Industrial agriculture and forestry

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

We are dealing with Nature as if she were a factory floor and we even call agriculture and forestry nowadays industries.

Nature is not a factory floor, however, but a living intricate organism that cannot be (just) exploited, whether it is in the way that we farm today or the way that we deal with our woods and forests.

We are trying to get more and more out of our farmland and our woods and forests without considering that it just does not work that way. Oh, if the soil is depleted of nutrients we can just chuck some chemicals at it to feed the plants while at the same time further eroding the soil and the organism that live within it and that are needed for proper soil structure and soil health.

We use machinery that compacts the soil and destroys the organism that live there and that make the soil the life-sustaining stuff that it is. In forestry the huge harvesters, which are claimed to be so much more efficient than using loggers and tractors or better still horses to move the logs, with their weight and wheels destroy everything in their wake but then it is the fact that branches have not been left laying on the floor “for the wildlife”. So, lets create “habitat piles”, that will solve the problem, while we continue with bad practice.

But, we are told, it must be done this way so as to be expedient and profitable. Profit, in the world today, comes before anything and everything and that we are degrading and destroying the biosphere – let's get away from the term environment, for environment just, in actual fact means surroundings – to such an extent that it has difficulties supporting life.

Ever bigger and heavier machines are needed, we are told, for farming and forestry to be efficient and productive, which at the same time destroy the very soil that the entire operation depends upon. Then it is a call of chemical industry to the rescue in the form of fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, etc., in the hope that that might mitigate some of the infertility of the soil and so on. Fighting fire with fire might work with a forest fire to some extent but not in this case.

If we don't nurture Nature Nature will not nurture us. Simple as that. Time to understand that Nature is a living breathing organism and not some factory floor with production lines. But that is how we have come to behave in the last century or so and it is just not a way that we can go on. In fact, we should never, ever, have started down that road and we must make a one-hundred-and-eighty degree turn about and we must do that now, immediately, before it is too late.

We are reaching the point where the Earth, where Nature, will have to end the burden that we have placed upon Her, if we do not lift the burden ourselves. It is those practices of ours of treating Nature like a factory floor that have placed an enormous burden upon Her and unless we lift this burden She will change things Herself, no doubt. Nature has Her ways of keeping a balance and that way might very well go against us.

We need Nature but Nature does not need us. This is something that we did well to remember and began now, this very moment, to make and demand the changes that are required. Nature is not a factory nor is it a store of resources to be plundered for profit.

© 2017

The trees are called Standing People

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The trees are called Standing People, by the Native Americans, and we should perceive them in the same way, because they are our teachers. They do not walk about like human beings, but they do hold the energy of the Earth and Sky.

The roots of the trees go deep into our Mother Earth, and their branches reach for the sunlight high in the sky.

These teachers of the woods show humankind how to balance the male and female energies present in every human being.

Through their example, we can learn how to give and receive. The trees are firmly grounded in the Earth and are reaching for the heaves with their branches, showing human beings how to be bridges between the tangible and non-tangible worlds.

The balance of demonstrative and receptive is found in the heart of humans and in the trunk of trees.

These living examples of balance allow humankind to discover the flow of life force that brings inner peace. It is circular and flows up through the roots to the tops of the branches, traveling down to the roots again, creating a recycling of energy.

But the tree never is on its own. It forms a living symbiosis with others around it and does this via an Internet of the trees, the wires which are fungal and without this symbiosis between trees and fungi neither tree nor fungi could live.

Like trees we must connect with the Earth Mother by rooting ourselves deeply in Her while stretching out to the sunlight for warmth and energy. We must feel the pulse of the Earth in order to be able to live well on this Planet.

Modern man, alas, has forgotten this – much due to certain religions that have cut him off from the Spirit of the Mother – and has come to believe himself to be a higher being than other forms of life on the Planet and master over the Earth.

Much of this has been due to a misinterpretation of the scriptures, very much on purpose and not accidental, of the term “G-d gave man dominion over the Earth” which was taken to mean domination and thus control. Nothing, however, is further from the truth for it in reality means that G-d appointed man as husbandman, as caretaker, of the Planet. In his wish for domination, however, man altered the agreement.

It is, however, those monotheistic religions, based on a perceived single male divine being, that has caused the great damage to the Earth in that it has cut people off the truth and the links with the Earth Mother and we must now redevelop those and reconnect to save mankind and the Planet.

The trees can teach us so much if we are but prepared to pause and listen to them and observe them, and care for them. And yes, they do need our care quite often to live better and longer and so be there for us when we need them.

Bernard of Clairvaux – St Bernard (no, not the dog, though the latter is named after the former) – understood and taught that trees and stones can teach us more than any human teacher if we but pause, listen and observe. Though he also was an abbot of the Catholic Church and seriously into the Virgin Mary.

We must connect, or should I say reconnect, with the Earth, our Mother, and learn from the ancient ways of the Native Americans and other Peoples who still know the secrets of Mother Earth. The trees can and must be our guide in this and in this way we may be able to heal the Earth and get Her back to health.

© 2013