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So how much more effectively could you regeneratively farm without being chained to the limits of organic farming? Just as a baseline, crops engineered towards

So how much more effectively could you regeneratively farm without being chained to the limits of organic farming? Just as a baseline, crops engineered towards this end instead of toward pure profit would likely be much better at it than anything organic.

hinkley 5y ago
Complex systems are bigger. If you were building a factory, you’d want the shortest supply chain you can manage because inventory is a liability. From the standpoint of avoiding the worst of climate change, you want the most complicated “supply chain” you can manage. This also works for nitrogen cycles as well. Nitrogen that spends time as protein in insects or microbes is better than metabolizing back into the air. Petrochemical agriculture is not very sophisticated. It can solve simple problems with few moving parts. Genetic engineering has started to ask more complex questions but at the end of the day we are still just getting past surface concerns. Where science and technology might help is with telemetry, but only if everyone prints out Goodhart’s Law and puts it over the door, on the fridge, the microwave, the coffee machine, etc. Data filtration is another thing. We think if invasiveness as a sort of score for a plant, but that’s an average of overall behavior. They are both harder and easier to deal with than we make it sound. Each plant is vulnerable during some part of its lifecycle, and or in certain biomes. It’s much easier to “take them out” during this window. But they’re patient. If you miss the window then you have a bigger problem next year. As a human my ability to juggle all of these concerns is somewhat limited, and a little detection and scheduling would go a long way toward helping me keep these problems small.
- hinkley 5y ago
  To the petrochemical comment: for example look at Paul Stamets. Among the many irons he has in the fire, he knows that certain fungal pathogen species have competitors that are in some cases benign. But fungicides are broad spectrum. They kill off many fungi that would be no problem (and the occasional human liver). The worst weeds and the worst pathogens can often spread faster than their competitors. Only by maintaining a complex ecosystem can you achieve an armistice.
colechristensen 5y ago
While I skimmed, I didn’t see anything about “regenerative” besides a casual mention of cover crops which you wouldn’t do anything in particular to already (no pesticides or fertilizer or genetic engineering). The other bit was about being very local about picking where and how to grow nontraditional crops (think farmers market faire) in difficult locations that would otherwise grow nothing. Transgenic watermelons aren’t a thing and the markets for these like organic. Basically a bunch of progressive kinds of people are moving to Montana to grow fancy food and like to get pieces written to show off their virtue. They’re not entirely wrong but also… eh it’s all a little overdone.
- emilywolfe 5y ago
  You're right, this one was focused largely on the work of one organic farmer, although I would argue that much of what he does is actually regenerative in the sense of regenerating local commerce and economies. And he was one of the first to grow his own soil nutrients by planting dryland alfalfa as a cover crop, and rotating his cover crops. I would also say that while you're right about progressives moving to Montana, this is not one of them. Bob is a third-generation Big Sandy farmer. In the book Liz Carlisle co-authored with him, she said he was a republican. My idea was to show how through organic, he'd added value to his own farm, to many others, and to rural communities. And that meant creating infrastructure and new markets. Regenerative, now 40 years later, can learn from that as IT aims to create new markets.
  - Causality1 5y ago
    regenerative in the sense of regenerating local commerce and economies. That is wildly outside the definition of "regenerative farming" given by the article.
    - emilywolfe 5y ago
      It is. I use the definition that most farmers in the state use in the article--working on soil health through a suite of techniques, while also still spraying in a limited capacity when needed. There are a million ways to define regenerative agriculture. That's one of the main issues right now, and it's something I covered in part 1 of this series. It's covered in incredible depth here: https://thecounter.org/regenerative-agriculture-racial-equity-climate-change-carbon-farming-environmental-issues/ https://thecounter.org/regenerative-agriculture-racial-equit... That article also leads to the same point I was trying to make in the above comment. If agriculture is going to be truly regenerative, it needs to support communities. I did not get into that explicitly in the story, but it informs the entire framing of it.
KennyBlanken 5y ago
European farmers out-produce American farmers per acre and do so with less pesticide and fertilizer use. American farmers aren't very productive because they don't have to be. They get $85 billion a year in all manner of federal programs, and that doesn't even start to cover protectionist trade policies. We pay farmers to not grow anything to artificially inflate the cost of produce. We did that because the old system generated outrage - namely, the federal government buying produce that it would ship to a warehouse (which of course the government didn't own or operate itself, so we paid for that as well) and then just let it rot. Bad optics, you see. So now we just pay them to not do anything at all, because that's more efficient. Except we still have the federal govnerment buying up billions in food and letting it spoil. Meanwhile, we have millions of kids who go to school hungry. And whenever anyone suggests more federal spending to fix that, guess who stands up and shouts about it the loudest? That's right, the congressional reps from midwestern states where they believe in capitalism and none of that commie handout shit.
- quixoticelixer- 5y ago
  European farmers also get massive subsides and are also not very productive.

hinkley 5y ago

Complex systems are bigger. If you were building a factory, you’d want the shortest supply chain you can manage because inventory is a liability. From the standpoint of avoiding the worst of climate change, you want the most complicated “supply chain” you can manage. This also works for nitrogen cycles as well. Nitrogen that spends time as protein in insects or microbes is better than metabolizing back into the air. Petrochemical agriculture is not very sophisticated. It can solve simple problems with few moving parts. Genetic engineering has started to ask more complex questions but at the end of the day we are still just getting past surface concerns. Where science and technology might help is with telemetry, but only if everyone prints out Goodhart’s Law and puts it over the door, on the fridge, the microwave, the coffee machine, etc. Data filtration is another thing. We think if invasiveness as a sort of score for a plant, but that’s an average of overall behavior. They are both harder and easier to deal with than we make it sound. Each plant is vulnerable during some part of its lifecycle, and or in certain biomes. It’s much easier to “take them out” during this window. But they’re patient. If you miss the window then you have a bigger problem next year. As a human my ability to juggle all of these concerns is somewhat limited, and a little detection and scheduling would go a long way toward helping me keep these problems small.

hinkley 5y ago
To the petrochemical comment: for example look at Paul Stamets. Among the many irons he has in the fire, he knows that certain fungal pathogen species have competitors that are in some cases benign. But fungicides are broad spectrum. They kill off many fungi that would be no problem (and the occasional human liver). The worst weeds and the worst pathogens can often spread faster than their competitors. Only by maintaining a complex ecosystem can you achieve an armistice.

colechristensen 5y ago

While I skimmed, I didn’t see anything about “regenerative” besides a casual mention of cover crops which you wouldn’t do anything in particular to already (no pesticides or fertilizer or genetic engineering). The other bit was about being very local about picking where and how to grow nontraditional crops (think farmers market faire) in difficult locations that would otherwise grow nothing. Transgenic watermelons aren’t a thing and the markets for these like organic. Basically a bunch of progressive kinds of people are moving to Montana to grow fancy food and like to get pieces written to show off their virtue. They’re not entirely wrong but also… eh it’s all a little overdone.

emilywolfe 5y ago
You're right, this one was focused largely on the work of one organic farmer, although I would argue that much of what he does is actually regenerative in the sense of regenerating local commerce and economies. And he was one of the first to grow his own soil nutrients by planting dryland alfalfa as a cover crop, and rotating his cover crops. I would also say that while you're right about progressives moving to Montana, this is not one of them. Bob is a third-generation Big Sandy farmer. In the book Liz Carlisle co-authored with him, she said he was a republican. My idea was to show how through organic, he'd added value to his own farm, to many others, and to rural communities. And that meant creating infrastructure and new markets. Regenerative, now 40 years later, can learn from that as IT aims to create new markets.
- Causality1 5y ago
  regenerative in the sense of regenerating local commerce and economies. That is wildly outside the definition of "regenerative farming" given by the article.
  - emilywolfe 5y ago
    It is. I use the definition that most farmers in the state use in the article--working on soil health through a suite of techniques, while also still spraying in a limited capacity when needed. There are a million ways to define regenerative agriculture. That's one of the main issues right now, and it's something I covered in part 1 of this series. It's covered in incredible depth here: https://thecounter.org/regenerative-agriculture-racial-equity-climate-change-carbon-farming-environmental-issues/ https://thecounter.org/regenerative-agriculture-racial-equit... That article also leads to the same point I was trying to make in the above comment. If agriculture is going to be truly regenerative, it needs to support communities. I did not get into that explicitly in the story, but it informs the entire framing of it.

KennyBlanken 5y ago

European farmers out-produce American farmers per acre and do so with less pesticide and fertilizer use. American farmers aren't very productive because they don't have to be. They get $85 billion a year in all manner of federal programs, and that doesn't even start to cover protectionist trade policies. We pay farmers to not grow anything to artificially inflate the cost of produce. We did that because the old system generated outrage - namely, the federal government buying produce that it would ship to a warehouse (which of course the government didn't own or operate itself, so we paid for that as well) and then just let it rot. Bad optics, you see. So now we just pay them to not do anything at all, because that's more efficient. Except we still have the federal govnerment buying up billions in food and letting it spoil. Meanwhile, we have millions of kids who go to school hungry. And whenever anyone suggests more federal spending to fix that, guess who stands up and shouts about it the loudest? That's right, the congressional reps from midwestern states where they believe in capitalism and none of that commie handout shit.

quixoticelixer- 5y ago
European farmers also get massive subsides and are also not very productive.