22 ms·
No-till no-herbicide farming system in trial since 1981
- swalsh 6y agoSorry if I missed something while reading this. Does this system reduce the dependency on added Nitrogen (given the luming Nitrogen crisis coming in the future if current rates persist)?
- Retric 6y agoWe are extracting Nitrogen from the atmosphere, that isn’t going to run out. Ammonia is made from Nitrogen and Hydrogen, it’s the Hydrogen that’s extracted from natural gas. However, splitting it from water is again effectively unlimited and not that expensive. Phosphorus is plentiful, current methods give us a 300+ year supply and other options exist. Potassium is a little more questionable we are likely to need to mine the ocean floors fairly soon which would spike prices, but it could ultimately be a closed loop where we are collecting the runoff.
- TheNorthman 6y agoThe problem isn't us running out of nitrogen, the problem is the impact that nitrogen deposition has on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.
- Retric 6y agoI agree that’s a problem, however unlike most environmental issues runoff is an inefficiency not a byproduct. Farmers that more efficiently use fertilizer directly have less runoff. So, generally the economic incentives are in close alignment. The US for example has seen a significant reduction in runoff without that much pushback from farmers. That said, there is a point where with wasted fertilizer costs less than the methods of avoiding runoff, which changes the dynamics.
- himinlomax 6y agoYou can have nitrogen runoff problems whether you use artificial fertilizer or manure, the only difference is that people who use manure typically (though not always) are more careful about it.
- flyingfences 6y ago> The system’s sole source of fertility is leguminous cover crops
- marketingPro 6y agoI didn't know such a problem may be coming. Would everyone composting solve this? If anyone was unaware, urine is high in nitrogen and when added to compost is like "adding gas to fire, but slower". I never had an issue with Nitrogen in my compost. I can see nitrogen going to waste if food ends up in a landfill, but I imagine our sewage systems recycle this for profit. Is this manageable with habit changes?
- kickout 6y agoNo, the scale of agriculture is too big for residential solutions to move the needle. Need economic incentives for these eco-friendly practices.
- marketingPro 6y agoI did a crappy Google search and I found 50% of food is eaten by humans. I think you are incorrect here. 50% of nitrogen goes to waste if no one composts.
- Ensorceled 6y agoSearch for nitrogen in the original article, it definitely reduces the need for added nitrogen. Adding lots of cheap nitrogen is something we've become addicted to ... farmers used to rotate crops etc. There is another article on this site about how corn will uptake far more nitrogen than it needs, so cheap, abundant nitrogen isn't really as necessary as we believe.
- refurb 6y agoNitrogen crisis? First I’ve heard of this. Have an links to educate myself?
- zimbatm 6y agoOne of the difficulty for smaller farmers is the transition period where the field produces a lower yield. They don't have the monetary buffer available for that. I hope that Governments with a minimum of foresight will fund those efforts.
- kickout 6y agoThis is correct. Its not an education problem (most farmers agree with these no-till sustainable practices), its an incentive problem. No sane farmer who derives their living from farming is going to take such a huge risk when annualized corn-soy production is heavily subsidized by the government (rightly or wrongly) on the _possibility_ of these practices maybe paying off (someday). https://thinkingagriculture.io/incentivizing-regenerative-agriculture/ https://thinkingagriculture.io/incentivizing-regenerative-ag... edit: There is a carefully crafted statement on the OP link saying increased yields in dry years. Outside of 2020 and 2012, the Midwest has been anything but dry. Can't expect people to adapt unprofitable practices
- wil421 6y agoIf there are already subsidies why can’t there be subsidies specifically for adopting organic methods. You could also make the subsidies pay more during the first few years of the transition period. Milk is very subsidized as well. You could pair local dairies with local farmers participating in similar programs.
- kickout 6y agoThat's the million dollar question. There are reasons to subsidize overproduction of food and plant-based biofuels (ethanol) -- food riots are bad. So the current system makes sense even if I don't agree with it 100%. I anticipate we will see governments study/adapt these subsidy markets for more eco-friendly practices (for the purpose of carbon sequestration and/or ground water protection).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kickout 6y agoI think the Rodale people are well intentioned but off in their approach. Need to focus less on the technological aspect or more on the economic and scaling aspect. The reason people don't do this isn't because they aren't aware of such practices, they don't do it because you have to thread a needle as far as precise management is concerned to simply turn a profit. Not that much room for margin in today's agriculture landscape
- spiderfarmer 6y agoThis is where environmentalists always say that the consumer should pay more in the supermarkets, ignoring the fact that the supermarkets make the highest margins in the entire chain between seed and consumer. And they have no incentive to pay farmers more, because farmers don't have a lot of places where they can sell their products. Solve this problem and you can really change the system.
- kickout 6y agoNo. F that. Consumers aren't paying externalities for transportation costs (think airlines and cars). Why should agriculture be the bad guy? Start with transportation and then come after ag. Don't single out ag please
- adrianN 6y agoSimple: Make better practices required by law, so that all farmers have to do it. Add some tariffs so that foreign farmers can't compete by ignoring these practices.
- estsauver 6y agoThey're running 72 experiments on 12 acres. That's mostly interesting to me because that's an incredibly small area of land. US corn agriculture is on about 83 million acres of land. Subsaharan African Agriculture also plants about 83 million acres of maize. They see yields that are 1/3 to 1/4 of US agricultural yields. These yield gaps dramatically close when you start using fertilizer and modern agricultural practices. (The One Acre Fund puts out some pretty good data on this, the Burke and Lobell lab at Stanford have a few good papers on this as well.) In short, I would just ask people to remember that there are quite a few farmers who would love to stop paying for fertilizer if it didn't impact their yields: all of them in fact. It's one of their biggest costs generally. When an organization says "The Farming Systems Trial was started by Bob Rodale, who wanted scientific backing for the recommendations being made to the newly forming National Organic Program in the 1980s" they've incorporated confirmation bias into their heart. I'm certainly biased, I'm the CTO of a company that's trying to improve agricultural inputs by financing access to smallholders in subsaharan Africa (Apollo Agriculture, we're actually a YC F1 company also,) but it's worth noting that this is research that's quite a bit outside the normal recommendations that ag scientists believe. I also worked at The Climate Corporation before, to put all my potential biases out on the table.
- kickout 6y agoIs growing maize the best use of Subsaharan Africa land if their productivity is ~33% of 'optimized' regions? Or is it better to sequester carbon that land? The world is not short of maize supply
- nicoburns 6y agoOr indeed grow other crops that might be better suited to the environment in that location.
- estsauver 6y agoMaize ends up being one of the most economically efficient and calorically dense crops to grow. If you have very little money to invest in your land, it's definitely one of your best choices. We're trying to get farmers a bit more capital access to be able to move to more productive systems, but if you don't have an extra 50$ for fertilizer, you definitely are going to struggle to switch to potatoes.
- jl2718 6y agoThey say crop rotation is their primary defense against pests. My mother’s farm had excellent results with no rotation by mixing in a small amount of tobacco. I’d also be interested to see someone test an omega-balanced cattle feed permaculture using corn and flax, maybe seed hemp too.
- chromatin 6y agoWow! Thanks for posting this link. My mother gave me some years ago a late 80s/early 90s copy of the “Rodale book of composting,” which was excellent and I recommend. I have been applying the principles in my own home garden but was unaware of the larger context.
- Aerroon 6y agoHow much (additional) human labor does this require? Farm work tends to be difficult and on the dangerous side.
- sudoaza 6y agoIt's all machined, no manual labor. Instead of sparying you would roll the pasture with already existing farming machinery. They use the same no till sower as other no-till methods.
- mikey_p 6y agoThere's still a fair bit of labor, but most of that now takes the form of repair and maintenance work on machines.
- kickout 6y agoModern farming is hyper efficient and basically 90% automated. That said, the remaining 10% market is probably a 100B-1T market opportunity (seriously). Not many startups either.
- motohagiography 6y agoIsn't the viability of herbicides just a function of regional labour costs? I ask because I know some permaculture farmers who do these super dense crops with symbiotic plants, and it only works because they're out there working it.
- fouc 6y agoPermaculture farming is fairly low effort actually. Most of the work is in shaping the earth. Generally seeds are sown semi-randomly and whatever pops up is what pops up. There's very little direct management of plants. Also getting in grazing animals does a great job of prepping land for new growth.
- zimbatm 6y agoIsn't the issue that the arable land gets destroyed using the current practices[1]? Borrowing into the future and making farmers dependent on chemicals doesn't seem like the best strategy in the long term. [1]: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/arable-land https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/arab...
- marcinzm 6y agoI don't see how that plot implies causality onto fertilizers. Population in the US has grown significantly and urbanization has been a trend for the last century. I'm assuming land converted into housing or suburbs or cities is no longer classified as arable.
- refurb 6y agoI’d love someone more knowledgeable to weigh in, but destroyed seems like an overstatement. There is land in Canada that’s been farmed for coming on 150 years. The last 60-80 being “modern” farming methods. It’s still highly productive land. In terms of your link, it looks like it’s not counted as farmland if it’s abandoned (no intention to farm it in the future). Some of that land may no longer be able to be cultivated, but I’d assume that’s not the only driver of the decrease.
- triyambakam 6y ago150 years and even 60-80 is a short time though considering plots in e.g. SE Asia being farmed for at least a thousand years. What would the long term for conventional farming look like?
- bluGill 6y agoMost people in the US/Canada have no information on what was done a few hundred years ago. This is archaeological evidence that before Europeans came the natives were farmers, but disease (large numbers died) and introduction of horses most of the old knowledge of farming was lost even before the old farms were force-ably taken away.
- bagswatchesus 6y agoThe only difference is that people who use manure typically (though not always) are more careful about it. https://www.mylvbags.co/replica-louis-vuitton-handbags/women.html https://www.mylvbags.co/replica-louis-vuitton-handbags/women...
- docPangloss 6y agoThere's a variation of Rodale's approach that is used in gardens. I just shared it on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24826386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24826386 about Ruth Stout and her no-till garden & farming approach. Admittedly, during her initial year of the garden, she tilled the plot. Subsequent years she used mulch cover (and perhaps some strategic cover crops).
- srehnborg 6y agoFarmers Footprint is also worth checking out. They have a similar mission. - https://farmersfootprint.us/ https://farmersfootprint.us/ They have shown conventional soil will return to normal after 1 growing season, which is pretty wild. They even reimburse farmers that make the switch, but don't see the same yields.
- kickout 6y ago1 year back to 'normal'? Unlikely. Soil that has been under intense management will almost always need more than 1 year to 'return to normal' which is hard to define.
- srehnborg 6y agoThere is a great documentary on regenerative farming. https://farmersfootprint.us/watch/ https://farmersfootprint.us/watch/ - 6 minutes in. Worth watching the full 20 minutes.
- mabbo 6y agoIn the same area of thoughts, I am reminded of a farmer my parents knew many years ago. He raised cattle. And he got tired and decided to be lazy. You see, keeping cattle takes a lot of work. Constant vet bills for inoculations, treatments when they get sick. Corn-feeding, to maximize their size, means buying a lot of corn. Constant attention and work. And my parents' friend, well, he was tired of it. So he put his cattle out into a field. And he did nothing. If one got sick, it went to the dog food place. They ate grass that grew in the field. They didn't get as big and he didn't make as much money, but he also got to take things a bit slower, easier. Then, organic beef became a big deal. He did not give a shit about 'organic' or whatever these strange hippies were talking about. But he was more than happy if they wanted to pay him extra for his laziness. (Note: I am paraphrasing a second-hand story and while I grew up rural, I didn't raise cattle- mistakes are being made here, forgive me.)
- rch 6y agoMy sense is that it's like programming in that laziness can manifest in the form of automation, limits on tech debt, and other investments in efficiency. For example, a more intensive version of the lazy farmer's method would be to set timed gates around the property to induce herd movement for optimal grazing. At a talk on regenerative farming, one speaker estimated he was making about $150 an hour based on how little time it took to set and maintain a well designed gate system. This was on leased land.
- shavingspiders 6y agoGrass based livestock farming, or grass based with corn finishing, is pretty common in high rainfall areas of the world like Ireland & New Zealand. Considerably lower intensity than feedlots (better for the environment too), easier to handle, and generally a higher quality output so long as you're around area that can process that output & send it to the right market.
- nickff 6y agoLower intensity is a double-edged sword; you're easier on the land, but you occupy a lot more of it. Over the past century, increases in agricultural productivity (due to high-intensity farming) in North America and Europe have allowed for the 're-wilding' of an area almost as large as France.
- JackPoach 6y agoI am highly skeptical of these claims. Corn is not new. Nor is wheat. Or rye or whatever. We have records of yields pre-green revolution, pre-GMO, pre-mechanization, pre-fertilizers, etc. And they aren't that great. Yes, modern agriculture is not sustainable and we should incorporate as many organic techniques as we can. But we also should be ready to take lower yields. And that's fine. We don't need that much corn. It doesn't go to human consumption, hardly any. It goes toward animal feed and high-fructose syrup production. We can survive with less Coke and less factory farmed poultry. But we should stop romantisizing our past and treat organic agriculture as something new or magical.
- mikey_p 6y agoDon't forget to factor ethanol production in as well. In many places it is providing huge incentives for massive corn yields and production.
- JackPoach 6y agoI am 99% sure that corn ethanol is US and Brazil story. Anyway with oil prices this low, it makes no sense. The whole idea was insane from the beginning as corn ethanol has negative EROI (more energy is spent on producing a single unit of corn ethanol than you can produce by burning it.).
- pm90 6y agoIt makes more sense if you think about it as an artificial market for the excess corn produced by US farmers. You have to do something with it, might as well make HFCS and ethanol.
- falcolas 6y agoThankfully, there are other things that can be done (specifically, making food) with that same corn - it just requires a bit more processing (mechanical or chemical) to free the endosperm from the hull.
- deleted 6y ago
- zwieback 6y agoHow well would this scale in areas where most of our intensive agriculture is now, e.g. Kansas, Nebraska? We have a ton of farming like this guy is doing around where I live but we have lots of rain and pretty good soil to beging with.
- aurizon 6y agoHow to they handle grasshoppers in swarm? With a swarm of a few million on the move they can graze 12 acres to stubble in an hour. Caterpillars can also do great harm. There are natural effective insecticides, like natural pyrethrins or nicotines - do they work well enough? Weeds? There are very few natural weed killers - hank pick? Robot machine weed picking is getting better and better.
- roboben 6y agoI wouldn’t be concerned about scale. If we convert every lawn to farm land, we would get three times the amount of current farm land on top. Say we replace it completely, we could still farm 3 times less efficient and would have the same amount of yield. https://geog.ucsb.edu/the-lawn-is-the-largest-irrigated-crop-in-the-usa/ https://geog.ucsb.edu/the-lawn-is-the-largest-irrigated-crop...
- robocat 6y agoYour numbers are out by at least an order of magnitude. “The analysis indicates that turf grasses, occupying about 2% of the surface of the continental U.S.,” “Agricultural land (% of land area) in United States was reported at 44.37 % in 2016”
- roboben 6y agoWhere are your numbers from?
- saalweachter 6y agoThe keyword there is "irrigated". 90 million acres of corn are planted each year but less than 10 million are irrigated.
- robocat 6y agoThe 2% is from your linked article. The other number is from the first credible result from googling - use google.
- exfalso 6y agoLast time I looked into organic produce it seemed quite clear that it's a net negative for the environment. This is mostly due to land usage (up to 2x than conventional. Yeah let's cut down more rainforests so that the West can eat healthier sounding food...). The articles I read also mentioned eutrophication of water bodies caused by organic farming. This is because the nutrient content of organic manure has high variance, so farmers always over-fertilize, producing excess nutrients that seep into groundwater. This is one article I read a while back: https://ourworldindata.org/is-organic-agriculture-better-for-the-environment https://ourworldindata.org/is-organic-agriculture-better-for... Can someone point to more good literature on this topic?
- ip26 6y agoThe rain forest is not being cut down to grow organic heirloom tomatoes. From what I know, it's being razed to grow palm oil, bananas, and cheap corn/soy to feed cattle. In that vein, see your own link: The organic-conventional debate often detracts from other aspects of dietary choices which have greater impact. If looking to reduce the environmental impact of your diet, what you eat can be much more influential than how it is produced. The relative difference in land use and greenhouse gas impacts between organic and conventional systems is typically less than a multiple of two. Compare this to the relative differences in impacts between food types where, as shown in the charts below, the difference in land use and greenhouse gas emissions per unit protein between high-impact meats and low-impact crop types can be more than 100-fold. If your primary concern is whether the potato accompanying your steak is conventionally or organically produced, then your focus is arguably misplaced from the decisions which could have the greatest impact.
- exfalso 6y agoVery true, dietary choices have much larger impact (I'm currently eating broccoli as I'm typing this because of that very reason). However the claim that organic produce is better for the environment seems false nonetheless. Happy to read literature that proves otherwise.
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- carapace 6y agoThis is just the start: applied ecology makes money and saves the planet. Grow "food forests", practice regenerative agriculture, make money. It's fun and feels great. You can start right where you are. Reposting a comment I made a few weeks ago: A brain dump: I've been investigating a few systems of agriculture. - There's Small Plot INtensive (SPIN) which is specialized for market production, emphasizing minimizing labor and maximizing market crops. https://spinfarming.com/ https://spinfarming.com/ (Be aware that these folks are selling their system as a course, and this is a sales site not an info site. You can get the details from reading carefully and watching the videos that practitioners have made.) https://www.transitionculture.org/2011/09/05/spin-farming-basics-a-book-review/ https://www.transitionculture.org/2011/09/05/spin-farming-ba... Quitting Your Job To Farm on a Quarter Acre In Your Backyard? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJx1SPClg6A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJx1SPClg6A Backyard Farming: 2 Year Market Garden Update of Nature's Always Right Farms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zpn1oGkQrrg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zpn1oGkQrrg Profitable Farming and Designing for Farm Success by JEAN-MARTIN FORTIER https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92GDHGPSmeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92GDHGPSmeI https://www.themarketgardener.com/ https://www.themarketgardener.com/ Neversink Farm in NY grosses $350,000 on farming 1.5 acres (area in production). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5IE6lYKXRw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5IE6lYKXRw - Then there's the "Grow Bioinstensive" method which is designed to provide a complete diet in a small space while also building soil and fertility. They have been dialing it in for forty years and now have a turn-key system that is implemented and functioning all over the world. http://growbiointensive.org/ http://growbiointensive.org/ (These folks are also selling their system, but they also have e.g. manuals you can download for free. I find their site curiously hard to use.) - Permaculture (which could be called "applied ecology" with a kind of hippie spin. I'm not a hippie but I'm sometimes mistaken for one.) and a similar school (parallel evolution) called "Syntropic" Agriculture. Both of these systems aim to mimic natural ecosystems to create "food forests" that produce crops year-round without inputs (no fertilizer, no irrigation.) The process takes 5-15 years or so but then is self-sustaining and regenerative. For Permaculture I find Toby Hemenway's (RIP) videos very good: https://tobyhemenway.com/videos/how-permaculture-can-save-humanity-and-the-planet-but-not-civilization/ https://tobyhemenway.com/videos/how-permaculture-can-save-hu... https://tobyhemenway.com/videos/redesigning-civilization-with-permaculture/ https://tobyhemenway.com/videos/redesigning-civilization-wit... There's a very lively and civil forum at https://permies.com/forums https://permies.com/forums For Syntropic agriculture: https://agendagotsch.com/en/what-is-syntropic-farming/ https://agendagotsch.com/en/what-is-syntropic-farming/ (FWIW, I find Gotsch's writing (in English) to be impenetrable, even though I pretty much know what he's doing. Anyway, his results are incontrovertable.) I'm afraid I don't have a good link in re: Food Forests and eco-mimetic agriculture yet. This "Plant Abundance" fellow's youtube channel might be a good place to start, in any event it's a great example: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEFpzAuyFlLzshQR4_dkCsQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEFpzAuyFlLzshQR4_dkCsQ - If you really wanted to maximize food production and aren't afraid of building insfrastucture (like greenhouses and fish tanks) there's the (sadly now defunct) Growing Power model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growing_Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growing_Power https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs7BG4lH3m4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs7BG4lH3m4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV9CCxdkOng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV9CCxdkOng They used an integrated greenhouse/aquaculture/compost system to produce massive amounts of food right through Milwaukee winters. - Then there is the whole field (no pun intended) of regenerative agriculture, e.g.: "Treating the Farm as an Ecosystem with Gabe Brown Part 1, The 5 Tenets of Soil Health" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUmIdq0D6-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUmIdq0D6-A and "Symphony Of The Soil" Official Trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXRNF_1X2fU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXRNF_1X2fU This is very much non-hippie, very much grounded in (often cutting-edge) science (ecology, microbiology, etc.) and ecologically and economically superior to artificial methods (e.g. Brown makes money. It's actually weird that more people aren't adopting these methods faster. You make more money, have fewer expenses, and your topsoil builds up year-on-year rather than washing away in erosion.)
- clarkmoody 6y agoThis talk introduced me to the no-till, soil health farming paradigm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yPjoh9YJMk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yPjoh9YJMk TL;DR: focus on soil health and diversify your crops. His results are stunning.
- kleton 6y agoNo-till is the norm now for conventional grain in the US. The distinction is that instead of using herbicide to kill the cover crop, they are using mechanical methods that require specific timing.
- avernon 6y agoThere are a lot of clever ideas like this that have started getting branded under "regenerative agriculture". It is most in use on land that is already pretty degraded, dry, or has irregular rainfall. It has also had more popularity with animal/grazing systems than row crops. The key is that when you have healthier soil you get tons of benefits for free instead of spraying, fertilizing, and irrigating. The listed caveat that it takes years to return to previous yields is important. Healthy soil doesn't happen overnight. Farmers that already have a lot of debt will struggle to make this switch. "The Call of the Reed Warbler" is a book that has extensive case studies and stories about people applying regenerative agriculture to their farms. It is especially focused on Australia.
- dehrmann 6y ago> Organic Manure I doubt that this scales. There just isn't enough manure (organic or not) to build soil.
- brodouevencode 6y agoSurprised no one has mentioned Joel Salatin: https://www.peakprosperity.com/joel-salatin-we-are-the-solution-as-well-as-the-problem/ https://www.peakprosperity.com/joel-salatin-we-are-the-solut...
- mc_ 6y agoThere are many graziers to refer to without bolstering the racism of Salatin. Greg Judy and Gabe Brown being some bigger names but Chris from Sylvanaqua Farms is a good Black/Indigenous voice to start listening too.
- brodouevencode 6y agoRacist? Not sure what you mean.
- jchook 6y ago> We have found that organic no-till practices year after year do not yield optimal results, so our organic systems utilize reduced tillage and the ground is plowed only in alternating years. So.. by no-till they mean occasional till? My naive thought on no-till is that, in addition to reducing erosion, the soil gains a poorly understood yet very beneficial network of information and nutrient sharing that builds over time (eg mycelium). Tilling destroys that. Also I read it works best with diverse, cooperative planting instead of mono-crop factory farming.
- hbosch 6y agoBased on what you said, seems like tilling is more for harvesting than for growing.
- kjs3 6y agoDepends on the soil. Down where I live, heavy clay soils benefit from tilling to break it up the so water can penetrate and plants can develop a decent root system. If you were aiming for 'no-till' I suppose you'd look to do this once or a small number of times by blending in a ton of soil amendments.
- 0000011111 6y agoYes. In short this is environmentally friendly and does not scale globally.
- rudolph9 6y agoAnother org doing research in this area is https://landinstitute.org/ https://landinstitute.org/ They’ve made great strides domesticating a perennial cousin of wheat which allow use of existing equipment for harvest and doesn’t require replanting each season. It’s Actually a real product called “kerenza” and I have half a pint of kerenza flour sitting on my counter right now (tastes like regular flour) They have a number of other projects with a lot of potential too! They’re on Amazon smile also, without even doing anything different than I otherwise would have, (for better or worse) we gave $200 to them via Smile. They could use your support any way you are able to contribute!
- jelliclesfarm 6y agoWe don’t have to worry about increasing food production or calories. If anything we need to grow less so we can get a handle on food wastage. We have to grow good soil and eliminate manual and low paying jobs in Ag. Protect water sheds. Environment and labour...that should be the priority. And we need to stop making food a speculative game.
- hosh 6y agoI’d love to see some data on organic no-till + biochar, as well as effects of fungi inoculations appropriate for annual crops.
- Darwingirl11 6y agoI am a biologist/ecologist by training and there exists a biomimicry technique that can regenerate the most damaged, capped soils and produce up to an inch of soil per year. It mimics the behavior of the great herds and incorporates overlooked factors that contribute to the biological soil cycle including plant succession, coverage, small and large animal impact. It also incorporates permaculture. It arrests the desertification process, doubles the effectiveness of rainfall, promotes deep penetration of water to restore aquifers, brings back the native plants, insects, birds etc. It can be used purely to restore biodiversity on damaged land. And it’s carbon negative. It can be used for agriculture or ranching (or forest fire management). It eliminates the need for fertilizer and tilling. It eliminates runoff. Ranchers who are using it here in Colorado are seeing a 300% increase in hay production and thus the same for number of cattle or bison the land can sustain. It’s become known as concentrated, rotational grazing but there’s a little more to it. Alan Savory developed the technique while studying land degeneration on game preserves in Africa. His book and course explain SO many previously-invisible processes that contribute to soil health. Even without using animals, there is SO much we can do to restore healthy soil cycles, increase the effectiveness of rainfall and stop erosion desertification. https://savory.global/ https://savory.global/