Excerpt
SEVERAL years ago, at a symposium on ecology and agriculture, one of the speakers, David Ehrenfeld (7) of Rutgers University, discussed the connection between the lives of mountain sheep and sustainable farming practices. He talked about how the sheep live in very high, rocky, and extremely steep places—a dangerous environment for a lamb to be born into. Biologists studying these sheep have observed how important it is for the lambs to learn from older sheep how to negotiate the rocks and crevices. In feet, experiments have been performed where some lambs were hand raised, away from the older sheep and subsequently released into the same environment as lambs raised in the wild by their parents. Sadly, the human-raised lambs had extremely high mortality—they fell off the mountain. The experience of the older sheep passed on to the younger sheep was essential for survival.
This is how agriculture has been for most of history—older, experienced farmers passing on their knowledge and techniques to younger farmers. With mordern agricultural science and technology, and its corresponding compartmentalized approach, howevere, we seem to have ignored this knowledge gained …
Footnotes
Kamyar Enshayan is an agricultural engineer and education coordinator for the Sustainable Agriculture Program at Ohio State University, 1735 Neil Avenue, Columbus, 43210; Deb Stinner is an ecologist and adjunct assistant professor of entomology, and Ben Stinner is a soil ecologist and associate professor of entomology, Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, Wooster, 44691. The authors thank the George Gund Foundation for its support of the Farmer-to-Farmer Mentorship Project.
- Copyright 1992 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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