Design and the Future of Agriculture

I saw 'Natural World: A Farm for the Future' on BBC2 last night (it's on iPlayer for 7 days) and was drawn into its intelligent exposition of modern agriculture's dependence on fossil fuels.  The programme, with the premise that this was unsustainable, looked to find different ways of producing food, and it was fascinating.  The examination of the roots of the problems we are facing threw up some surprising ideas.  One was not to plough fields! The reasoning being that each time they are ploughed and exposed to the sun, the fertility of the soil is slowly lessened, over decades you end up with dead soil and a reliance on artificial (fossil-fuel derived) fertilizer.  It's well worth watching, with 'Design' being mentioned many times.  I've transcribed a little sample below.

[Narrative] "I can see how you can grow cattle without ploughing and with natural fertility, but how do you grow everything else we need? Well, it seems that there are a number of people around the world who've already grappled with this problem.  They've developed a system known as permaculture.  Britain's leading expert is Patrick Whitefield.  Permaculture seems to challenge all the normal approaches to farming."

PW: You know people often think that there are two ways of doing things, one is by drudgery, and the other is by chucking fossil fuel at it. Now permaculture is about a third way of doing things, and that is by design, by conscious design.

Presenter: So you're designing the labour out, or you're designing the need for that energy out?

PW: Both.

See the Programme