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The documentary, Kiss the Earth talks about this, but it starts with a FDR-era government service that had been attempting to teach farmers about soil health fo
by hosh 5y ago
The documentary, Kiss the Earth talks about this, but it starts with a FDR-era government service that had been attempting to teach farmers about soil health for decades.
A big part of this is that the solution to this comes from a very different way of seeing, a different way of solving problems.
Yields of a specific crop from a farm practicing regenerative agriculture or permaculture is less than the yields of a monocropping farm. However, the profit from across all of the crops and livestock from farm practicing regenerative agriculture is much better per sq ft than conventional farming. It is also more resilient against crop failures and market swings.
But using the paradigm from which conventional farming methods come from, regenerative agriculture is counter-intuitive.
It first starts with seeing soil as a living organism, and the whole farm as a living system -- an ecosystem. From there, growing good crops require growing your soil. Feeding grazing livestock directly on cover plants not only helps grow the soil, pasture-raised livestock are happier and yield healthier meat. (So you don't just rotate crops, you also rotate grazers). I can go on.