Why this logo?

Am I against the development of agriculture? In a world where famine is growing problem it would be insane... but...

There are serious reasons I devised this sign, and there is specific inspiration behind my 'hatred' of tractors.

We are not completely fair, if we talk about modern agriculture as of the sole rescuing source of mankind. Partially, agriculture is connected not just with famine, but it is also indirect source of other human suffering, that is causing diseases, cancer among all, because of the uncontrolled use of chemicals. Bad agriculture, that involves the idea of increasing plowed land vs. increasing production is also linked to these general problems of humanity. It causes so drastic change in the ecosphere, that it contributes to global warming, erosion, degradation of soil, desertification etc.

Anyway, what are my personal reasons? Well, I finished agriculture school. In there they basically thought us that nothing would produce if we wouldn't spray with poison fifty times a year because all crops would be exterminated by the pests... Hmm, there they also left us showeling antibiotics into the food of pigs, but told us not to inhale it because cancer would be guaranteed... Where they told us we need to plow up the last remains of salty steppe, because wheat doesn't need deep plowing to yield, and it would bring up the salt even more - of course nothing yielded here, as salt is poisonous for wheat, but the landscape was ruined, only there was left a sea of invasive weeds...

In Vojvodina (and everywhere else) there is a need to strictly prohibit and fine the plowing of everything that is not arable land – woods, glades, pastures, public paths, dykes... The natural landscape needs to be fixed by law. Unauthorized cutting of hundred years old trees in the field should not get unnoticed and put away with!

Plowing, crop dusting, condense animals into farms... This is the conventional way, but is it the way of future? Is it sustainable, or just stuff for short term? Surely, I am for improvement, but not this way.

What else to say about the part of the world I am living in – The Bachka region was first devastated by invading Turks, who burned villages, expelled the residents, then cut out all the forests, and the today's industrialization and extensive agriculture finished the job by turning the landsacape into an agricultural desert (see picture). People that visit even from nearby Serbia first ask the question "Why is just but every little spot plowed up?"

Vojvodina

Historically speaking what was left after the rule of Turks was grassland afforested to less than 6 %, and it is said only Ireland has less trees on the continent. But this agricultural "improvement" led to forever loss of steppe, of pastures, of alkaline grassland. My town Subotica was originally surrounded by 12 grassy geographically distinct areas (Serbian: pustara or Hungarian: puszta) which of none is left. From the point of native flora, e.g. this resulted in loss of 28 % of it!

These are my personal calculations based on published data. But what's new discovery to me is connected with the idea that modern agriculture is more dangerous than the large scale urbanization: let's compare my percentages with the analysis done about one of the bigger European cities Budapest. This metropolis with over three million citizens (of course not as big as Tokyo but in Central-European terms) has doubled, maybe even tripled in last hundred years, thus swallowing up the nature around it. According to a rather old study (Kovács-Priszter, 1974) in the Budapest agglomeration more than 100 plant species have disappeared in the course of a century, e.g. 7 % of the flora, a shocking number to the authors.

          And what should than we say?

Plowed up forest – lined arrangement of alien trees, destroyed habitat of remnant flora
in the "Nature reserve" Subotica sands