[HN Gopher] In the US, regenerative farming practices require un...
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In the US, regenerative farming practices require unlearning past
advice
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 266 points
Date : 2024-10-25 20:03 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (investigatemidwest.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (investigatemidwest.org)
| debacle wrote:
| The farmers already know regenerative ag and are executing
| certain aspects of it, but for most of the US the financial
| incentives aren't aligned and the mineral losses in heavily
| farmed soils will take generations to recover.
|
| This is an economics problem not a knowledge problem.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| From many examples I have seen of farms that have switched to
| regenerative practices it takes about 3 years to bring the soil
| back to life. Some of those had been corn for generations.
| Living soil consumes rock minerals making them available to
| plants. It doesn't matter if all the previously released
| minerals all washed away. As long as there is sand, silt, clay
| and living soil the minerals are available for plants.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Aren't those minerals depleted by higher and higher yield
| crops that are industrially farmed and then shipped all over
| (along with the water)? How does the regenerative practice
| add back an equivalent amount? Wouldn't it need additives
| that are equal in mass to all the plants previously farmed?
| debacle wrote:
| It doesn't. After a few years, the scant resources
| (phosphates, magnesium, manganese) run out again.
|
| Most small-scale regenerative ag farms are bringing in a
| lot of outside material to add those minerals back in.
|
| My farmland hasn't been farmed for 50 years. If I clear an
| area and put a veggie bed in, I get 1 year of great yield,
| 1 year of "okay" yield, and then it becomes impossible to
| grow anything due to nutrient deficiencies.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Isaac Asimov once conducted a thought experiment: "If all
| the earth's crust was converted into bio-mass, what would
| be the limiting element?"
|
| Remember all those post WWII photos showing how
| fertilizing with phosphorous resulted in incredible crop
| yields?
|
| Guess what element China (which has some of the world's
| largest reserves) has quit exporting?
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> "If all the earth's crust was converted into bio-mass,
| what would be the limiting element?"_
|
| I think selenium would run out long before phosphorus.
|
| The crust contains selenium at 0.05-0.09 ppm, but most
| plants require around 0.1-1 ppm. It's also one of the
| hardest nutrients to remediate because you can't just
| dump a bunch of selenium on the surface when 5-10 ppm
| starts to become toxic to lots of other organisms.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| I was supplementing with selenium for various reasons,
| and it seemed clear that it's one of the minerals that
| used to be supplied via our diet, but is quite deficient
| now, due to exhaustion in the soil.
|
| Selenium, along with taurine, is one of the supplements
| which genuinely drove my physicians vehemently crazy, so
| I doubled up, and ensured that they were the focal point
| of my daily regimen.
| waldothedog wrote:
| When you say it drove your physicians crazy, what do you
| mean?
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| They wanted social validation for their fad diet from the
| doctor and didn't get it.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| No, they get pissed because the supplements can actually
| heal illnesses and support better health, which means
| they wouldn't be able to push drugs on me.
|
| Psychiatrist's parting shot was, "they're all bio-
| active!"
|
| Micronutrients are no fad, because guess what, they used
| to come in our fruits, vegetables, and meats.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| > Selenium, along with taurine, is one of the supplements
| which genuinely drove my physicians vehemently crazy, so
| I doubled up, and ensured that they were the focal point
| of my daily regimen.
|
| Selenium is commonly recommended by doctors in New
| Zealand.
| adrian_b wrote:
| While all animals need selenium and many plants contain
| some variable amounts of selenium, because they take it
| from the soil instead of sulfur, all the sources that I
| have read say that it has not been proven that selenium
| is required by any plant.
|
| Selenium is one chemical element that, like nickel and
| cobalt, has been needed by all living beings already some
| billions of years ago, but nowadays there are many living
| beings which have lost their dependency of selenium,
| which has been a beneficial trait for them, due to the
| scarcity of selenium.
|
| The terrestrial plants, because of their environment
| which frequently lacks many minerals, have lost their
| dependencies of several chemical elements, e.g. of
| cobalt, of sodium, for most of them also of nickel, which
| is optional even in those which can use it, and
| apparently also of selenium.
|
| If you have seen any source which says that it has been
| discovered that some plant needs selenium, please
| indicate it.
|
| As I have said, many plants happen to contain selenium
| only because they are not selective enough in their
| sulfur intake, not because they need selenium for
| anything, unlike the animals, which would die without
| selenium.
| psd1 wrote:
| The clue is in the name. We'll mine it on the moon!
| pfdietz wrote:
| Phosphate builds up in soil, converted to insoluble
| forms. Most applied phosphate isn't absorbed by plants.
| So "regenerative agriculture" could actually make sense
| if there are ways of tapping into this phosphate bank,
| say by encouraging the growth of phosphate mobilizing
| microorganisms.
|
| One issue with phosphate ore is contamination with
| undesirable elements, like cadmium and also uranium and
| its decay products, like radium. The waste stream from
| sulfuric acid treatment of the ores is radon-emitting
| gypsum.
|
| Sulfuric acid itself may become limiting once we're off
| fossil fuels, since almost all of it is currently
| produced by oxidation of sulfur extracted in the
| desulfurization of oil and gas.
| chairmansteve wrote:
| You need to return your waste to soil, maybe?
|
| Composting the food waste, and use composting toilets to
| create a "circular economy".
|
| That is apparently how it was done in the old days...
| schiffern wrote:
| See _The Humanure Handbook_.
| https://humanurehandbook.com/
|
| See also, Paul Wheaton criticism of _The Humanure
| Handbook_ ( "No, _do_ fear your poop! Fear it!! ").
| Timecode link, but I recommend the whole video.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vZPTPIHO8w&t=4980s
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| I too am a connoisseur of dysentery.
| schiffern wrote:
| But seriously check out the links, especially the second
| one. That's precisely the point -- to close the nutrient
| loop but still 100% interrupt the pathogen fecal-oral
| route.
| idunnoman1222 wrote:
| I watched the video and all he said is that if it smells
| bad, it is bad but I don't see anything about closing the
| nutrient loop
| pfdietz wrote:
| Yes, let's put human waste containing a whole Walgreens'
| of drug residues onto a field growing our food crops.
| What could possibly go wrong?
| psd1 wrote:
| Good question.
|
| It's about unknown unknowns, right? But we could map out
| where those may be.
|
| I guess chemical toxicity, drugs with long half-lives
| that affect soil organisms, and antibiotics that promote
| resistance.
|
| (yeah yeah they are all chemicals.)
|
| For the chemical toxicity, it's chemicals that are
| harmful to plants but allowed for human consumption, or
| chemicals in sufficient quantity to disrupt soil balance.
| Doesn't seem like a real concern?
|
| With metabolic disruption to soil organisms, yes, there
| may be real danger there. That smells like previous
| environmental mistakes.
|
| Antibiotics, yeah, some danger. Livestock is exposed, and
| resistance-conferring genes might jump directly to human
| pathogens.
|
| It's worth studying. There are requirements for both
| sewage processing and fertilising soil, so the value of a
| solution would be high.
| chairmansteve wrote:
| Yes, at an industrial level it's a problem. But as a
| small scale regenerative farmer, its the thing to do.
|
| Like many things, poop doesn't easily scale....
| pfdietz wrote:
| I don't see what scale has to do with it. The
| concentration of drug residues in manure is independent
| of the quantity.
| lukas099 wrote:
| I think most municipal waste systems in the U.S. do this.
| Probably other developed countries too. And they probably
| do it to a higher standard of safety and not allowing
| leaching or runoff.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Some municipalities actually have separate stream food
| waste composting, which is great, but rare. Turning solid
| waste in sewage into fertilizer is a thing (I don't know
| if it's most places or not, i think not), but is pretty
| problematic in how it's done, it's a pretty toxic
| product. Definitely not the same as a composting toilet.
| https://missouriindependent.com/2024/08/09/fertilizer-
| from-h...
| Retric wrote:
| Most of the matter in food comes from water H2O or Air CO2
| + N2. Nitrogen fixing bacteria are literally getting that
| nitrogen from the air not the soil even if they live in the
| soil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_fixation
|
| Modern agriculture uses fertilizer for extra nitrogen (N),
| phosphorus (P), and potassium (K).
|
| Plants also need a few trace minerals from soil but it's a
| tiny fraction of their mass Iron, Calcium, etc and can also
| be added back: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_flour
|
| PS: There's some really destructive agricultural like sod
| that's literally shipping soil, but the premium pays to
| replace the soil.
| bluGill wrote:
| Every unit of a crop has a specific amount of minerals
| forever taken away. Nitrogen comes from the air and to
| isn't an issue. but where are you going to get those tons
| of phospeous from? Farmers now have to add sulfur because
| while not much is needed some is taken away and needed -
| they used to get that from acid rain but we cleaned up
| that source (overall a good thing but one unexpected
| issue)
|
| i don't know how much iron crops need compared to what is
| in most soils. I know farmes are adding sulfar and other
| mineral.
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| > Nitrogen comes from the air and to isn't an issue
|
| I thought it was a huge issue because natural nitrogen
| fixation was slow and unreliable, and that's why Haber-
| Bosch was such a big deal.
| bluGill wrote:
| By not an issue I mean we have plenty and it is 'easy' to
| replace. Of course fixing is slow and so we need to add a
| lot but supplies won't run out.
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| You sure? I vaguely remember that the Green Revolution
| was roughly a 10x in yield. That sounds pretty
| significant. What's the yield difference using modern
| techniques?
| Retric wrote:
| Nitrogen fertilizer alone is a long way from 10x yield.
| The initial program got 3x yields over 20 years from a
| host of changes (pesticides, farm equipment, new hybrids
| etc), but at the core it was really a mix of education
| and loans not just some novel techniques.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution
| AngryData wrote:
| Yes it is. And not only does fertilizer take significant
| amounts of power, it also uses hydrogen as a reagent
| which is sourced from fossil fuels. But despite that, it
| is still "cheap" because the alternative is using twice
| as much land, and smaller farmers who are most interested
| in regenerative farming don't have the capital to double
| their land usage which is a problem. They are getting
| beat out by larger scale corporate farms that aren't
| worried about the state of the land 30 years down the
| road.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Fungi digest rocks and make the minerals water soluble. It
| is the life in the soil the regenerates the fertility.
| Fungi are the first things to die with tilling and chemical
| application; breaking the nutrient cycle.
| hwc wrote:
| instead of mining rocks thousands of miles away, crushing
| them, and then spreading the result in your fields,
| convince local fungi to do all that work locally!
| analyte123 wrote:
| It's more about keeping minerals _on_ the field. A big one
| is reducing erosion, which practices like no-till and cover
| cropping help. Tons of soil being washed away is a lot of
| nutrients being lost.
|
| If you look at a regenerative certification program like
| [1] you'll see that you're allowed to apply synthetic
| fertilizer but it has to be no more than the rate removed
| by harvested crops. This means, hopefully, that you aren't
| losing much to erosion, runoff, or volatization, and that
| good soil structure is keeping them available.
|
| [1] https://s3.amazonaws.com/media.regenified.com/wp-
| content/upl...
| schiffern wrote:
| > Living soil consumes rock minerals making them available
| to plants.
|
| Thank you. This is one of those super-underappreciated
| biological facts.
|
| Industrial ag treats soil like it's a _tank_ of fertility,
| and guess who sells the refills? Biologists know that healthy
| soil is a _factory_ , making new fertility out of
| rock/air/rain/sun.
|
| Direct from soil microbiologist Dr Elaine Ingham:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2H60ritjag
| darth_avocado wrote:
| What a lot of regenerative ag proponents focus on is the value
| it adds to the ecosystem and the soil. But it gets dismissed
| because regenerative farming is objectively not capable of
| maintaining ag output at the level it is right now at the
| current prices.
|
| We need to talk more about the need for the consumption habits
| to change if we want regenerative ag to take over. We won't be
| able to farm the amount of corn and soybean we farm today, but
| that would mean consumers will have to consume less stuff that
| is a corn derivative, or even better, consume less. There's no
| reason we should be selling a single bag of Doritos across the
| country, let alone for $2.
| gruez wrote:
| >There's no reason we should be selling a single bag of
| Doritos across the country, let alone for $2.
|
| Most of that is markup. The raw materials are on the order of
| cents.
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| Raw materials are very often not the biggest contributor to
| cost of manufacturing something.
|
| Look at CPUs, for a fabricator the cost of the silicon
| alone is a constant cost which is dwarfed by capital
| investment and yield cost.
|
| Then there are other costs like labour, administration and
| shipping.
| crazygringo wrote:
| What's wrong with corn?
|
| I definitely appreciate having corn tortillas and corn chips
| and cornbread to diversify what is almost entirely otherwise
| wheat and potatoes and rice, in terms of my starches.
|
| I need to get my calories somewhere. Don't really see what's
| wrong with some corn chips when I need a quick snack on the
| go because my last meal was five hours ago.
|
| And heck, plenty (most?) of the fresh food I eat comes from
| across the country, if not from other countries entirely. But
| corn chips, having most of their water removed, are _far_
| more environmentally friendly to transport due to being so
| lightweight.
| fuzztester wrote:
| >What's wrong with corn?
|
| it sucks as a cereal, nutritionally speaking, iirc, based
| on what I've read earlier. i could be wrong, but don't have
| time to check it now.
|
| may check out millets and other alternative cereals instead
| of, or in addition to corn, wheat and rice.
|
| some of them are nutritionally or agriculturally superior.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Nutritionally speaking, corn is an excellent source of
| energy.
|
| In many parts of the Earth, e.g. in Europe, maize a.k.a.
| corn and wheat are much cheaper energy sources than
| anything else and wheat and corn are about as cheap.
|
| Wheat may be preferable to corn only because it has a
| double amount of proteins, so it can also be used to
| provide a big part of the daily intake in proteins, if it
| is supplemented with at least another source of proteins
| that is rich in lysine. However, wheat is more suspicious
| from the point of view of its health effects, so when the
| absolute minimum cost for the daily food is not the
| target, corn might be the best energy source in food.
|
| The bulk of the food that is needed daily is required for
| providing energy and corn can do that at a minimal cost
| and it can be cooked into tasty food.
|
| The rest of the food must provide proteins, essential
| fatty acids, vitamins and minerals, but much less amounts
| are needed for that.
|
| So corn is perfect nutritionally for its right purpose.
| Obviously it cannot be the only kind of food that is
| eaten.
|
| Except for energy (i.e. starch), most cereals do not
| contain anything in sufficient amounts to be an adequate
| source of it. Wheat is an exception by having a useful
| amount of protein, which is however harder to digest than
| most other proteins and the undigested fragments may have
| undesirable effects. Only oats has a higher protein
| content than wheat, but oats is much more expensive, so
| it is not really competitive from this point of view.
|
| Therefore it makes no sense to claim that corn is worse
| nutritionally than other cereals, because it is better
| than most (except possibly rice, which cannot be
| cultivated in the places where corn is grown) at the only
| thing for which cereals are really good: providing
| energy.
| biorach wrote:
| > iirc, based on what I've read earlier. i could be
| wrong, but don't have time to check it now.
|
| Please, if all you've got is a vague recollection of
| stuff you read ages ago just don't comment at all. You're
| just adding noise
| fuzztester wrote:
| Please don't add misinformation.
|
| >if all you've got is a _vague_ recollection of stuff you
| read _ages_ ago
|
| I didnt say "vague", you added that. Kindly don't.
|
| And I said "earlier", not "ages ago". That "earlier"
| could span a wide range of times ago. How did you manage
| to make the jump from my "earlier" to your wrong
| interpretation, "ages ago? That is sloppy / inaccurate
| thinking / writing.
|
| In fact, it sounds more like misrepresentation than
| misinformation, which is even worse. Don't do it.
| biorach wrote:
| "vague" is an accurate description of your comment. You
| can get as defensive as you want but you're just adding
| more noise
| fuzztester wrote:
| Ha ha. Clearly (not _vague_ ly, ha ha, pun intended), you
| can't think clearly, and you are inaccurate in saying
| that 'vague" is an accurate description of your comment'.
|
| (Howdja like my wordplay up there? ;)
|
| Dude (as in dude on a dude ranch, meaning a rank newbie),
| take a piece of advice: don't try to punch above your
| level, or, in other words, don't bring a knife to a gun
| fight.
|
| Your arguments are pathetic and fake.
|
| And, as a knockout blow: I noticed that you avoided
| replying to my above point about my use of "earlier" vs.
| your absurdly wrong (or intentionally fake)
| interpretation of it as "ages ago". That was either
| stupid or cowardly of you.
|
| End of this subthread for me. I don't waste my time
| arguing with fakes and cowards. Rant on, if you like,
| into /dev/null.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _it sucks as a cereal, nutritionally speaking, iirc,
| based on what I 've read earlier. i could be wrong_
|
| You are wrong. Sorry. I can't even imagine where you
| could have read that.
|
| I would rebut you with actual facts, but since you
| haven't given any information to rebut, there's nothing
| for me to say except that you've been misinformed.
| fuzztester wrote:
| I like your style of reply. It is at least somewhat more
| sensible than that of another one in this subthread (from
| the guy who misinterpreted my words, and talked about my
| "noise", ha ha). But it is not quite sensible enough, in
| this case.
|
| Do you really need information from me to rebut, when you
| can so easily look up relevant words like corn (maize),
| wheat, rice, millets, and balanced diet, to name just a
| few of the words / terms I talked about, in Google or
| other search engines, and particularly in Wikipedia?
|
| The Wikipedia articles for many such common human food
| items often includes a table of nutrient names and
| corresponding percentages for that food item, such as for
| the percentage of carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins
| and minerals, by needed daily value (DV), with a citation
| to the USDA article on the same subject.
|
| Those are hard facts, not my opinions.
|
| Check them out, then come back and talk.
| fuzztester wrote:
| Okay, I didn't talk about balanced diet earlier, but I
| did, now.
|
| That is the one of the most important points in my
| argument above, about why corn sucks nutritionally.
|
| Of course, I did not mean that it is totally useless.
| Obviously it has some nutrients, just like any other food
| item has. Maybe I should have mentioned that earlier, in
| my first comment in this subthread.
|
| I did not mention balanced diet, because I kind of
| thought that all educated people would know what that
| means and what it's constituents are - such as
| carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals,
|
| Just compare the nutrition from corn (maize) with the
| nutrition from some of the other food items I mentioned,
| in said Wikipedia articles.
|
| Here you go, I'm pasting some relevant links below:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorghum
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millet
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_millet
|
| And there are some more millets. Google them.
|
| Also, for vegetarians (who don't eat meat in any form,
| land or sea based), which is hundreds of millions of
| people in the world, due to culture or religion or lower
| income), legumes are equally important, along with
| cereals, to give the proper balance of essential amino
| acids needed to make the needed protein for our bodies.
|
| Google "essential amino acids" and "complete protein"
| topics.
|
| And I have only scratched the surface of the subject of
| nutrition. I am by no means an expert. I am just a
| beginner, who has an interest in the subject, for my own
| personal use, and to share any info I pick up, with
| friends.
|
| You're welcome :) ;).
| harimau777 wrote:
| Personally, what I've seen and read suggests that the best
| general strategy for lowering obesity is to shift calorie
| consumption away from carbohydrates and towards protein
| (although to be clear, I don't think it's necessary to take
| a hardline "all carbs are bad" approach). Corns seems like
| a poor food for someone trying to shift their calories more
| towards protein.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| It's weird to say we need to decrease the amount of food
| made of corn because most of the commodity corn grows goes
| to animals.
|
| It's not weird to say we should grow less commodity corn
| because it is resource intensive and broadly subsidized.
| jkdufair wrote:
| Pretty sure most corn is grown for animal feed. We could help
| by eating less - or no - meat.
| Scarblac wrote:
| The majority of the current output is used to feed lifestock.
| We're going to have to stop eating meat almost entirely to
| make room for human plant based food production.
| ggm wrote:
| I don't think you're wrong, A good write up of the economic
| incentives would be really interesting.
|
| Regenerative practices would probably initially look like a
| reduced high side profit, and reduced land yield intensity but
| at significantly reduced input costs on chemicals and
| pesticides. The labour costs might be higher or lower
| depending. Then over time, yield to use would show for area in
| production actual profits were better but still to a lower high
| point. More certainty as long as e.g. massive disease or pest
| risk didn't strike.
|
| And as long as organics have a higher premium price at lower
| yield, when the soil can pass the certification tests for
| residues there's a new profit highpoint.
|
| That's my sense but perhaps there are better takes on it.
| insensible wrote:
| Permaculture designer here. That's a pretty good take.
| Biggest aspect missing is that once you abandon the "parking
| lot" approach to farming, you get many niches where you can
| profit from multiple crops on the same land. The farmer in
| the article is grazing under productive trees, for one
| example. Another opportunity is to stack a bunch of berry
| bushes of graduated height next to rows of trees. And to
| graze chickens after a larger animal, yet another enterprise
| on the same land. And with all the added fertility from the
| grazing, now you can sell a cutting of hay you didn't have
| before.
|
| The profit per unit area can become very high.
| jethkl wrote:
| your comment introduced me to the term permaculture, looks
| interesting. Do you leverage numerical optimization -
| linear programming or integer programming for example - in
| your work?
| harimau777 wrote:
| Does that scale? It seems like the planting and harvesting
| would be difficult to automate and/or require increased
| labor. However, I am definitely not an expert.
| lukan wrote:
| "Does that scale?"
|
| Not in my experience.
|
| The promises of many permaculture proponents, are close
| to a scam.
|
| Basically, the claim is establish a working ecological
| system - and then it runs by itself, while producing lots
| of yield. Permanent Culture.
|
| But in reality, wild nature takes over quite quickly, if
| you don't do anything. A fruit tree does usually not have
| benefits by making big red apples for example. Small ones
| are good enough for wild reproduction. But we want as
| many apples as possible, which means pruning, etc.
|
| And a vegetable garden ... they like care, but if you
| don't tend to them, they will remain tiny and soon
| displaced by weeds.
|
| So what I have seen in my experiments in my garden and on
| other permaculture farms - is that the result looks nice,
| but it is a lot of work and low yield. Some ideas like
| fruit forests are a nice additionm but all in all I doubt
| permaculture can feed the world. (I have not seen one
| permaculture farm, that could feed itself)
| devmor wrote:
| > This is an economics problem not a knowledge problem.
|
| This is something I have to regularly say to colleagues and
| contemporaries in the software and electronics space.
|
| I am sure it comes up in many fields. So many things are done
| inefficiently and with disregard to the future for the sake of
| short term profitability.
|
| In this case though it may doom us all rather than just create
| more work for someone a few years later.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > Before the Civil War, over half of the country's residents were
| farmers, Jolliff said, and they worked with small parcels of land
| in diversified operations. The modern regenerative agriculture
| movement encourages that same type of farm diversification.
|
| Yea, and before the civil war, we didn't have gasoline engines.
| You are never going to see a broad return to rural farming life
| ever again.
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| We HOPE we never see a return to rural farming life...
| cryptonector wrote:
| _the ghost of Pol Pot has joined the chat_
| sethammons wrote:
| I hope we do, but modernified. You grow most of your staples
| and you reduce your reliance on the system, acting as a true
| UBI because you can take care of your family. Work becomes
| increasingly optional for those who seek more than what
| modern abundance self gardening could achieve. A few hours of
| daily work and all the time waisters of modern tech. Just
| need enough money to pay property taxes.
| adrianN wrote:
| I don't think we'll get every other person to choose farming as
| a career again.
| thiuho798928u wrote:
| You realize, once Petroleum runs out this century, humanity is
| completely screwed right ?
|
| Forget transportation/energy, our economy is chemically hooked
| on to it like a coke-addict.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOMWzjrRiBg
|
| If the transition doesn't happen, we're looking at it dropping
| to 1-5% of its size now.
|
| I hope we do this before we take out the rest of the earth with
| our cancerous global-scale genocide of everything - animals,
| plants, cultures, 'different' humans, languages and cultures.
| cryptonector wrote:
| The U.S. has centuries' worth of proven natural gas reserves.
| If we ran out of oil (that's not happening anytime soon) we
| could use natural gas for transportation just fine. Much of
| the world already uses natural gas for transportation. We
| could then save the remaining oil for plastics.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > once Petroleum runs out this century
|
| Weird. I had that on my calendar for _last_ century. I wonder
| what happened?
| Kstarek wrote:
| we have so much oil and natural gas, we're going to
| transition off of petroleum before we run out
| mythrwy wrote:
| And coal. Massive amounts of coal which could be gassified
| in a pinch if there were nothing else.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Agriculture uses only a bit over 1% of US primary energy
| demand. We use more energy cooking food than we do growing
| it. And that's with the large inefficiency of growing feed
| crops for livestock.
|
| Replacing fossil fuel use in agriculture is a minor problem
| compared to replacing it in the economy as a whole.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Love a good opportunity to shill a post from my favorite
| subreddit of all time!
|
| https://preview.redd.it/every-
| time-v0-s3c958v8vylc1.jpeg?aut...
| kaonwarb wrote:
| I'm happy to support farmers who want to turn to regenerative
| methods, but I can't see them as a solution for feeding today's
| world. As the article itself notes:
|
| > U.S. agriculture production tripled in the latter half of the
| 20th century, due in part to chemical inputs.
|
| And, yes:
|
| > But that came with an environmental cost -- soil degradation,
| water quality issues and a loss of biodiversity.
|
| I'm not downplaying those costs, and am happy to see a range of
| approaches. But this is not a serious proposal for feeding folks
| at scale.
| bluGill wrote:
| It is also ignoring what conventional ag has figured out. Most
| of the soil loss was pre WWII and conventional ag has figured
| out how to grow more soil (about 1mm per year in the best case
| and typically slower)
| cryptonector wrote:
| The soil loss during the great depression was not due so much
| to bad farming practices (though tilling is harmful) but to
| massive farming bankruptcies following the last harvest, so
| much land was left unseeded -- that is, with no cover crops
| of any kind. The wind did the rest.
| legacynl wrote:
| That's a very simplistic view. Isn't that exactly the same
| as saying "guns don't kill people, bullets do"?
|
| It's the bad farming practices that created the situation
| where the soil was vulnerable.
|
| We're not talking about blame, but rather about determining
| the direct causes.
| cryptonector wrote:
| It's not simplistic because something could have been
| done (plant cover crops) but nothing was done. The
| textbooks I had claimed it was about monocultures and
| such, but the real issue was tilling, and we _still_ till
| the soil today. So no, it 's not a simplistic view.
| bluGill wrote:
| The type of plow used then is almost never used today.
| they used to turn the soil over butting top soil (aerobic
| stuff) under lower layers (anerobit stuff). Now they
| break up compaction but don't turn the soil over.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Inter-seeding different crops is better still.
| Arn_Thor wrote:
| Doing regenerative farming does not mean abandoning half a
| century of knowledge and technological progress. Rather, it is
| using all we now know and know how to do to heal the land and
| maximizing output. In a lot of cases yes, the output may be
| smaller of some crops, but the net total calories extracted
| might not be that different.
|
| Not to mention, if your land is all but barren and it requires
| fertilizers to grow, when prices spike or supply disappears and
| the farmer can't afford to plant...the output is zero.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| For large-scale agricultural food production capable of feeding
| millions of people, the question of double-cropping under
| regenerative practices is a tricky one. Modern industrial
| agriculture relies heavily on two crops per year on the same
| land, which relies on generous fertilizer and water inputs.
| Regenerative practices would prefer giving up on the second crop
| in favor of various methods of biomass accumulation, composting,
| soil generation etc over that time period.
|
| Note one business opportunity for the regenerative sector could
| be organic healthy soil production. There's a demand for high-
| quality soil and this could make the second half of the year
| productive. This could go well with a mushroom production system
| integrated with composting.
| analyte123 wrote:
| Most agricultural land is _not_ double-cropped, in the US less
| than 3% of farmland was double-cropped in 2015 [1]. You
| actually have it backwards: when possible, cover crops or
| double cash crops are a key regenerative practice because they
| prevent erosion and keep living roots in the ground which can
| enhance soil health in other ways [2].
|
| [1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2014/june/double-
| croppi... [2] https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/conservation-
| basics/conservation-b...
| throw88888 wrote:
| > Modern industrial agriculture relies heavily on two crops per
| year on the same land
|
| Depends on how you define modern industrial agricilture I
| guess.
|
| From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_cropping
|
| "However, only 5% of global rainfed cropland is under multiple
| cropping, while 40% of global irrigated cropland is under
| multiple cropping."
|
| Most farmland is rainfed. Only about ~20% is irrigated
| globally.
|
| That means less than ~10% of all farmland globally is double-
| cropped.
| whoitwas wrote:
| Go look at videos from the 70s before we began ingesting
| chemicals and tons of calories. Everyone is half the size with
| 99% less body fat.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Also in 1970, 33% of the global population was malnourished.
| That number is less than 8% now.
| Arn_Thor wrote:
| Apples and oranges. We can produce a lot of food without
| turning all of it into ultra-processed products stuffed with
| high-fructose corn syrup.
| whoitwas wrote:
| Nice. This is a bad faith argument as we can attempt progress
| safely without poisoning the entire planet -- within the laws
| we pay for of course.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| I think the point I'm making is we can't really. Organic
| farming would potentially halve the world's food output.
| spease wrote:
| > Go look at videos from the 70s before we began ingesting
| chemicals
|
| You're going to have to be more specific than "chemicals"
| unless you're asserting that humans had fusion cells.
| kelipso wrote:
| No you don't. Every knows what "chemicals" mean unless you
| insist on being annoyingly pedantic.
|
| Purposely misinterpreting what people say is the worst way to
| argue.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I don't know what "chemicals" means. Are you talking about
| preservatives, artificial colors/flavors, artificial
| sweeteners, certain natural fats, processed fats,
| contaminants, environmental chemicals, microplastics? I
| could go on. Saying "chemicals" is just a way to make an
| unfalsifiable claim. If someone shows evidence that, let's
| say, aspartame is harmless it's possible to just move the
| goalposts to the other "chemicals" because the list is
| nearly endless.
| kelipso wrote:
| It's all of those things. Yes the list is nearly endless
| and by default they all should be considered harmful to
| humans.
|
| Also, there is no need to stop using the word just
| because it can be used in arguments to make unfalsifiable
| claims. Talk about the claims instead; it's silly to talk
| about the word.
|
| You seem to come from a perspective that we should
| consider these chemicals to be safe unless proven
| otherwise. That is an extremely naive perspective.
| spease wrote:
| > You seem to come from a perspective that we should
| consider these chemicals to be safe unless proven
| otherwise. That is an extremely naive perspective.
|
| Whatever you're talking about has been ingested by
| millions or billions of people, so I don't think it's
| "naive" to assume a certain degree of safety
| for...whatever you're talking about in American food.
|
| Yeah, America's health profile is different than other
| countries and we have a high rate of obesity, but only to
| a certain extent. We don't have a whole lot of people who
| walk into McDonald's and then drop dead after having the
| fries.
|
| There's a degree of reasonableness between "we should
| assume nothing is wrong" and "we should throw our food
| economy into chaos by outlawing 'chemicals' until we can
| have a two-generation double-blind randomly controlled
| study of every single one to prove safety."
|
| And this would probably have to include herbicides and
| pesticides which might get taken up or broken down by the
| plants, or which trace amounts might still exist on the
| product if it isn't properly prepared, etc.
|
| It's a dead-end proposal because you can't shut down food
| production to that degree without, you know, _starving_
| people and causing the collapse of modern society. Which,
| I'm just spitballing here, is probably going to have
| worse acute effects than all those "chemicals" put
| together.
|
| So clearly you need to prioritize what you think is
| causing harm, and I suspect that's exactly what relevant
| research is doing.
|
| Reminds me of a particularly sassy medical paper:
|
| > Advocates of evidence based medicine have criticised
| the adoption of interventions evaluated by using only
| observational data. We think that everyone might benefit
| if the most radical protagonists of evidence based
| medicine organised and participated in a double blind,
| randomised, placebo controlled, crossover trial of the
| parachute.
|
| https://www.bmj.com/content/327/7429/1459
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC300808/
|
| https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094
| kelipso wrote:
| Your argument is something like if it doesn't work 100%
| perfectly, then don't try it at all. No need to go whole
| hog, there is a perfectly fine list of banned chemicals
| published by the EU right next door. We should start with
| that.
| QuadrupleA wrote:
| Every molecule in your body is a chemical.
| kelipso wrote:
| A statement that does not say anything. Don't even know
| why you would bother posting this.
| mmiyer wrote:
| "chemicals are those ingredients with scary names" is not a
| useful definition - unless you think foods containing
| 3-Methylbutanal are problematic (bananas [1]). You _have_
| to be more specific, otherwise you end up deriding
| ingredients based on how they sound rather than how safe
| they are. HFCS for example, is 55% fructose and 45% glucose
| while regular sugar is 50% fructose and 50% glucose. So
| since fructose might be worse for the body (although this
| is disputed and it might be that glucose is worse), HFCS
| might be a little worse but it really is the quantities of
| sugar that matter than the kind.
|
| 1. https://jameskennedymonash.wordpress.com/2013/12/12/ingr
| edie...
| kelipso wrote:
| Of course it means added chemicals. You cannot be this
| pedantic and still have a normal conversation. Well...you
| can but it's very annoying.
| spease wrote:
| Casual conversations are not about the technical aspects
| of food production and distribution that has been refined
| for thousands of years.
|
| Also, chemistry? As a subject? _Incredibly_ pedantic. The
| exception is the rule for practically everything.
|
| There are formulations of medications that are selecting
| for _this one shape_ of the particular molecule which has
| otherwise identical composition. And that may determine
| insurance coverage.
|
| If you don't want to have pedantic discussions, organic
| chemistry is not going to be a pleasant topic for you.
|
| Odds are none or very few of the people on hacker news
| are farmers or chemists deeply involved with the
| agricultural industry, but I imagine this would come
| across about as favorably as a hacker news perspective on
| farmers complaining about the way apps on their phone
| work. Or complaining that computer nerds have ruined John
| Deere tractors by making them impossible to repair.
|
| Ie it's going to totally lack any sense of nuance about
| the business, politics, and logistical constraints
| involving the existing solutions.
| kelipso wrote:
| I skimmed all of that but I gather you are saying don't
| talk about food production unless you are an expert or
| you want to be pedantic or some bullshit like that.
| Everyone eats food, everyone can influence food
| production in one way or another, whether through grocery
| habits or local or national politics. There is absolutely
| no way I would want to be associated with such a limiting
| viewpoint such as yours.
| fragmede wrote:
| Could be worse! You might have ingested some dihydrogen
| monoxide!
| spease wrote:
| What's great about this comment is how damn complex just
| fucking _water_ is.
|
| You've got tap water, which can have chlorine or
| chloramine added to it. Yes, the water that you drink can
| be chlorinated. They do this because it kills off
| microbes that might be living in the pipes between the
| water distribution center and your faucet, because right
| now we believe that ingesting trace amounts of chlorine
| is better than contracting bacterial disease from your
| drinking water.
|
| Then you have water that's run through your filter, which
| might cut down on some larger particles.
|
| Then you have reverse osmosis, which removes smaller
| particles, and usually includes a carbon filter. This can
| actually be harmful over long periods of time because the
| reverse osmosis process removes the trace magnesium etc
| that you usually get from water and lead to mineral
| deficiencies.
|
| Then you have distilled water, which has been vaporized
| and condensed. Same risk applies as reverse osmosis
| water.
|
| And then you have deionized water, which has gone through
| an extra filtration step. Not usually intended for
| drinking, and same risk of mineral deficiencies with
| long-term consumption applies.
|
| Now, in the context of "remove everything artificial",
| deionized water is probably the closest to being pure
| H2O. On the other hand, you need to _additives_ to avoid
| health issues from drinking that.
|
| On the other end of the scale, tap water sounds horrible-
| it's chlorinated!
|
| And I suppose if you keep going, you get to a point where
| you find the nearest natural lakebed composed of non-
| saltwater and just stick a straw into it. That's probably
| the most "natural" source of freshwater, with absolutely
| zero additives, save for local pollution. There's
| probably plenty of fecal matter from the local wildlife,
| but that's natural, right? Note: Please do not try this
| at home or anywhere else.
|
| So that's...six varieties of water, each with their own
| profile of additives or "chemicals". And in practice the
| water you get in your food is probably just going to be a
| mix from the municipal water supply, runoff, local wells,
| moist fertilizer, etc.
|
| So before we even get to the chemicals in the food, we
| have to worry about the chemicals being put into the food
| to grow it. Oh, plus the chemical composition of the
| soil...hopefully there's no heavy metals nearby, some
| plants are particularly greedy about snatching them up.
|
| So it's a really complex problem. We can't just say "no
| chemicals in food". It's just not that simple.
| harimau777 wrote:
| I think that you could probably put together a reasonable
| working definition of something like:
|
| Substances which are artificially synthesized or heavily
| processed which are added to food. For the purpose of this
| definition, ingredients which have a long history of use such
| as salt, alcohol, fermented foods, smoking, etc. are
| excluded.
|
| Of course the purpose of this definition is to serve as a
| generalization in order to facilitate discussion. I'm certain
| that there are exceptions where modern additives are probably
| fairly obviously harmless such as vitamin/mineral
| fortification. Likewise there are traditional ingredients
| that we now know can be harmful such as alcohol, excessive
| salt, smoke, etc.
| spease wrote:
| What I would imagine happens is that some food producer
| realizes that a lot of their product is going to waste and
| they have intermittent reports of food poisoning. So they
| add salt to be able to continue selling the same volume of
| product. This also may make the product more flavorful.
| Seems like a win all around to them.
|
| Now the food is causing long-term issues in _some_ people,
| but the American medical system introduces a lot of
| friction towards chronic medical issues. These issues are
| underreported, therefore there isn't a lot of money
| available to reaearch them. And the time between cause and
| effect is, well, decades before we have clinical
| diagnostics to allow us to say "you specifically need to
| eat less salt".
|
| Now we can slap regulations on the companies involved in
| food production to revise the levels of sodium in food. I'm
| not sure we know what the optimal levels are. But it will
| probably cost them millions of dollars factoring in food
| waste, changes to established shipping / storage
| guidelines, possibly even force them to change companies to
| deliver product faster or pull their product from certain
| retailers who find it no longer profitable to receive
| shipments given the low volume they can sell before the
| product is unsafe to sell.
|
| But it's only really possible to have the discussion of
| what the right solution is if the specific objection is
| stated. If someone is concerned about GMOs, the driving
| issue may be more related to where they can be grown, size
| of the product, crop vulnerability to disease, _avoiding_
| excessive use of herbicides or pesticides, adapting to
| ecological changes, and so forth.
| whoitwas wrote:
| There are a wide array of problems from plastics to
| herbicides and pesticides related to consumption. There's
| also the sustainability issue as laid out in this article.
| It's unclear what your contention is other than you might not
| like general statements about "chemicals". It's not possible
| to enumerate every issue. You're statement isn't contributing
| anything.
| spease wrote:
| Everything we eat is "chemicals" that is broken down
| chemically to be turned into energy (edit: and structural
| purposes).
|
| Sure in like-minded folks, chemicals may be understood to
| mean artificial sweeteners, pesticides, GMOs, HFCS, etc.
| but it's unclear which they're objecting to or even what
| agricultural sub-industry they're criticizing.
|
| Heck even high amounts of sodium in the American diet is
| criticized, but strip it out entirely and you've got a
| different set of problems now.
|
| Most likely each change was done for a reason that improved
| either the cost-effectiveness or the appeal of food, or
| solved issues relating to storage, availability, changing
| ecologically factors, vulnerability to plant disease,
| malnutrition, etc.
|
| It's just not constructive to say something that's so
| generic that it evaluates to "food could have healthier
| ingredients" or even "food could have more natural
| ingredients". It's just handwaving a bunch of supply chain
| issues as if people are just choosing to be arseholes.
|
| It's like taking potshots at tech for centralizing personal
| information into databases that keep getting compromised
| for identity theft. Yeah, there are issues with that
| paradigm, but that's not to say that solving the issue is
| as simple as decentralizing all information storage - that
| introduces another set of issues (eg are end users really
| going to have sufficient cybersecurity chops to not lose
| their data themselves instead of a third-party).
|
| It's easy to complain about the solution when you aren't
| familiar with the constraints that keep it from being
| perfect.
| whoitwas wrote:
| Why do you say everything is chemicals like it's some
| sort of gotcha? That's very obvious.
|
| There's a clear context here. You're rejecting context
| and screaming, "chemicals!"
| whoitwas wrote:
| The main constraint to a solution is the size and scale
| of chemical companies who lobby to create rules in their
| favor. There's no practical solution to this problem, the
| best we can do is educate people to live and consume
| sustainably.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| What they meant should have written was "tons of refined
| sugar". That's the chemical that makes you fat, through
| making your food over-calorized while not leading your body
| to realize you need to stop eating.
|
| The fake lie answers that they will give might include zero
| calorie sweeteners because people hate the idea that you can
| "have your cake and eat it too" (no meta-pun intended).
| fredgrott wrote:
| Note, it is far different for these crops that were once farmed:
| -cotton -Tobacco
|
| And that is about 30 percent of USA farmland....the main
| pollutant being arsenic
|
| Even in land producing corn...the soil loses enough that several
| tones need to be added per acre. They use to rotate between beans
| and corn to keep that expenditure down....as beans replaces
| nitrogen taken from soil by corn...
|
| my bias, worked Uncles farms during childhood each summer.
| poochkoishi728 wrote:
| A 6mb mp3 downloads automatically when visited, on desktop at
| least, which seems pretty wasteful.
| raybb wrote:
| Might want to send that feedback to
| https://investigatemidwest.org/contact-us/
|
| Especially not nice if it happens on mobile connections.
| lagniappe wrote:
| Change the extension to .js, boom problem solved
| destitude wrote:
| Simply switching to no-till in the fall would be a huge
| improvement. I drove by hundreds and hundreds of miles of just
| pure black dirt fields that were recently tilled up after
| harvesting in western MN. Even though I live a ways away from
| there we've had dirt deposited on top of snow in the winter when
| strong winds come through and pick up small bits of all that
| exposed soil.
| manvillej wrote:
| my family has been getting into this very seriously in the last
| few years. There are several very serious challenges to the
| adoption of regenerative farming.
|
| 1. most farmers are stubborn and OLD
|
| 2. most of the industrial equipment is not meant for regenerative
| practices meaning many farmers simply can't afford to switch
| technologies
|
| 3. regenerative farming takes time & there simply isn't enough
| expertise out there
|
| 4. agricultural land shrinks every year. EVERY year. new farms
| are harder and harder to start & we really cannot afford to dip
| our food supply
|
| 5. Economically, the government has a very strong interest in
| keeping food cheap. Hungry people have a tendency to overthrow
| governments. farming has extremely thin margins.
|
| 6. There is a lot of funding in the form of grants and programs
| to encourage growth, but it means most farmers need to become
| grant writers. Large scale farms now have professional grant
| writers, smaller farms where the regenerative practices might
| have the most impact are having a difficult time accessing these
| programs.
|
| 7. Carharts are fashionable and really expensive. My dad found my
| first carhart on the side of the road with treadmarks across it
| and I got made fun of for it. Give me back my carharts.
|
| Here are some of the things that are really helping with these
| problems though:
|
| 1. most farmers are really stubborn and will push through
| problems because its just work
|
| 2. Agritourism is bringing in a lot of renewed interested in
| farming & money.
|
| 3. Food chain issues (looking at you boarshead & mcdonalds) is
| bring a renewed interest in buying local.
|
| 4. Regenerative farming simply makes better food. Seriously, I
| cannot eat grocery store pork or chicken. The meat looks and
| tastes different.
|
| 5. Ignoring no-till techniques, there are techniques that can be
| started at a low cost for small scale farms. Chicken tractors,
| rotational grazing, soil health programs, etc. My family has been
| doing chicken tractors for chickens and turkey for personal
| consumption. Its been pretty easy for 1-2 person to raise
| 1500+lbs of meat with only about an hour of work a day. The only
| labor intensive day is harvesting and we've really gotten it
| streamlined. Its also eliminated the need for fertilizing or
| aerating the area they are run in.
|
| 6. I've noticed its really bonding family farms together and
| bringing in younger farmers in with a sense of ownership and
| purpose
| rmosolgo wrote:
| Thanks for sharing all these reflections on the topic.
| Regarding Carhartts, I can really recommend Super Casuals,
| which sells Carhartt factory seconds:
| https://www.supercasuals.com/category.cfm/449
|
| They're stamped "IRR" on the inside... but that's more subtle
| than tread marks XD I usually order several sizes of what I'm
| interested in and send most of them back.
| throw10920 wrote:
| > agricultural land shrinks every year
|
| What's the cause of this? Nutritional deficiency? Economics? Or
| something else?
| bluGill wrote:
| Suburbs expanding.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > the government has a very strong interest in keeping food
| cheap
|
| I'd go further. Governments and society want to overproduce
| food for resiliency. Markets aim for efficiency, so you need
| some amount of subsidies for production.
|
| > Food chain issues (looking at you boarshead & mcdonalds) is
| bring a renewed interest in buying local
|
| Buying local doesn't really solve this.
| codingdave wrote:
| > most farmers need to become grant writers.
|
| That seems like something a tech community who is looking for a
| problem to throw AI/LLMs at... really ought to be able to help
| out with.
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| > 4. agricultural land shrinks every year. EVERY year. new
| farms are harder and harder to start & we really cannot afford
| to dip our food supply
|
| of course we can.
|
| for corn, circa 40% is used to feed livestock and 35% for
| ethanol production. there is very little human consumption.
|
| for wheat, in the US and Europe, only around 35% is used to
| feed humans.
|
| we really should do much more regenerative agriculture so
| people eat better food down the chain.
| Cornbilly wrote:
| > for corn, circa 40% is used to feed livestock and 35% for
| ethanol production. there is very little human consumption.
|
| Good luck with getting Americans to pay more for and/or eat
| less meat.
|
| We're practically addicted to eating meat in some form at
| every meal. Not to mention the weird group of folks that have
| tied eating meat to masculinity.
| cvoss wrote:
| > It takes a long, long time for agriculture methods to change
|
| My relatives, corn farmers in Iowa, have been preaching no-till
| for three generations now. I asked my uncle why it's not been
| universally adopted after all this time.
|
| He said it's partly lack of awareness, which was astounding to
| me. I learned about the loss of our soil and the importance of
| no-till in the classroom in middle school in an urban area, of
| all places! The evangelism is occurring, but maybe it's just not
| reaching the right ears, or it's reaching deaf ears.
|
| The other factor, he said, was that you'll suffer lower yields
| for a few years after you stop tilling, while the soil builds up
| a proper layer of decomposing matter on top. Or at least, farmers
| are afraid that could happen. And it's not a risk worth taking in
| their view.
|
| There is a role here for government incentives to accelerate the
| transition. I think they already exist, but they should step it
| up, since we have been moving so slowly. The government is quite
| accustomed to tweaking the economics of farming to stabilize such
| an important part of our society.
| kylebenzle wrote:
| Maybe a lot of farmers don't want to drastically increase their
| herbicide use?
| factormeta wrote:
| >The other factor, he said, was that you'll suffer lower
| yields for a few years after you stop tilling, while the soil
| builds up a proper layer of decomposing matter on top. Or at
| least, farmers are afraid that could happen. And it's not a
| risk worth taking in their view.
|
| Maybe it has more the fact that humans are risk averse. We
| just don't want to make financial sacrificed in the short
| term to get longer term rewards. Many of us want to do good,
| but we also don't want our 401ks and subsidies to go down.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Feels like something you could roll out to a small portion
| of the land and see what happens. Is that not viable?
|
| Edit: NVM, it was pointed out elsewhere that the needed
| equipment is different
| watwut wrote:
| These are low margin businesses. Chances are they can't
| afford it without significant pain.
| duckmysick wrote:
| > you'll suffer lower yields for a few years after you stop
| tilling, while the soil builds up a proper layer of decomposing
| matter on top.
|
| Anecdotal, but can confirm, I observed lower yields (sometimes
| minimal, in the range of 5-10%) for a year or two after
| starting to till. But it's so much worth in the long run.
| Granted, I'm talking about the market-garden size yield. Could
| be different in multi-hectare yields, but I can see the
| difference on my scale. After the initial one or two years I
| can see increased yields with lowered herbicide use and less
| frequent weeding activity.
| theoreticalmal wrote:
| What on earth is a regenerative farmer doing on HN? I'm very
| curious and intrigued
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Edward H. Faulkner published "Plowman's Folly" in 1943.
|
| He revisited his analysis in 1947 in "A Second Look" in which
| he responded to critics, and doubled-down:
|
| "The soil which the gardener or farmer works is made up of tiny
| crystalline fragments. The action of soil acids, principally
| those released through the decay of organic matter, unlocks the
| minerals required for healthy plant growth. [ ... ] the
| continuous use of commercial fertilizers is a mistake. [ ... ]
| The "bank account" theory of soil is bankrtup. It holds that
| whatever we take from the soil in the growing of crops must be
| put back - usually in the form of prepared fertilizers. What
| the soil needs, on the contrary, is the gentle chemistry
| described above. If man cannot learn this, he will pay and pay,
| ultimately to his ruin".
|
| 1943. 1947. This is not new stuff. By the time "A Second Look"
| was published, there were _340,000 copies_ of "Plowman's
| Folly" in print.
| hnmullany wrote:
| No-till conservation cropping systems produce better physical
| soil health and higher soil organic carbon, but they do require
| higher herbicide use:
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360507198_Are_No-Ti...
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| is it "unlearning", and was it "advice", when you were forced
| into a practice because otherwise you and your family would die
| due to destitution?
|
| Regenerative farming practices require not doing what the US
| ecoomic landscape forced agriculture to become. Corporations were
| given too much power, allowing them to erode cooperations with
| with good, varied yield by buying up farms one at a time until
| the coop as a whole didn't have good, varied yield anymore, and
| going "oh poor babies let us buy your entire coop, you can keep
| farming but we, instead of the market, will pay you", and the law
| went "this is fine, there is no problem here", and it continues
| to say that to this day.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| natives knew of some of the best farming practices hundreds of
| years ago and european settlers while initially relying on them
| eventually disregarded them as savages
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