By Jonathon Elwood Smith
Sustainability Studies Intern
One activity that positivity affects the use of natural resources is how the garden disposes of its yard waste. The community garden uses its own compost from the garden to recycle the nutrients and material left over. Not needing to extract material from other sites or use raw material for the garden and fertilizers. If land is over harvested the soil depletes and actually can destroy the ecosystem chain for the microbes within the soil. The Common Life by Scott Russell Sanders brings up a very good point . He wrote: “On a crowded planet we had better learn how to live well together, or we will live miserably.” In a sense, sustainability is the common life and it is something people have lost touch with within local communities.
The physical degradation of ecosystems can be completely avoid if we view it as a community that we as humans belong to like Aldo Leopold would suggest. Being able to work with nature and not against, and to use nature’s natural processes to take care of weeds and garden waste through the composition cycle, is something that machine-based agriculture fails to understand. The use of local organic farming provides not only raw material to reuse through this recycling it provides a means to get back in touch with the land. To view the land and its resources as part of our community means we must first learn to respect it and understand its functions. Through awareness we can begin to act, and though concern for the land we can learn to love. With love any means can be possible if the vision is followed through with action.
Leave a Reply