To steal a quote from Holistic Management Educator Brian Wehlburg – ‘species aren’t invasive, nature is’.
A “weed” is defined as a “plant out of place”. But who decides what “out of place” is? Did you know that a new “invasive weed” is declared in Australia, on average, every 18 days? Did you know there are now more introduced plant species in Australia than native ones? Nature hates bare ground and will fill it with whatever grows best – because nature is efficient. Natural ecosystems are never monocultures so the argument that if we don’t destroy it, the weed will take over is just plain wrong. When a system is out of balance it may appear that a species is taking over but its just there to kick start ecosystem function and in so doing create opportunities for other species to move in. What created the imbalance in the first place….. 9 times out of 10 is humans… yet we still think reducing complexity by killing weeds (usually by adding poison) will somehow fix the problem we created.
Almost everything we eat, stand on, live in, look at, grow and breathe comes mostly from introduced plants? Without introduced plants, we’d be in big trouble. We can wax lyrical about how we ‘should’ all be eating a native diet but how?
Instead lets engage with nature as she is right here and now – not how we think she should be, not how she was, how she is. Embracing diversity and learning from nature is the key to stabilising climate, building soil and having healthier populations of all higher-order species. Nature is not static, there is no going back to how it was as evolution happens continually. And when we focus on weeds as a problem we miss the gifts they bring us – diversity, habitat, strata, mineral cycling, small water cycle contribution, photosynthesis which feeds soil life, ground stabilisation, green leaf cover and often medicinal benefits.
Despite their role in plant succession, “invasive species” declarations have created a cyclical chemical market supported by councils, landholders (big and small) and governments worth billions.
These bodies, and their environmental advisers, who also determine the definitions of “biodiversity”, deem a rich ecosystem of introduced species be classified (in environmental verification schemes) the same as a ploughed out or sprayed-out monoculture of conventional cropland (for example). Of course, many of our natives are in fact considered “weeds” in other countries with governing bodies there mandating their elimination, instead of recognising their contribution- and so the spiral continues.
Have you ever wondered why the world’s most amazing places like the Amazon and other great woodlands of the planet are so rich with complex life, yet our standard form of agriculture is one step away from a desert- simplified, controlled and conquered. This is simply because there is a powerful natural force on this planet that we have chosen to ignore.
Thanks to insights such as Holistic Management and tools like Silvopasture, Biodynamics, Permaculture and Syntropic Agriculture, we now know that we can turn this around.
Whether you are a grazier, small-cropper, poultry or egg producer, homesteader, market gardener, orchardist or even a hay producer, you will find that there are enormous benefits to embracing dynamic and powerful ecological functions into your system.
Embracing complexity is easier said than done. Humans can handle “complicated” (we’ve worked out how to fly into space) but we can’t handle “complex” – (predicting weather patterns or microbial fluctuations like fungal blooms). Too many unpredictable moving parts spoil the broth!
There is a trick to all this of course- that nature actually knows what she’s doing, we just need to get out of the way! If you see something you class as a “weed”- leave it alone. If you are being “taken over” by something, use your powers of observation to work out what the conditions are that you have created that have favoured that “invasion”. Ditch the poisons, the plough and the match (even the mower) and just see what happens when Life happens!
