stephgouv wrote:Speaking of studies, I ask myself a question (in all objectivity!) to better understand:
How is it that you had to wait until you had major health concerns to seek and then change your way of cultivating when you cultivated in the traditional way before?
However, I suppose that with your advanced studies, you were taught (or not?) That working the first 20-30 cm of the earth was harmful?
In my opinion, there must not be tons of engineers like you who have changed the way they cultivate yet so easy and so respectful of the environment.
I notice that what we teach our children today no longer corresponds at all (or at least in part) to reality and we continue to teach them things from 50 years ago! But that, the teachers can not do anything ... they do what they can with the means we give them.
Rough question, if there is one. But fundamental. [edit: I had not read lesserffor]
I will have to come back to it at length one day ...
Just one or two things to think about:
a) Knowledge (or knowledge) is. He is not good". Not bad". E = mc² is a fact.
b) What we do with it is something else. And calls for ethics. E = mc² allows dictators to hope to dominate the world. But that's because they're crazy. Not because E = mc². E = mc² allows electricity to be produced without emitting carbon - but with many other disadvantages. Let's say, that it is discussed. E = mc² allows radiotherapy. I do not hide from you that if I was prescribed one, I would follow it. And would find, if successful, that good (like a friend of mine went through).
c) The "knowing" have, like everyone else, in their head, a system of values which make them use their knowledge differently. And even a belief system. There are no more believers than scientists!
d) The "knowing", like everyone else, have blinders !!! They are elements of a system (a society, a nation, INRA, such and such a high school, etc.). And, on a daily basis, they make compromises. They do not want, or cannot, see this or that, because that would force them to question too much! So they don't see ...
It was my case. Even if I have always "pulled" more from the green side than from the Monsanto side. Even though I was an agroforestry specialist (in Africa) as early as 1988 ... I took hits, you can't imagine. I can tell you that I have cried many times when they tried to "shoot" me for nonconformity. So as not to be "mainstream" in the system. Fortunately, my wife was always there. And I got up.
Finally, I had to think I was dead to let go of my blinders and finally to think, to express myself with what I call a "realistic radicalism". It is much easier when you only represent yourself (the institutions, be it "French Cooperation" or "Agricultural Education" are complex systems in which you are a pawn - even the directors). I decided, seeing that in my head I was dead, to give a damn what this could trigger ...
Radicality because I do not stay in the middle of the ford, like the "organic". Who question "chemical" agriculture, but do not ask many questions about copper (it comes!), Or tillage (it hardly comes!) ... Being radical is no longer be content with being in the middle of the ford (and having wet feet all the time!). It is choosing a bank. Because we are not crayfish.
But "realistic" because my vision is based on what actually exists. Not on more or less obscure beliefs, which lock in other "blinders". Sometimes, but not always, worse! It is not enough to question!