Moves towards a 'gentler' form of farming are surely welcome?

摘要

I have just finished reading Lark Rise to Candleford, Flora Thompson's memoir of a rural childhood in the 1880s. When I saw the passage above, it struck me that nowadays an expanse of ripe wheat may elicit a more ambivalent response. In Suffolk, the fields seem suddenly to have turned yellow and the combines are hard at work. While acres of barley rippling like blond fur is a marvellous sight, is the crop so apparently perfect and abundant only because it has had lots of artificial fertiliser and the full panoply of "-icides" thrown at it? And does this matter?