7 ms·

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 pres

by 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)
  - hosh 5y ago
    Well ... notill is something that some indigenous people had as a practice. I think we lost a lot more in our shift to modernity. We've been living on this narrative that what comes next is necessarily better than what came before, and while there are some progress, that narrative doesn't hold up to be universally true. https://www.atnesa.org/contil/contil-shetto-indigenous.pdf https://www.atnesa.org/contil/contil-shetto-indigenous.pdf If folks thought notill is so revolutionary, wait 'til they see perennial food forests and agroforestry. Those also have indigenous roots.
    - xyzzyz 5y ago
      > Well ... notill is something that some indigenous people had as a practice. Okay, what were their yields per acre? Or is the plan to go back to population levels of indigenous people?
      - hosh 5y ago
        It’s less about yields and more about ways of viewing and experiencing the world, which in turn changes the kind of questions people ask. “What are the yield numbers for practice X?” “How can we maximize yields?” “How can we supply population size Y?” “How do we grow food to standards that are sellable in grocery markets?” “How can we keep grown produce fresh enough to transport them thousands of miles away?” In contrast to things like: “What makes for a healthy ecosystem (which includes plants, animals, fungi, and humans)?” (A farm as an ecosystem rather than a machine that produces food) “How do we incorporate waste as an input to another living system within the ecosystem?” “What can we grow locally that would support the community and reduce dependency on long-haul transported food?” “What are the feedback cycles in our ecosystem and how can I design in a way to add more of such processes?” “What small changes I can make to those feedback cycles that would create larger effects in the ecosystem?” “What yields are we not incorporating into the design of our ecosystem?” “How can I turn the margins into productive land?”
bsder 5y ago
Most of the issues we have in our system in the US is due to the fact that we really don't have farms--we have gigantic agribusinesses. Most of the "family farms" have been driven out of business or have had to scale up to industrial levels (thus becoming part of the problem). How does "Regenerative Agriculture" address the scaling problem?
hinkley 5y ago
He is fond of saying he doesn't have the highest yields in his county (but IIRC he's in like the 90th percentile), but he does have the highest profits. Farming and software share that in common. People get fixated on gross revenue and over a long enough time frame gross revenue doesn't mean shit. Edit: He's also farming on 16" of rain a year. If he can do it, so can you.

by 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)
- hosh 5y ago
  Well ... notill is something that some indigenous people had as a practice. I think we lost a lot more in our shift to modernity. We've been living on this narrative that what comes next is necessarily better than what came before, and while there are some progress, that narrative doesn't hold up to be universally true. https://www.atnesa.org/contil/contil-shetto-indigenous.pdf https://www.atnesa.org/contil/contil-shetto-indigenous.pdf If folks thought notill is so revolutionary, wait 'til they see perennial food forests and agroforestry. Those also have indigenous roots.
  - xyzzyz 5y ago
    > Well ... notill is something that some indigenous people had as a practice. Okay, what were their yields per acre? Or is the plan to go back to population levels of indigenous people?
    - hosh 5y ago
      It’s less about yields and more about ways of viewing and experiencing the world, which in turn changes the kind of questions people ask. “What are the yield numbers for practice X?” “How can we maximize yields?” “How can we supply population size Y?” “How do we grow food to standards that are sellable in grocery markets?” “How can we keep grown produce fresh enough to transport them thousands of miles away?” In contrast to things like: “What makes for a healthy ecosystem (which includes plants, animals, fungi, and humans)?” (A farm as an ecosystem rather than a machine that produces food) “How do we incorporate waste as an input to another living system within the ecosystem?” “What can we grow locally that would support the community and reduce dependency on long-haul transported food?” “What are the feedback cycles in our ecosystem and how can I design in a way to add more of such processes?” “What small changes I can make to those feedback cycles that would create larger effects in the ecosystem?” “What yields are we not incorporating into the design of our ecosystem?” “How can I turn the margins into productive land?”

bsder 5y ago

Most of the issues we have in our system in the US is due to the fact that we really don't have farms--we have gigantic agribusinesses. Most of the "family farms" have been driven out of business or have had to scale up to industrial levels (thus becoming part of the problem). How does "Regenerative Agriculture" address the scaling problem?

hinkley 5y ago

He is fond of saying he doesn't have the highest yields in his county (but IIRC he's in like the 90th percentile), but he does have the highest profits. Farming and software share that in common. People get fixated on gross revenue and over a long enough time frame gross revenue doesn't mean shit. Edit: He's also farming on 16" of rain a year. If he can do it, so can you.