Organic gardening and farming
is the organic cultivation and production of food
crops and other crops with a minimal amount of exploitation or harm to any
animal. Organic gardening and stock-free farming methods use no animal
products or by-products, such as bloodmeal, fish products, bone meal, feces, or other
animal-origin matter, because the production of these materials is viewed as
either harming animals directly, or being associated with the exploitation and
consequent suffering of animals. Some of these materials are by-products
of animal husbandry, created during the process of
cultivating animals for the production of meat, milk, skins, furs, entertainment,
labor, or companionship; the sale of by-products decreases expenses and
increases profit for those engaged in animal husbandry, and therefore helps
support the animal husbandry industry, an outcome most vegans find
unacceptable.
Types
Forest gardening
Forest gardening is a fully plant-based organic
food production system based on woodland ecosystems, incorporating fruit and
nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables. Making use of companion planting, these can be intermixed
to grow in a succession of layers, to replicate a woodland habitat. Forest
gardening can be viewed as a way to recreate the Garden
of Eden. The three main products from a forest garden are fruit, nuts and green
leafy vegetables.
Robert Hart adapted forest gardening
for temperate
zones during the early 1960s. Robert Hart began with a conventional smallholding
at Wenlock
Edge in Shropshire.
However, following his adoption of a raw vegan
diet for health and personal reasons, Hart replaced his farm animals with
plants. He created a model forest garden from a small orchard on his farm and
intended naming his gardening method ecological horticulture or ecocultivation.
Hart later dropped these terms once he became aware that agroforestry
and forest gardens were already being used to describe similar systems
in other parts of the world.
Vegan permaculture
Vegan permaculture (also known as veganic permaculture,
veganiculture or vegaculture) avoids the use of domesticated animals. It is
essentially the same as permaculture except for the addition of a fourth core
value; "Animal Care." Zalan Glen, a raw vegan, proposes that vegaculture
should emerge from permaculture in the same way veganism split from
vegetarianism in the 1940s. Vegan permaculture recognizes the importance of free-living animals,
not domesticated animals, to create a balanced ecosystem.
Veganic gardening
The veganic gardening method is a distinct system
developed by Rosa Dalziell O'Brien, Kenneth Dalziel O'Brien and May E. Bruce,
although the term was originally coined by Geoffrey Rudd as a contraction of vegetable
organic in order to "denote a clear distinction between conventional
chemical based systems and organic ones based on animal manures". The
O'Brien system's principal argument is that animal manures are harmful to soil
health rather than that their use involves exploitation of and cruelty to
animals.
The system employs very specific techniques including the
addition of straw and other vegetable wastes to the soil in order to maintain soil fertility. Gardeners following the system use
soil-covering mulches,
and employ non-compacting surface cultivation techniques using any
short-handled, wide-bladed, hand hoe.
They kneel when surface cultivating, placing a board under their knees to
spread out the pressure, and prevent soil compaction. Kenneth Dalziel O'Brien
published a description of his system in Veganic Gardening, the Alternative
System for Healthier Crops:
The veganic method of clearing heavily infested land is to
take advantage of a plant's tendencies to move its roots nearer to the soil's
surface when it is deprived of light. To make use of this principle, aided by a
decaying process of the top growth of weeds, etc., it is necessary to subject
such growth to heat and moisture in order to speed up the decay, and this is
done by applying lime, then a heavy straw cover, and then the herbal compost
activator…The following are required: Sufficient new straw to cover an area to
be cleared to a depth of 3 to 4 inches.
The O'Brien method also advocates minimal disturbance of the
soil by tilling, the use of cover crops and green manures, the creation of
permanent raised beds and permanent hard-packed paths between them, the
alignment of beds along a north-south axis, and planting in double rows or more
so that not every row has a path on both sides. Use of animal manure is
prohibited.
There are many other methods currently used and under development.
Practices
Soil fertility is maintained by the use of green
manures, cover crops, green
wastes, composted
vegetable matter, and minerals. Some vegan gardeners may supplement this with human
urine from vegans
(which provides nitrogen)
and 'humanure'
from vegans, produced from compost toilets.[2]
Generally only waste from vegans is used because of the expert recommendation
that the risks associated with using composted waste are acceptable only if the
waste is from animals or humans having a largely herbivorous diet.
Veganic gardeners may prepare soil for cultivation using the
same method used by conventional and organic gardeners of breaking up the soil
with hand tools and power tools and allowing the weeds to decompose.
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