a minipost
My Dad worked with three of the Native American Nations in Montana for much of his life. In the process he became close with the Blackfeet people and was a friend of Chief Earl Old Person. He told a story of walking with the chief along an experimental area scientists and environmentalists had tired to return to its native state after decades of a near mono-culture dry farming. The project, overrun with non-native weeds, was a failure.
The experts had carefully identified what wasn't native and laboriously removed it. Then they brought in once native plants and seeds and expected nature to take over. Initially the plants did well, but over a period of a few months they began to fail. The next year saw them struggling and plants they had eradicated along with non-native weeds began to appear. Three years out, when Earl and my Dad were walking through the area, it was mostly non-native weeds and a few examples of plants they had removed.
Earl explained, with some frustration, this wasn't an isolated case. Western environmental science 'knew' much more than the Blackfeet who had been in the area for thousands of years. He paused and offered:
They never asked the soil for its story.
Years later my Dad learned some soil scientists were brought in and discovered the mono-culture had changed the makeup of the microorganisms in the ground. In fact it would be impossible for the original plants to thrive in the otherwise rich soil. The original group didn't know the story of the soil.
This pretty much sums up my frustration with techno-solutionism. People develop hammers, see everything as a nail and rush in armed with wads of money and a singular focus. But they don't know the story of the soil.
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