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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
by 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 agoWhat if the measurement wasn’t yield but total nutrition?
- splistud 5y agoYield 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 agoIt 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
- andscoop 5y agoI don’t think the yield downside is a given though. Gabe Brown sees >20% more yield than his counties average using regenerative methods. I want to see more data but I’m hopeful that as regenerative ag practices begin to be improved and honed across the United States, the yield problem will go away. https://www.csuchico.edu/regenerativeagriculture/demos/gabe-brown.shtml https://www.csuchico.edu/regenerativeagriculture/demos/gabe-...