我是如何成为一名有机农民的

原文作者George Young, 即farmingGeorge，是一名来自英国东南部的农民。他曾经是一名银行业从业者，后来转行从事农业。George热衷于种植各类环境友好，富有营养的又可持续的食物，也喜欢参与社区建设。

I never dreamt of becoming a farmer. Growing up my plans were always to be a film editor or professional jazz musician. However, life had other plans!

我从未梦想过成为一名农民。从小到大，我的梦想一直是成为一名电影剪辑师或职业爵士乐手。然而，生活另有安排！

Whilst in London in my early twenties, I had a career in banking, earning cash on the side playing music, whilst editing short films in my spare time. When the banking career trajectory stalled, aged 27, I began pondering if I should be doing something else with my life. The lifestyle of farming appealed to me greatly, but still I never imagined that I would actually enjoy farming. At that time, the way my dad farmed was disconnected from growing food, and had little connection to the greater community. It was a job whose role stopped when the commodity grain left the farm gate.

20岁出头时，我在伦敦从事银行业，一边演奏音乐一边编辑短片赚钱。当银行业的职业轨迹停滞不前时，我在27岁时开始思考我是否应该做点别的事情。务农的生活方式极大地吸引了我，但我从未想过我会真的喜欢务农。那时，我父亲的耕作方式与种植粮食是脱节的，与更大的社区几乎没有联系。当种植的作物离开农场大门时，他的工作角色就停止了。

However, I still assumed that a farming life would be more rewarding than the somewhat soulless banking job, and made the decision to quit London, moving back to the farm. Before long I began taking the reins and making some significant changes.

然而，我仍然认为务农生活会比没有灵魂的银行工作更有回报，并决定离开伦敦，搬回农场。不久之后，我开始管理农场，并做出了一些重大改变。

The cropping and style of farming was reasonably conventional when I came home. We grew milling wheat, oilseed rapeand peas, with some cattle. The livestock primarily remained on permanent rough grazing, and were not a part of the arable rotation. We ploughed rotationally,and operated a min-till method of establishment the rest of the time. Pesticide inputs and fertiliser use were high too, based on the assumed wisdom of their necessity to produce yield.

当我回家的时候，种植和耕作方式相当传统。我们种植小麦、油菜和豌豆，还养了一些牛。牲畜主要是多年生草场放养，不属于可耕地轮作。我们轮流犁地，在其余的时间里，我们采用最小化耕作法。基于提高产量必须使用杀虫剂和化肥的假设，我们大量投入杀虫剂和化肥。

Not long into my farming career I visited local farmer Simon Cowell, who practiced no-till arable farming. Seeing how successful his system was without the need for any cultivations tipped me over the edge into the rabbit hole, and my whole agricultural mindset shifted to beginning to work with nature as much as possible. This also began my penchant for visiting as many farmers as possible, in the UK and around the world, inorder to act like a magpie and “steal” their best ideas to implement on my farmback home.

在我从事农业不久，我拜访了当地农民Simon Cowell，他实行免耕农业。看到他的系统在不需要任何耕作的情况下如此成功，我的整个农业思维开始转变为尽可能多地顺应自然。这也让我开始喜欢尽可能多的拜访英国和世界其他地方的农场，以便像喜鹊一样“窃取”他们最好的想法，在我的农场实施。

I visited conventional farmers,zero-tillage farms, mixed farms, market gardens and orchards – if someone was growing something, I wanted to see how they did it. Interestingly, all the organic farms I visited at this time were rather disappointing, with a dearth of wildlife on the land, which puzzled me. Much as though they were farming without synthetic inputs, they were still failing to farm with nature.

我参观了常规农场、免耕农场、混合农场、商品菜园和果园——如果有人在种植某种东西，我想看看他们是怎么做的。有趣的是，我当时参观的所有有机农场都相当令人失望，土地上缺乏野生动物，这让我感到困惑。虽然他们没有用合成投入品，但是他们仍然没能将耕作融入自然。

Having stopped tillage six and a half yearsago, I stopped using insecticides very soon after, as my focus began to be on building a healthy, functioning ecosystem on my farm.  And it wasn’t long before I began to see some biodiversity gains, with increases in mammal and bird life – a sure sign of positive increases in soil life and insects. I had also managed to slash my fertiliser use by 30%, and fungicide use by 50%. However, something was still missing in my farming system. I had an itch I couldn’t quite scratch…

停止耕地六年半后，我很快就停止使用杀虫剂，因为我着力开始在我的农场上建立一个健康、正常运转的生态系统。不久，我就开始看到生物多样性的增加，哺乳动物和鸟类的数量增加——这是土壤生物和昆虫数量增加的迹象。我还设法削减了30%的化肥用量，50%的杀菌剂用量。然而，我的耕作系统中仍然缺少一些东西。我有一种我抓不到的痒感。

Three years ago, I discovered what it was. Food. Up until that point I had been growing a few crops destined for commodity markets, with no say over where that product would end up, or how it would be processed: whether it would create a nutritional food product, or one full of sugar and salt which in the long term makes the consumer ill. This also coincided with me adding a lot more crops into my rotation: buckwheat, lentils,hemp, heritage cereals, linseed, sunflowers, millet, beans – with their primary destination set as a short supply-chain food product with my name still on the label.

三年前，我发现了我系统里缺少的是---食物。在那之前，我一直在种植一些面向大宗商品市场的作物，对这些产品的最终目的地或加工方式没有发言权:它会是一种营养食品，还是一种从长远来看会让消费者生病的高糖高盐食物。因此同时，我也在我的轮作中加入了更多的作物：荞麦、扁豆、麻、传统谷物、亚麻籽、向日葵、小米、豆类——它们主要在短供应链中销售，标签上仍有我的名字。

What’s more, I was now able to grow these new crops with virtually no synthetic inputs whatsoever. And the introduction of a more varied rotation combined with my ecological farm focus meant that the wildlife on my farm was now starting to really thrive.

更重要的是，我现在能够在没有任何合成投入品的情况下种植这些新作物。引入更多样的轮作方式，再加上我对农场生态的关注，意味着我农场的野生动物开始茁壮成长。

A very recent decision was to take my input reduction that one stage further, and commit to becoming an organic farmer. Working directly with my customers showed me that they really wanted a fully organic product from me, but I was loath to end up like the ecologically dead organic farms I saw all those years ago. How could I keep the ecological gains made through zero-tillage and significant artificial input reduction?

我最近的一个决定是进一步减少投入品，并下决心成为一个有机农民。直接接触顾客让我知道他们真的想从我这里买到完全有机的产品，但是我不愿意做一个多年前我见过的那种生态死亡的有机农场。那我如何可以通过免耕和大量减少人工投入品使用来建立很好的农场生态呢？

Thankfully the solution isn’t too tricky, and was cemented on a few farm visits last year: agroforestry, and mixed farming on the arable land. The system of agroforestry I am implementing meansthat, although some soil will be disturbed most years, about 30% of the soil will remain in permanent organic cover. I am also establishing a wild seam, designed to link every field in my farm, such that wildlife are always safe to traverse the land. Plus, there is the superb benefit that the addition of fruit and nut trees means that the nutritional output of my farm is considerably more varied, and I have even more options as to how I connect to my end consumer.

令人欣慰的是，这个解决方案并不太棘手，而且在过去几年的几次农场考察中（解决方案）得到了巩固---即在可耕地上混合林业与农耕。我正在实施的农林复合系统意味着，尽管一些土壤在大多数年份会受到干扰，但大约30%的土壤将长期被有机覆盖。我还建立了一个野生带，旨在连接我农场的每一片田地，这样野生动物就可以安全地穿梭在这片土地上。此外，还有一个极好的好处，那就是种植果树和坚果树意味着我的农场产出的营养食物种类更加多样化，我甚至因此有更多的选项来与我的最终消费者建立联系。

Figuring out an holistic land management strategy for the farm means that I can proudly convert to organic farming, knowing I am doing my very best for the soil, wildlife, and the people who eat the food that I produce. I am able to be proud of the habitat that I am creating, and love that I can bring people along with me for the ride via blogs and videos. I may not be editing feature films, but it’s funny how some aspects of life always end up coming around full circle.

理解农场的整体土地管理策略意味着我可以自豪地转向有机农业，因为我知道我正在尽最大努力保护土壤和野生动物，为消费者提供食物。我为自己在创造的栖息地感到自豪，也喜欢通过博客和视频把我正在从事的事业展示给大家。虽然我没有在剪辑电影，但是生活就是这么有意思，通过其他方式让我从事了自己热爱的事业。