Without Chemicals and High Technologies In Farming Can We Feed the World

Many people believe that we need to develop our farming techniques like people do in western countries or in developed countries. They need more big machines so they can grow in the big, big area. So to have a big machine, farmers can work easily and happily. They just sit in the air-conditioned room and press the button. They use computers to control everything. That's what many people dream about, the future of farming. And at the same time, people think that we need to have high technology to develop seeds. We need to use chemicals, use hormones to increase the yield from farming. So we can have enough food to feed the increasing population of the world. But after we talked with many farmers in the U.S., in many countries, in developed countries, we found that most of the farmers cannot survive by themselves. They cannot survive without subsidies from the government. Most of the farmers, they have to borrow a lot of money from the bank. And they have to be in debt a lot. And in the same time, most of the farmers, they need to sell their land when they retire. They have not enough money to make a living. And many of them, even they sell their land, they don't make enough money to cover their debt. High technology of farming and high technology in developing seeds and use more chemicals, it leads to big debt for farmers and makes the soil deplete. The water contaminates the plant, starts to extinct. Compared to Thai farmers, this is Yai Nom. Yai Nom is 63 years old. She has nothing. She has only a hole and a space to do farming. She can grow enough food in a small area, only half an acre. She can produce enough to feed her family with 16 grandkids, grandchildren. And she has enough food for them. And she has enough income to take care of all of them. And this is Yai Noi. Yai Noi is 73 years old ladies who do farming in the same area with Yai Nom. She has no tools. She uses bamboo stick to dig. But she can produce quite a lot of vegetables. She can take care of her family. And she still has surplus to share with friends and people around. And she has surplus to sell in the market too. She can sell more than 300 kilograms of her produce from her garden every month. That's quite a big income for her to take care of her family. When people said that if you don't use high technology, if you don't use chemicals, don't use high-tech seeds, you cannot feed the population of the world. I always thinking about these two ladies because I came to visit them many times in the past until now. I saw that they are so different from the information that we got from the media, from the mainstream. So when you think about one American farmer that I used to talk with them, he said he has 5,000 acres and he borrows almost a million dollars per year. And he uses more than 10,000 liters of diesel oil every year. And he said he can feed more than 127 people per year. But at the end, he has a lot of debt. And in the same time, his soil starts to deplete. He needs to increase the investment every year to increase the fertilizer every year. And in the same time, the weed killer, the pesticides increase too. And the price also increases. So that makes it harder and harder for them to survive. But compared to these old ladies, they are old farmers who have less than half an acre. Each lady has less than half an acre to do a small garden. But they grow everything that they need in their life. So they save a lot of money from buying food. And in the same time, they did not invest much money. They maybe invest less than $50 per year. And then they invest a lot of their labor. And they have enough food to feed their family, have enough surplus to share with friends and people nearby. And even surplus to sell. They make income every month. In the same time, the soil starts to be better and better every year. They start to use less and less compost after that. They have no problem with pests or disease. Because when the soil is fertile, the environmental system is balanced, everything is controlled by itself. And then they grow many things mixed together. That makes the bugs and pests confused. And when everything is balanced, everything is controlled by themselves, they have less problems with bugs here. So everything is growing well. They never use any single drop of chemical in this area for many, many years. The soil starts to be better and better every year. The most incredible thing is the taste of their vegetables. I love to eat vegetables, but normally when we buy vegetables from the market, it's so bland, so tasteless. But the vegetables here are so good. Everything is sweet and tastes strong, tastes good. Especially daikon or cabbages. Tastes so sweet. If we did not cook by ourselves, we don't believe that they did not add any sugar. But it tastes good. Without chemical, it doesn't mean there's no pests, no bugs at all. Some of them, they have a lot of locusts eating corn like this. They just let them eat. But when nature can control itself, the corn still looks good like this. It's so beautiful. When some people say that you cannot feed the population of the world without chemicals, without high technology in farming, I always think about this place. Because they have been producing food, they have been farming in their garden like this for many, many years. And then they never use any chemical. No high technology. There's nothing here. They use only solar panels to pump the water. That's only one simple technology that they have here. But they can feed so many people in the country because their produce will be sold online a lot. Many people taste it and they love it. They keep buying from them all the time. The question is, why don't we produce our food in this way? Because you invest less money, you just use a little bit more labor, but you can produce a lot of good food and high quality of food too. And at the same time, you got the good food and you develop the soil to make the soil very healthy. The soil will be a good home for all kinds of microorganisms, all kinds of bugs that will produce good food for us. So we can enjoy our good food with very low cost like this. We're happy to enjoy it. I love vegetables. Every time when I come here, I eat a lot until I cannot get up easily because it's so tasty, so joy to be able to eat good food. I want people to have a chance to eat good food like this. That's why I feel like we need to come back to develop farming in this way so we can have plenty of good food to feed population in the world. If we develop farming in this way, it will be very cheap. We will have a lot of good food to feed more than three times of population that we have in the world now.