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As a layman I assumed that was the case. But I understand the bigger issue now is that both soil and crop nutrients are dropping in farms due to soil depletion[

As a layman I assumed that was the case. But I understand the bigger issue now is that both soil and crop nutrients are dropping in farms due to soil depletion[0]. 0: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and-nutrition-loss/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-an...

hosh 6y ago
Yeah. And not only that, the "regenerative agriculture" mentioned in the article isn't just about sustainable practices, where we put back into the soilwhat we take out. Regenerative practices includes practices where soil fertility is built up year after year as a result of the agricultural practices. In other words, you can take a depleted land and bring it back up into productive land, and potentially, become more productive than non-regenerative practices. You can grow more than a single plant together, and depending on the combination, they can synergize in a way that helps both of them grow. Some of that is due to pest management (where one plant species deters pests that raid the other). Some add nutrients (nitrogen fixers and other dynamic accumulators). Some can grow at different canopy layers (such as growing ground cover to help retain moisture while taller plants are used as trellises for vining plants). Some plants have deep tap roots that break up compacted soil and help draw out nutrients to make them bioavailable. Many of them are pioneer plants and are considered weeds or considered invasive.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  Much of big Ag is an effort to shortcut all this. Use a chisel plow to break up compacted soil. Add ammonia. Use earth movers to create more flat land with useful soils. Etc. The advantages are clear: you can decide when to do these things, and do them on a short schedule. Its hard to argue waiting 5 years for some remediation project to maybe work, when I have a chisel plow right over there in the shed.
  - hosh 6y ago
    Yeah. Big Ag is not incentivized to be sustainable, let alone be regenerative. Big Ag is certainly not resilient. Its very reward system (like modern commerce in general) is based on the extraction of resources (whether that be in the earth, or people resources), and then controlling access to them. Overharvesting always happen, because we're culturally conditioned to define wealth and status in terms of how much one has hoarded more than other people. I think the main path out of this is to have decentralized food systems, and this is where regenerative and resilient design patterns really shine. I think it starts with a shift in the mindset, where instead of seeing wealth as coming from extraction and hoarding, to seeing wealth in terms of being stewards of regenerative processes. We have pseudo-regenerative processes in the financial sector with compounding interest, but you can't directly eat money. I can eat the stuff from my backyard. The beautiful thing about participating in building a decentralized food system is that I don't have to convince you, or anyone else on HN to affect collective action. I can start doing these things in my home, and trade things with other like-minded people. I can offer up the excess abundance to my friends, family, and neighbors. Some of them may want to take up the practices themselves. Just to be clear, I used shortcuts too. I am using raised beds and importing compost and manure (buying them from big box stores). But I'm also taking the time to plant edible perennials. I only found out later, there are many ways to get even quicker turn around time -- sprouts, fast growing annuals, succession planting. I'm learning. Next year's growing season will incorporate more.
    - core-questions 6y ago
      > we're culturally conditioned to define wealth and status in terms of how much one has hoarded more than other people. Do you have an alternative to this? This is basically animal behaviour, it's not unique to humans. Most of that hoarding is out of an effort to get a mate, too.
      - hosh 6y ago
        I wrote the alternative: seeing wealth as being stewards of regenerative processes. I'll elaborate. Plants are generally more cooperative than they are competitive, and groups of plants that cooperate will do better together than by themselves. Trees will establish a network of roots, and shunt nutrients to trees within the grove that are not doing so well. Just because some plant species will engage in chemical warfare with some species doesn't mean it won't cooperate with others, and there are many examples of such cooperation. This idea that nature is based on competitive pressure is not wholly true; there is a whole aspect of cooperative processes that occur in ecology. Animals (an insects), if you actually observe them, can also be more cooperative than competitive. It depends on how you set it up. Some examples: chickens are micrograzers, and sheep are grazers. They don't compete for the same niche. Due to the size of their mouth, sheep cannot eat plants past a certain height. Chickens will also eat bugs. That includes eating the bugs off of the sheep, if you let them. Yeah, my chickens get into my tomatoes sometimes. They scratch at the green mulch I put down in the garden. They will fly over the small fence to get to it. But a different perspective: I let them out into the main yard, and they like the forage there more than they like it in my garden. They help keep the cricket population down (which helps keep the black widow spider population down. The fertilize my backyard (which has poor soil fertility from the previous owner). Their scratching to get at things help aerates the soil, and bring in more fertility. So I don't have to compete with my chickens. I can shape the circumstances such that their natural instincts further the overall health of the system.
  - hinkley 6y ago
    Some of the regen folks hate the chisel plow, think it causes most of the problems you then have to deal with.

hosh 6y ago

Yeah. And not only that, the "regenerative agriculture" mentioned in the article isn't just about sustainable practices, where we put back into the soilwhat we take out. Regenerative practices includes practices where soil fertility is built up year after year as a result of the agricultural practices. In other words, you can take a depleted land and bring it back up into productive land, and potentially, become more productive than non-regenerative practices. You can grow more than a single plant together, and depending on the combination, they can synergize in a way that helps both of them grow. Some of that is due to pest management (where one plant species deters pests that raid the other). Some add nutrients (nitrogen fixers and other dynamic accumulators). Some can grow at different canopy layers (such as growing ground cover to help retain moisture while taller plants are used as trellises for vining plants). Some plants have deep tap roots that break up compacted soil and help draw out nutrients to make them bioavailable. Many of them are pioneer plants and are considered weeds or considered invasive.

JoeAltmaier 6y ago
Much of big Ag is an effort to shortcut all this. Use a chisel plow to break up compacted soil. Add ammonia. Use earth movers to create more flat land with useful soils. Etc. The advantages are clear: you can decide when to do these things, and do them on a short schedule. Its hard to argue waiting 5 years for some remediation project to maybe work, when I have a chisel plow right over there in the shed.
- hosh 6y ago
  Yeah. Big Ag is not incentivized to be sustainable, let alone be regenerative. Big Ag is certainly not resilient. Its very reward system (like modern commerce in general) is based on the extraction of resources (whether that be in the earth, or people resources), and then controlling access to them. Overharvesting always happen, because we're culturally conditioned to define wealth and status in terms of how much one has hoarded more than other people. I think the main path out of this is to have decentralized food systems, and this is where regenerative and resilient design patterns really shine. I think it starts with a shift in the mindset, where instead of seeing wealth as coming from extraction and hoarding, to seeing wealth in terms of being stewards of regenerative processes. We have pseudo-regenerative processes in the financial sector with compounding interest, but you can't directly eat money. I can eat the stuff from my backyard. The beautiful thing about participating in building a decentralized food system is that I don't have to convince you, or anyone else on HN to affect collective action. I can start doing these things in my home, and trade things with other like-minded people. I can offer up the excess abundance to my friends, family, and neighbors. Some of them may want to take up the practices themselves. Just to be clear, I used shortcuts too. I am using raised beds and importing compost and manure (buying them from big box stores). But I'm also taking the time to plant edible perennials. I only found out later, there are many ways to get even quicker turn around time -- sprouts, fast growing annuals, succession planting. I'm learning. Next year's growing season will incorporate more.
  - core-questions 6y ago
    > we're culturally conditioned to define wealth and status in terms of how much one has hoarded more than other people. Do you have an alternative to this? This is basically animal behaviour, it's not unique to humans. Most of that hoarding is out of an effort to get a mate, too.
    - hosh 6y ago
      I wrote the alternative: seeing wealth as being stewards of regenerative processes. I'll elaborate. Plants are generally more cooperative than they are competitive, and groups of plants that cooperate will do better together than by themselves. Trees will establish a network of roots, and shunt nutrients to trees within the grove that are not doing so well. Just because some plant species will engage in chemical warfare with some species doesn't mean it won't cooperate with others, and there are many examples of such cooperation. This idea that nature is based on competitive pressure is not wholly true; there is a whole aspect of cooperative processes that occur in ecology. Animals (an insects), if you actually observe them, can also be more cooperative than competitive. It depends on how you set it up. Some examples: chickens are micrograzers, and sheep are grazers. They don't compete for the same niche. Due to the size of their mouth, sheep cannot eat plants past a certain height. Chickens will also eat bugs. That includes eating the bugs off of the sheep, if you let them. Yeah, my chickens get into my tomatoes sometimes. They scratch at the green mulch I put down in the garden. They will fly over the small fence to get to it. But a different perspective: I let them out into the main yard, and they like the forage there more than they like it in my garden. They help keep the cricket population down (which helps keep the black widow spider population down. The fertilize my backyard (which has poor soil fertility from the previous owner). Their scratching to get at things help aerates the soil, and bring in more fertility. So I don't have to compete with my chickens. I can shape the circumstances such that their natural instincts further the overall health of the system.
- hinkley 6y ago
  Some of the regen folks hate the chisel plow, think it causes most of the problems you then have to deal with.