Fig. 2. Organic cucumbers grown in tunnels by an intuitive farmer in South Africa
more synthetic fertilizer, which
leads to acidified, degraded and
compacted soil, so plant health declines and plants are susceptible to
insect and pathogen attacks. This
means more pesticides and herbicides are applied, which in turn pollutes our air with greenhouse gases
and contaminants and uses more
water than is necessary, and it further kills our beneficial microbes.
And so the cycle continues.
The way in which farmers sometimes make important practical
management decisions, which can
be based more on intuition than on
pure rationality, is often overlooked; often farmers say they ‘feel’
what is required. A study by Peter
Nuthall published in 2012 describes
how the most successful New Zealand stock cattle farmers relied less
on formal technological tools devel-
oped to aid their practical decisionmaking, and instead developed a
personalised expert system, guided
mainly by their intuition. Nuthall
said that developing this intuitive
ability would be a more practical
approach in helping farmers make
customized decisions for increasing
efficiency on their farms.
International surveys published in
2006 and 2012 by Henk Kieft, from
the Netherlands, show that farmers
who farmed “intuitively” reported
earlier disease detection, lower
chemical inputs, increased nutritional value, longer shelf-life and
higher input efficiency in plant production. Characteristics such as quieter animals, improved immune
response, lower antibiotic use, lower veterinary costs and more efficient feed conversion rates were
reported in animal-based farming.
Farmers also reported minimizing
their impacts on the surrounding
environments, and spoke of working “together with nature”.
The role of intuition in decisionmaking has been long studied and
debated in research fields like neurobiology, psychology and psychiatry. But until now, the use of intuition in an agricultural context has
received little attention in scientific
research. Intuitive decision-making
is generally described as a process
that is fast, highly accurate, sensitive and seems to bypass the brain’s
functional cognitive processes.
However, knowledge and experience help in increasing the accuracy
of a decision made intuitively.
Intuitive farming techniques also
include telepathic interspecies communication (communication between humans and other species,