All farming is bad for nature. There is no such thing as environmentally friendly farming. The “less damaging” methods of farming are “it only destroying 95% of the habitat, not 98%.”
We could grow everything we need with 1/2 of the land if we banned dry land farming and moved to all irrigated. What’s better? less damaging farming or millions of acres re-wilded.
There is no actively growing onions in the field. It looks like it’s about ready to seed.
The brown rows is likely barley. It’s used as a cover crop over sandy soil. Before they plant the onions they spray the field with an herbicide. The beds are cultivated and seeded leaving a few inches of the dead barley.
The rows of dead barely acts as a windbreak to reduce sandblasting of the young plants with the wind.