4 ms·

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