6 ms·

"Dirt to Soil" by Gabe Brown might start getting more popular. He started investigating no-till, etc. after several successive years of crop failures and thus n

by akeck 5y ago

"Dirt to Soil" by Gabe Brown might start getting more popular. He started investigating no-till, etc. after several successive years of crop failures and thus not being able to afford the normal inputs for industrial farming.

rmason 5y ago
Adopting no-till techniques will save soil but won't appreciably reduce your fertilizer use. I'd even go so far as to say if you do it right the soil will be healthier. But if you use cover crops and especially rotate out of alfalfa you can safely reduce nitrogen use because of the carryover of nitrogen in the soil.
- TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  All the no till people I follow don’t use chemical fertilizer(eg JM Fortier). They do add compost to their soil but that’s not fertilizer.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwawaylinux 5y ago
    Zero till is a mainstream commercial cropping technique and has been for decades.
    - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
      I guess I am referring to regenerative organic no-till in particular.
      - throwawaylinux 5y ago
        Okay. Cropping requires nutrient inputs though, and there's not much way around that. Nitrogen fixing and such are helpful but not able to supply all requirements. Composting and this kind of organic farming is a nice boutique niche, but realistically it would be unable to sustain the food requirements of the world without being prohibitively expensive. Fertilizers based on petroleum and other mined minerals is the only options for that.
        TaylorAlexander 5y ago
        I’m making a solar powered farming robot that is open source and designed to help perform some of the labor that makes these processes more expensive. (See my profile). There are other ways to solve the problems currently solved by chemical inputs. And there are many examples of functional biodynamic organic farming systems all over the world that suggest we can scale it if we want to. We’ve just been addicted to cheap fertilizer. It’s interesting to think about where the money goes in our society. Let’s say we never broke up unions in the USA, and wages rose along with productivity instead of stagnating after 1980. Then we could be using more expensive farming methods, which make healthier communities, and yet people would be able to afford it. This is perhaps more similar to how things are done in France, for example. There’s a lot that goes in to making any commodity relatively cheap or expensive. I think probably healthy soils and healthy foods are worth paying more, but we should make sure our economy functions in a way that everyone can afford food, of course.
        throwawaylinux 5y ago
        > There are other ways to solve the problems currently solved by chemical inputs. What is one way? > And there are many examples of functional biodynamic organic farming systems all over the world that suggest we can scale it if we want to. We’ve just been addicted to cheap fertilizer. People need food to live and lots of people don't have much money. It's very easy to say we're addicted to cheap fertilizer when you can afford to pay premiums for your biodynamic organic food. Billions of people do not have that privilege.
        TaylorAlexander 5y ago
        I had intended to suggest that solar powered farming robots are one way to reduce costs. As far as people’s ability to pay, you seem to have glossed over my section where I point out that it is policy decisions, not some natural occurrence, that leaves so many unable to pay more. This is true both for within the United States where I live, and for the world at large. Whether or not people can afford higher food prices is something we have control over. We could ease restrictions on collective bargaining and unions could petition for their wages to increase. You may think that is a bad idea, but nonetheless you’d have to agree that is a policy decision that could result in higher wages. And so, whether or not “we” can afford to buy more expensive food is not out of our control.
  - timeon 5y ago
    No till people I follow (just few in USA and one in Ireland) ended up with adding huge amount of compost. Mulching with compost. Almost like starting with a new plot. For this you need to import compost. Where I live you can buy compost as much as you want but quality varies. So I wonder how this can work at scale. Maybe using different no till techniques I do not know.
    - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
      It’s true. Sometimes called no-dig by Charles Dowding or “deep compost mulch system” but folks in the USA, that doesn’t scale well. For JM Fortier and Curtis Stone for example though, they do a minimal tillage system with soil amendments but I don’t believe they do heavy application of compost regularly. They do take advantage of a flail mower and a power harrow to compost leftover green matter on site, which reduces waste. And I love RED Gardens in Ireland!
- andscoop 5y ago
  Gabe Brown goes a step further than a simple no-till philosophy. He promotes a very dense grazing of cows as well as cover crops which do bring fertilizer back to the soil. This is the most relevant quote I could find on his website. I can guess that some may quibble over the "chemical" modifier in front of fertilizer, but I remember his book going more into discussing the reduction in fertilizer use, so I'd start there if you are curious. > The misuse of chemical inputs (pesticides, chemical fertilizer and herbicides) is also detrimental to soil life. For this reason we do not use synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, GMOs, and glyphosate. We are working hard to eliminate the use of herbicide. http://brownsranch.us/soil-health/ http://brownsranch.us/soil-health/
Panino 5y ago
And his farm has above-average yields compared to other area farms, but also way higher profits. Brown Ranch practices Regenerative Agriculture. If I was president I'd ask Gabe Brown to run USDA.
- akeck 5y ago
  Exactly. I watched one of his presentations. His burn rate is quite low since he needs many fewer inputs to farm.
  - tharkun__ 5y ago
    Someone posted this link in some other discussion where he came up. I found it fascinating and what you mention as well as much of what your sibling posters do is in there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yPjoh9YJMk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yPjoh9YJMk I don't know what kind of crowd that "Sustainable Agriculture's annual symposium" pulls but I found the number of people in the audience quite small unfortunately.
- hosh 5y ago
  There is a government agency that goes around trying to teach farmers how to farm in a way to bring fertility back to soil life, and have even parterned with people farming with notill to talk to conventional farmers. Despite going around making presentations for years, it is still a hard sell to farmers. Examples (and I am paraphrasing not quoting): "What if my crop goes bad? Or hail? How do I deal with pests?" "Polycropping means that you'll have some kind of crop even if some of them don't do well, or the market crashes on one of them" "I can't run my farm and make a profit without the subsidies" "I was able to get off of subsidies and my farm is more profitable and resilient than it had been before." "I'd still have to get manure from somewhere and prices will go up" "I run a livestock operation on the fallow fields. They help fertilize the fields until I put crops back on them. I sell both crops and livestock." And so on.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    Much like science advances with the death of the older generation, farming advances as the old farmers die. The average farmer is something like 55 years old. Young farmers are far more willing in generation to try new things. No till is standard farming practice these days. You can't get government subsides in many cases if you do traditional tilling. (there are other types of tilling allowed - they are much better for the soil)
aaronax 5y ago
It is a very interesting book, which I just so happen to have read last week. Also I live only 15 miles from where he farms in North Dakota. I just wanted to mention (based on the book only, I don't know that much about him otherwise but would like to tour his operation this summer) that his approach is so much more than no-till, which itself I would say is fairly well known. An insane variety of cover crops, livestock grazing, and business strategy (his son and direct to consumer aspects) are the most interesting parts of what he does.

by akeck 5y ago

rmason 5y ago

Adopting no-till techniques will save soil but won't appreciably reduce your fertilizer use. I'd even go so far as to say if you do it right the soil will be healthier. But if you use cover crops and especially rotate out of alfalfa you can safely reduce nitrogen use because of the carryover of nitrogen in the soil.

TaylorAlexander 5y ago
All the no till people I follow don’t use chemical fertilizer(eg JM Fortier). They do add compost to their soil but that’s not fertilizer.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  Zero till is a mainstream commercial cropping technique and has been for decades.
  - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
    I guess I am referring to regenerative organic no-till in particular.
    - throwawaylinux 5y ago
      Okay. Cropping requires nutrient inputs though, and there's not much way around that. Nitrogen fixing and such are helpful but not able to supply all requirements. Composting and this kind of organic farming is a nice boutique niche, but realistically it would be unable to sustain the food requirements of the world without being prohibitively expensive. Fertilizers based on petroleum and other mined minerals is the only options for that.
      - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
        I’m making a solar powered farming robot that is open source and designed to help perform some of the labor that makes these processes more expensive. (See my profile). There are other ways to solve the problems currently solved by chemical inputs. And there are many examples of functional biodynamic organic farming systems all over the world that suggest we can scale it if we want to. We’ve just been addicted to cheap fertilizer. It’s interesting to think about where the money goes in our society. Let’s say we never broke up unions in the USA, and wages rose along with productivity instead of stagnating after 1980. Then we could be using more expensive farming methods, which make healthier communities, and yet people would be able to afford it. This is perhaps more similar to how things are done in France, for example. There’s a lot that goes in to making any commodity relatively cheap or expensive. I think probably healthy soils and healthy foods are worth paying more, but we should make sure our economy functions in a way that everyone can afford food, of course.
        throwawaylinux 5y ago
        > There are other ways to solve the problems currently solved by chemical inputs. What is one way? > And there are many examples of functional biodynamic organic farming systems all over the world that suggest we can scale it if we want to. We’ve just been addicted to cheap fertilizer. People need food to live and lots of people don't have much money. It's very easy to say we're addicted to cheap fertilizer when you can afford to pay premiums for your biodynamic organic food. Billions of people do not have that privilege.
        TaylorAlexander 5y ago
        I had intended to suggest that solar powered farming robots are one way to reduce costs. As far as people’s ability to pay, you seem to have glossed over my section where I point out that it is policy decisions, not some natural occurrence, that leaves so many unable to pay more. This is true both for within the United States where I live, and for the world at large. Whether or not people can afford higher food prices is something we have control over. We could ease restrictions on collective bargaining and unions could petition for their wages to increase. You may think that is a bad idea, but nonetheless you’d have to agree that is a policy decision that could result in higher wages. And so, whether or not “we” can afford to buy more expensive food is not out of our control.
- timeon 5y ago
  No till people I follow (just few in USA and one in Ireland) ended up with adding huge amount of compost. Mulching with compost. Almost like starting with a new plot. For this you need to import compost. Where I live you can buy compost as much as you want but quality varies. So I wonder how this can work at scale. Maybe using different no till techniques I do not know.
  - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
    It’s true. Sometimes called no-dig by Charles Dowding or “deep compost mulch system” but folks in the USA, that doesn’t scale well. For JM Fortier and Curtis Stone for example though, they do a minimal tillage system with soil amendments but I don’t believe they do heavy application of compost regularly. They do take advantage of a flail mower and a power harrow to compost leftover green matter on site, which reduces waste. And I love RED Gardens in Ireland!
andscoop 5y ago
Gabe Brown goes a step further than a simple no-till philosophy. He promotes a very dense grazing of cows as well as cover crops which do bring fertilizer back to the soil. This is the most relevant quote I could find on his website. I can guess that some may quibble over the "chemical" modifier in front of fertilizer, but I remember his book going more into discussing the reduction in fertilizer use, so I'd start there if you are curious. > The misuse of chemical inputs (pesticides, chemical fertilizer and herbicides) is also detrimental to soil life. For this reason we do not use synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, GMOs, and glyphosate. We are working hard to eliminate the use of herbicide. http://brownsranch.us/soil-health/ http://brownsranch.us/soil-health/

Panino 5y ago

And his farm has above-average yields compared to other area farms, but also way higher profits. Brown Ranch practices Regenerative Agriculture. If I was president I'd ask Gabe Brown to run USDA.

akeck 5y ago
Exactly. I watched one of his presentations. His burn rate is quite low since he needs many fewer inputs to farm.
- tharkun__ 5y ago
  Someone posted this link in some other discussion where he came up. I found it fascinating and what you mention as well as much of what your sibling posters do is in there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yPjoh9YJMk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yPjoh9YJMk I don't know what kind of crowd that "Sustainable Agriculture's annual symposium" pulls but I found the number of people in the audience quite small unfortunately.
hosh 5y ago
There is a government agency that goes around trying to teach farmers how to farm in a way to bring fertility back to soil life, and have even parterned with people farming with notill to talk to conventional farmers. Despite going around making presentations for years, it is still a hard sell to farmers. Examples (and I am paraphrasing not quoting): "What if my crop goes bad? Or hail? How do I deal with pests?" "Polycropping means that you'll have some kind of crop even if some of them don't do well, or the market crashes on one of them" "I can't run my farm and make a profit without the subsidies" "I was able to get off of subsidies and my farm is more profitable and resilient than it had been before." "I'd still have to get manure from somewhere and prices will go up" "I run a livestock operation on the fallow fields. They help fertilize the fields until I put crops back on them. I sell both crops and livestock." And so on.
- bluGill 5y ago
  Much like science advances with the death of the older generation, farming advances as the old farmers die. The average farmer is something like 55 years old. Young farmers are far more willing in generation to try new things. No till is standard farming practice these days. You can't get government subsides in many cases if you do traditional tilling. (there are other types of tilling allowed - they are much better for the soil)

aaronax 5y ago

It is a very interesting book, which I just so happen to have read last week. Also I live only 15 miles from where he farms in North Dakota. I just wanted to mention (based on the book only, I don't know that much about him otherwise but would like to tour his operation this summer) that his approach is so much more than no-till, which itself I would say is fairly well known. An insane variety of cover crops, livestock grazing, and business strategy (his son and direct to consumer aspects) are the most interesting parts of what he does.