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What is the best criticism of regenerative ag? Everything I see about it is so positive that it seems crazy everyone hasn't switched. Are there really no downsi

What is the best criticism of regenerative ag? Everything I see about it is so positive that it seems crazy everyone hasn't switched. Are there really no downsides and it's just institutional inertia/caution holding everyone back?

louis___ 5y ago
It's more that it requires to leave the mainstream system, because the fertilizer and pesticides that destroyed your soil are the money-making machines of "Big Ag" corporations. Regenerative ag will not make you very rich either, so you have not much money to invest in lobbying activities, to go against the flow.
- andscoop 5y ago
  > Regenerative ag will not make you rich… How do you figure? Regenerative ag is still relatively new, and it’s practices are being honed. Idk what you define as rich but I’d venture to guess that Joel Salatin and Gabe Brown are extremely wealthy.
saalweachter 5y ago
Honestly? My biggest concern about it is that half its advocates say crazy things. For instance, down-thread we got the line: "[Paul Wheaton] believes that in a decade the soil will be so rich in organic matter with healthy microbial activity (with no chemical history) could produce food that cures cancer. I believe that in an environment where human body is not weakened by the constant bombardment of chemical compounds, it could heal itself from cancer." I do my best to keep an open mind because, hey, a lot of bits and pieces sound plausible, but whenever I get to lines about cancer-curing food, I begin to doubt the truth, validity or factual nature of anything else that was said on the topic. Aside from that, the biggest question is always going to be "Does it scale to growing sufficient food for 10 billion people?" Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but whenever food comes up keep in mind that end game. If a particular agricultural system could produce food at lower energy costs, more sustainably, "better", but could only feed a billion people applied globally, it's only an acceptable solution in very particular moral frameworks.
- mathgladiator 5y ago
  I've experienced this, and I've learned to search for the grains of truth. At core, the people doing this are highly disagreeable, and so they form their own opinions and go deep. I think going deep into crazy is natural, and the hard question is trying to balance that out with a deeper truth. At core, I think there is a deeper value in being the control group outside of the modern world. So, can food cure cancer? I don't know, but it may be worth looking into. Amish, for instance, have 40% less cancer. Is it the food? the air? the bacteria? the hard work? No Idea! Myself, I'm getting firmly on the fasting train. I eat every other day, and I feel great.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    AFAIK Amish people consume less alcohol and tobacco than the average American. Could this be a factor in their lower cancer rates? Also - who diagnoses Amish people for cancer? Can there be a higher "dark number" of undetected cancers among them than among the general population?
  - rhacker 5y ago
    It may not be that it cures cancer, but that it stops causing it. Food that is sourced without chemicals, or pesticides.
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    While cancer is lower, their life expectancy is around the US average. US average lifespan isn’t something to write home about.
    - reedjosh 5y ago
      Does that account for infant mortality? Life expectancy should really only be talked about in terms of expected lifespan of someone who's already made it to say 3 years old. Otherwise, we get a very distorted view of modern medicine's ability to stave off death. Modern medicine has really done well at reducing infant mortality though.
mathgladiator 5y ago
The key criticism is that it yields less, so it doesn't scale. Furthermore, it generally lacks uniformity, so you can't automate either.
- kickout 5y ago
  Would disagree with the automated comment. Most thing in regenerative ag are just as automated as conventional ag, unless you're thinking of something specific?
  - mathgladiator 5y ago
    I'm probably thinking along the lines of perma-culture and bio-mimicry where things are all mixed up in a more natural way. Essentially, you don't have giant machines since there are too many edge cases.
- tastyfreeze 5y ago
  Crops can be integrated and still planted and harvested mechanically. Planting differing height crops or same height crops with different seed sizes you can still use machines and harvest multiple crops from the same time/land. Yield for some crops is actually more after the ~3 year transition period. However, for all crops quality is greatly improved. Better quality means you need to eat less to be satiated.
  - nradov 5y ago
    Better quality only helps if customers are willing to pay more. A lot of crops are sold through middlemen as undifferentiated commodities.
    - tastyfreeze 5y ago
      If there were a way to differentiate higher quality food in the store it doesn't need to cost more. People will prefer the higher quality produce and the low quality producers will need to adapt or die.
chris_va 5y ago
No-till agriculture, as an example, usually requires different capital equipment for the farm. It's not a blocker, but financing the capital equipment takes some investment and risk. Farms are fairly dialed into their operations already, and getting people to change (especially when they need to pay money to do it) is a slow process.
- jdavis703 5y ago
  So then is it reasonable to conclude government subsidies for regenerative agriculture could increase adoption?
  - chris_va 5y ago
    Yes, that does seem reasonable
  - lostlogin 5y ago
    Would taxing poor practices be a better approach? Eg Excess water usage, runoff, water pollution, pesticide use, fuel use or some other metric? That way the cost of food would rise, but the cost of regenerative practices presumably wouldn’t rise as much and would earn more.
  - debacle 5y ago
    One of the problems with no till is that the equipment, or at least some of it, hasn't been invented yet and could be considered 'cutting edge' in that manner.
    - benboughton1 5y ago
      No till farming is widespread especially in Australia for decades. Nearly all dryland farms take this approach. It just means controlling fallow weeds without tillage, usually with herbicide. Then plant straight through the previous crop residue. This preserves moisture in the soil and the soil structure. Planters mostly do this fine. I'm not sure what has not yet been invented elsewhere.
tastyfreeze 5y ago
It takes about 3 years for the soil to come back to life and it does take more management. During the transition period yields are reduced. Regenerative Ag also takes more farmers as a singer farmer can't manage as much land. It is crazy that everyone hasn't switched. It is more profitable but it is a leap of faith to switch and most ag extensions are still recommending high chem use. There are some hang ups with crop subsidies making it difficult to change also. But, the tide has changed as evidenced by this article. General Mills is pushing for 1 million regenerative farmed acres by 2030. The transition is happening but as with any paradigm shift it takes time to convince everybody that there is a better way. https://www.generalmills.com/en/Responsibility/Sustainability/Regenerative-agriculture https://www.generalmills.com/en/Responsibility/Sustainabilit...
kickout 5y ago
Replies to your questions are good. I'd say the yield downside is the most glaring. Farmers really can't afford a have a self-imposed 'bad' year while they try to adopt new practices. Bankers and lenders (which farmers rely on for operating loans might not even approve--IDK). It absolutely takes some trial and error as no 2 farms are the same. This also hurts testing things out in a smaller scale on your farm. You need to borrow/rent equipment or buy the equipment. But when you buy equipment without the scale, it basically adds overhead (with additional risk to the downside for yields). People don't like to admit it, but yields under current intense monoculture, fertilizer happy are best-case scenario. This is obvious and intended, we're squeezing as much yield as possible without care for long-term consequences. Those yields might not be achievable under regenerative practices (but they might be in certain farms). For some reason, we have this mindset where we can't give up any yield, but in reality, if the economic models and government subsidies were redesigned, we absolutely could.
- asimpletune 5y ago
  What if the measurement wasn’t yield but total nutrition?
  - splistud 5y ago
    Yield is an important measurement though. Nutrition is a fine metric, but some things grown in permaculture are not nutritive. They may grow nitrogen-fixers, shade plants, fodder, etc. These don't provide 'yield', but reduce outside inputs. The most important thing is to change how you think about yield. Yield/acre needs to take into account how much outside inputs are involved (trucked in fertilizers, mechanical inputs, etc). It's absolutely correct to measure how we're doing. It's tricky when the units of measurement are not the same. It's harder still where there are so many types of soil/climate conditions and so many types of output to measure. But we can't just ignore output if we want to improve or give prospective adopters some idea of risk (they are literally betting their farms on it afterall).
  - kickout 5y ago
    It should be, but isn't for many crops. Commodity crops are incentivized for quantity. Many fruits and vegetables are bred for storage and transportability, not nutritional value or taste. As i've said in other threads we have many misaligned incentives in agriculture that we're seeing play out. if you click my bio, I post blogs about these topics and more
ohsonice 5y ago
Look into Chris Newman at Sylvanaqua farms. Scale and social-economic accessibility are some of the big ones. He critiques a pattern of "circle citation" within the community.
SlapperKoala 5y ago
More labor intensive. Often requires large upfront capital investment and adopting of new skills to implement. Benefits are difficult to quantify.

louis___ 5y ago

It's more that it requires to leave the mainstream system, because the fertilizer and pesticides that destroyed your soil are the money-making machines of "Big Ag" corporations. Regenerative ag will not make you very rich either, so you have not much money to invest in lobbying activities, to go against the flow.

andscoop 5y ago
> Regenerative ag will not make you rich… How do you figure? Regenerative ag is still relatively new, and it’s practices are being honed. Idk what you define as rich but I’d venture to guess that Joel Salatin and Gabe Brown are extremely wealthy.

saalweachter 5y ago

Honestly? My biggest concern about it is that half its advocates say crazy things. For instance, down-thread we got the line: "[Paul Wheaton] believes that in a decade the soil will be so rich in organic matter with healthy microbial activity (with no chemical history) could produce food that cures cancer. I believe that in an environment where human body is not weakened by the constant bombardment of chemical compounds, it could heal itself from cancer." I do my best to keep an open mind because, hey, a lot of bits and pieces sound plausible, but whenever I get to lines about cancer-curing food, I begin to doubt the truth, validity or factual nature of anything else that was said on the topic. Aside from that, the biggest question is always going to be "Does it scale to growing sufficient food for 10 billion people?" Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but whenever food comes up keep in mind that end game. If a particular agricultural system could produce food at lower energy costs, more sustainably, "better", but could only feed a billion people applied globally, it's only an acceptable solution in very particular moral frameworks.

mathgladiator 5y ago
I've experienced this, and I've learned to search for the grains of truth. At core, the people doing this are highly disagreeable, and so they form their own opinions and go deep. I think going deep into crazy is natural, and the hard question is trying to balance that out with a deeper truth. At core, I think there is a deeper value in being the control group outside of the modern world. So, can food cure cancer? I don't know, but it may be worth looking into. Amish, for instance, have 40% less cancer. Is it the food? the air? the bacteria? the hard work? No Idea! Myself, I'm getting firmly on the fasting train. I eat every other day, and I feel great.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  AFAIK Amish people consume less alcohol and tobacco than the average American. Could this be a factor in their lower cancer rates? Also - who diagnoses Amish people for cancer? Can there be a higher "dark number" of undetected cancers among them than among the general population?
- rhacker 5y ago
  It may not be that it cures cancer, but that it stops causing it. Food that is sourced without chemicals, or pesticides.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  While cancer is lower, their life expectancy is around the US average. US average lifespan isn’t something to write home about.
  - reedjosh 5y ago
    Does that account for infant mortality? Life expectancy should really only be talked about in terms of expected lifespan of someone who's already made it to say 3 years old. Otherwise, we get a very distorted view of modern medicine's ability to stave off death. Modern medicine has really done well at reducing infant mortality though.

mathgladiator 5y ago

The key criticism is that it yields less, so it doesn't scale. Furthermore, it generally lacks uniformity, so you can't automate either.

kickout 5y ago
Would disagree with the automated comment. Most thing in regenerative ag are just as automated as conventional ag, unless you're thinking of something specific?
- mathgladiator 5y ago
  I'm probably thinking along the lines of perma-culture and bio-mimicry where things are all mixed up in a more natural way. Essentially, you don't have giant machines since there are too many edge cases.
tastyfreeze 5y ago
Crops can be integrated and still planted and harvested mechanically. Planting differing height crops or same height crops with different seed sizes you can still use machines and harvest multiple crops from the same time/land. Yield for some crops is actually more after the ~3 year transition period. However, for all crops quality is greatly improved. Better quality means you need to eat less to be satiated.
- nradov 5y ago
  Better quality only helps if customers are willing to pay more. A lot of crops are sold through middlemen as undifferentiated commodities.
  - tastyfreeze 5y ago
    If there were a way to differentiate higher quality food in the store it doesn't need to cost more. People will prefer the higher quality produce and the low quality producers will need to adapt or die.

chris_va 5y ago

No-till agriculture, as an example, usually requires different capital equipment for the farm. It's not a blocker, but financing the capital equipment takes some investment and risk. Farms are fairly dialed into their operations already, and getting people to change (especially when they need to pay money to do it) is a slow process.

jdavis703 5y ago
So then is it reasonable to conclude government subsidies for regenerative agriculture could increase adoption?
- chris_va 5y ago
  Yes, that does seem reasonable
- lostlogin 5y ago
  Would taxing poor practices be a better approach? Eg Excess water usage, runoff, water pollution, pesticide use, fuel use or some other metric? That way the cost of food would rise, but the cost of regenerative practices presumably wouldn’t rise as much and would earn more.
- debacle 5y ago
  One of the problems with no till is that the equipment, or at least some of it, hasn't been invented yet and could be considered 'cutting edge' in that manner.
  - benboughton1 5y ago
    No till farming is widespread especially in Australia for decades. Nearly all dryland farms take this approach. It just means controlling fallow weeds without tillage, usually with herbicide. Then plant straight through the previous crop residue. This preserves moisture in the soil and the soil structure. Planters mostly do this fine. I'm not sure what has not yet been invented elsewhere.

tastyfreeze 5y ago

It takes about 3 years for the soil to come back to life and it does take more management. During the transition period yields are reduced. Regenerative Ag also takes more farmers as a singer farmer can't manage as much land. It is crazy that everyone hasn't switched. It is more profitable but it is a leap of faith to switch and most ag extensions are still recommending high chem use. There are some hang ups with crop subsidies making it difficult to change also. But, the tide has changed as evidenced by this article. General Mills is pushing for 1 million regenerative farmed acres by 2030. The transition is happening but as with any paradigm shift it takes time to convince everybody that there is a better way. https://www.generalmills.com/en/Responsibility/Sustainability/Regenerative-agriculture https://www.generalmills.com/en/Responsibility/Sustainabilit...

kickout 5y ago

Replies to your questions are good. I'd say the yield downside is the most glaring. Farmers really can't afford a have a self-imposed 'bad' year while they try to adopt new practices. Bankers and lenders (which farmers rely on for operating loans might not even approve--IDK). It absolutely takes some trial and error as no 2 farms are the same. This also hurts testing things out in a smaller scale on your farm. You need to borrow/rent equipment or buy the equipment. But when you buy equipment without the scale, it basically adds overhead (with additional risk to the downside for yields). People don't like to admit it, but yields under current intense monoculture, fertilizer happy are best-case scenario. This is obvious and intended, we're squeezing as much yield as possible without care for long-term consequences. Those yields might not be achievable under regenerative practices (but they might be in certain farms). For some reason, we have this mindset where we can't give up any yield, but in reality, if the economic models and government subsidies were redesigned, we absolutely could.

asimpletune 5y ago
What if the measurement wasn’t yield but total nutrition?
- splistud 5y ago
  Yield is an important measurement though. Nutrition is a fine metric, but some things grown in permaculture are not nutritive. They may grow nitrogen-fixers, shade plants, fodder, etc. These don't provide 'yield', but reduce outside inputs. The most important thing is to change how you think about yield. Yield/acre needs to take into account how much outside inputs are involved (trucked in fertilizers, mechanical inputs, etc). It's absolutely correct to measure how we're doing. It's tricky when the units of measurement are not the same. It's harder still where there are so many types of soil/climate conditions and so many types of output to measure. But we can't just ignore output if we want to improve or give prospective adopters some idea of risk (they are literally betting their farms on it afterall).
- kickout 5y ago
  It should be, but isn't for many crops. Commodity crops are incentivized for quantity. Many fruits and vegetables are bred for storage and transportability, not nutritional value or taste. As i've said in other threads we have many misaligned incentives in agriculture that we're seeing play out. if you click my bio, I post blogs about these topics and more

ohsonice 5y ago

Look into Chris Newman at Sylvanaqua farms. Scale and social-economic accessibility are some of the big ones. He critiques a pattern of "circle citation" within the community.

SlapperKoala 5y ago

More labor intensive. Often requires large upfront capital investment and adopting of new skills to implement. Benefits are difficult to quantify.