When the Soil Association was founded in 1946, the intensification of agriculture was only in its infancy. But the post-war imperative for food security was a powerful agent for change, and, encouraged by government policies, British farmers were seduced onto the chemical treadmill. The use of nitrogen fertiliser enabled fertility building through rotations to he abandoned. Plants fed with soluble fertilisers produced sappy, unbalanced growth and were much more vulnerable to pest and disease attack.This led to the development of the pesticides, fungicides and herbicides industry in the 1970s. The agricultural armoury was completed by drugs and antibiotics to control parasites and diseases in overstocked livestock systems. A whole generation of farmers has been indoctrinated into believing that it is not possible to produce sufficient quantities of food without using the new chemical inputs.
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