used to be. A lot of those advances in technology rely HEAVILY on fossil fuel, a finite resource whose limited supply we are arguably still in the sweet spot of, but which is causing climate change on a scale rarely witnessed in the history of the planet.
In this video, I find some of the gems from the Biggle Garden Book. This was before the advent of hybrid crops, biotech, and chemical pesticides and fertilizers.
But the history of agriculture is not all peaches and cream. Many useful technologies and a lot of useful information about how everything works has been discovered since this book was published. This is back when people were ingesting lead, mercury, and arsenic like it was skittles. But it was also before DDT, agent orange, and glyphosate. In the next Biggle Garden Book video, I’ll be talking about the 5 scariest tips.