by Ogo A. Bellard

Created on: March 01, 2008

The concept and practice of crop rotation is not a new one there are ancient Roman, African and Asian archaeological references to its practice and theory. But it was not until 8 - 13 CE during the global Muslim Agricultural Revolution (MAR), that it became well known and widely introduced into global farming practises. It is only with the fairly new advent of inorganic pesticides and fertilisers that crop rotation lost favour and was mistakenly replaced. There is however a return to or innovation of these old practices through the systems of sustainable land use development as seen in organic farming, permaculture, polyculture etc. It is becoming undeniably self-evident that modern petro-chemical reliant commercial farming is not only unsustainable but increasingly damaging to the environment.

Going back to the MAR for a bit because within it we can see the roots of modern farming in some very fundamental concepts and practises that changed humanity forever. What the MAR did was to put forward major innovations to agriculture of the time. The Muslim trade routes saw the introduction of these innovations inconjunction with an incredible amount of new food crops, especially into Europe that had been mainly wheat farming up until then. Among the new crops were cotton, rice, aubergines, bananas, figs, lemons, flax, oranges, apricots and sugar cane.

There are four main reasons to practise crop rotation and they are Soil Depletion, Disease Prevention, Pest Control and Weed Control. Different crops not only utilise different properties of the soil like minerals and nutrients, but they themselves also change the soil with their root structures and outputs too. If one plants the same crop year after year in the same soil or garden bed. The soil will without aid, become leached of all that the specific crops requires in order to grow. The yield of that crop will gradually dwindle until it is not worth sowing any more. There are three solutions to this problem.

One; move to new land and join a slash and burn farming culture that has in itself become clearly redundant in the face of pressing population and environmental concerns. Two; join the modern commercial culture that is wholly reliant on petro-chemicals for fertiliser and pesticides in combination with grow once hybrid seed. Or alternatively ply your land with massive amounts of manure and compost which whilst being organic might perhaps break the bank. Three; join a culture of crop rotation combined in a dynamic

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