Much of human misery and angst flows from the self regulating aspect of nature. The physical world mechanisms that make "self regulation" work are many of civilization's ancient foes. The same forces, e.g. fungus ("the teeth of the soil"), that help a forest grow also rot wooden buildings. Much of our civilization is an attempt to break free of these forces. (The concept of "the singularity" sums this up nicely.) Maybe one of the necessary components of nature is the idea that one can break free?
Many engineered systems aim to counteract the restoring forces of nature. For example, for life on Earth to be possible, large uniformly impermeable surfaces must break up into soil. Consequently, roads and parking lots require numerous workarounds to contain, direct, and lessen the impact of those forces.
"Natural" farming methods attempt to function in phase with those forces. The solutions to the day to day problems that arise in that context generally carry along their own set of problems. For example, if your garden has slugs, then you can add ducks to your farm to eat the slugs and keep their population in check. But once you have ducks, then you will need to worry about hawks and other predators killing them, so then you might add geese to help repel predators, or build an enclosure for them, and so on.
Combining many "solutions" is one way life attains stability within a dynamic environment. Devising that type of solution, however, can be time consuming and almost necessarily dilutes the desired output. For example, by adding a menagerie of animals and other plants to make a strawberry field productive, a farmer also adds more mouths to feed and reduces the space for strawberry plants to grow.
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