Disclaimer: These are my views and my understanding of (regenerative) agriculture. By no means am I an expert, just a student at YouTube University. I am not condemning conventional practices or judging other farmers for their practices. My goal is to bring forth information that will help others develop a better understanding of the ecosystem they are working with. Many of these points & ideas are going to be in conflict with the practices we are currently employing on our farms (myself included). Have an open mind and be willing to learn instead of taking everything personally. Do your own research before implementing any practices on your own operation. Adaption, not adoption.
This is a continuation of a previous post that establishes the principles of what regenerative agriculture is all about. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out here: What is Regenerative Agriculture?
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Why regenerative ag? I didn't realize how incredibly loaded that question is when I started writing this post, but I'll give it my best shot.
I recently heard Johnny Hunter, a forward thinking farmer from the Missouri Bootheel, say:
"How a crop looks above the soil surface, without any intervention or inputs from the farmer, is a mirror image of how healthy the soil below the surface truly is."
That is a pretty bold statement...but I don't disagree with him. Most of our soils would grow a pretty piss poor crop if we didn't fertilize or spray pesticides...but by the same token, take a look at what the guys with healthy soils & functioning ecosystems like Gabe Brown, Dave Brandt, etc. are able to grow with very little to no herbicides or fertilizers. I'll give you a hint...it is not a piss poor crop. So what are Gabe and Dave doing that we're not? Well for starters, they are essentially the ones that wrote the book on the concepts discussed in my previous post, and they began putting them into practice many years ago. They have been implementing practices on their operations that mimic nature, and they are continually striving to improve their practices over time as they learn their own best management practices.
So that sets the stage for what we are dealing with as far as our degraded soils and ecosystems, which for me is enough of a reason to want to see what changes we can make to improve our situation...but I suppose some of you still need more convincing.
Physical: The first thing we have to have is a physical medium to grow our crop. This is the mixture of sand, silt, clay, air, and water that make up our soils. Pretty important, right? Yes.
Chemical: The next thing we need are nutrients, or food for our crop. This is our nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, etc. We need plenty of plant food out there to feed our record crop, so we better pour on that fertilizer...that is where plant nutrients come from, right? Well...not exactly.
Biological: Finally, we have our soil biology. The tiny little critters that live in our soils. They help cycle nutrients by eating plant material, among other things, and convert them to a form that is available to the plant.
So, we have these three main categories...they probably all contribute about equally to our record crop, right? Probably looks something like the venn diagram below?
Well, Ray Archuletta has a different understanding of the Physical/Chemical/Biological balance in our soils. Ray believes the Biological contribution is much greater than the physical or chemical portions. This is because the biology is what drives the whole process. Without soil biology, we wouldn't have a chemical portion as there wouldn't be anything to break down the plant material, or produce the acids that break down the soil aggregates to provide plant available nutrients. Don't get me wrong, the physical and chemical components are important...but most of us are underestimating the importance of the biological component by focusing almost entirely on the physical and chemical components...which is a huge mistake.
We do this because we have a pretty good understanding of, and can monitor the physical and chemical components through soil testing...and can make adjustments to the chemical component through fertilizer applications. The monitoring & adjustment process is much less refined, and really less understood in general when it comes to the biological component. There isn't a quick fix that we can go apply and get our soil biology back to it's native form. That is going to take time, along with knowledge of the native system and a willingness to adapt our cropping system accordingly...and that is what regenerative agriculture is all about.
What's the old saying? Bad news always comes in threes?
I think it is rather easy to see that regenerative ag practices are helping us grow food in a manner that increases long term sustainability our production system. But why is it important to make the implementation a priority right now? Why not just stick with our current, conventional system and work the bugs out as they come? Today's farmers are growing more crops with less inputs than ever before...something is working, right?
Well, here is where it gets complicated because yes, we do have a fairly reliable, efficient production system in place right now...BUT...this current system is very reliant on fossil fuels to function. I'm going to repeat that to make sure it sinks in, because this is important: OUR CURRENT PRODUCTION SYSTEM IS VERY RELIANT ON FOSSIL FUELS TO FUNCTION. That is OK for now (I guess), but we need to understand that fossil fuels are a finite resource and we are burning through our supply very quickly...and once that supply is gone, we aren't getting it back...its gone forever. This problem applies to almost every aspect of our society, but I'm just going to focus on how it applies to agriculture.
Even if we ignore the diesel fuel we need to run our trucks, tractors, and harvesters; we still use a lot of fossil fuel based products in the growing process itself...synthetic fertilizer, herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, etc...you name it, if it is something other than a seed, chances are good that it either is a fossil fuel based product or it is produced using fossil fuels...and even the seeds are not completely innocent as they were probably grown in a fossil fuel intensive system and typically contain seed treatments. Man, talk about pissing in everyone's Cheerios, right? Well folks, we all need our Cheerios pissed in from time to time or we get complacent.
OK Michael, you said earlier that we are growing more crops with less inputs, but that isn't good enough? Well folks, to be blunt...no, that isn't good enough. We need to wean ourselves off of fossil fuel based inputs entirely. Dwayne Beck refers to fossil fuels as "ancient sunlight" because the raw, unrefined material was once a growing plant or animal (millions of years ago). So, because these fossil fuels had to be "grown" at some point, we are simply harvesting that ancient sunlight or ancient photosynthesis that grew those plants & animals. It is important to understand this concept and realize that every time we use a fossil fuel, we are subsidizing our farms and our civilization with ancient sunlight. How long can we continue to operate while relying on this subsidy? I don't have that answer, but it is certainly not forever.
This is a continuation of a previous post that establishes the principles of what regenerative agriculture is all about. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out here: What is Regenerative Agriculture?
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Why regenerative ag? I didn't realize how incredibly loaded that question is when I started writing this post, but I'll give it my best shot.
Degraded Resource
The first thing that we all need to realize is that we are dealing with a severely degraded resource in our agricultural soils and ecosystems. I know that stings to hear, but it is the truth. Think back to what the ground we farm looked like before it was turned over by a plow for the first time. It was probably pretty awesome, right? Nice rich, black soils as deep as they could dig. That is why the early settlers decided to stick around the in the Midwest...these "new" soils were much better than the worn out soils they were used to farming in Europe, and probably even on the east coast by then. Now, compare these "new" soils that our ancestors turned over to the soils we are farming today. Pretty big difference isn't it? This difference quantifies how degraded our soils and our ecosystems have become due to extensive tillage, erosion, and monoculture cropping practices (among other things).I recently heard Johnny Hunter, a forward thinking farmer from the Missouri Bootheel, say:
"How a crop looks above the soil surface, without any intervention or inputs from the farmer, is a mirror image of how healthy the soil below the surface truly is."
That is a pretty bold statement...but I don't disagree with him. Most of our soils would grow a pretty piss poor crop if we didn't fertilize or spray pesticides...but by the same token, take a look at what the guys with healthy soils & functioning ecosystems like Gabe Brown, Dave Brandt, etc. are able to grow with very little to no herbicides or fertilizers. I'll give you a hint...it is not a piss poor crop. So what are Gabe and Dave doing that we're not? Well for starters, they are essentially the ones that wrote the book on the concepts discussed in my previous post, and they began putting them into practice many years ago. They have been implementing practices on their operations that mimic nature, and they are continually striving to improve their practices over time as they learn their own best management practices.
So that sets the stage for what we are dealing with as far as our degraded soils and ecosystems, which for me is enough of a reason to want to see what changes we can make to improve our situation...but I suppose some of you still need more convincing.
What about the Biology?
We know our soils are degraded, but clearly we still have some good stuff left out there or we wouldn't be growing record crops year after year, right? Yes, I will agree with that. OK, so lets talk about what goes into growing that record crop from a soils perspective. I'll leave out the sunlight/weather aspect for simplicity.Physical: The first thing we have to have is a physical medium to grow our crop. This is the mixture of sand, silt, clay, air, and water that make up our soils. Pretty important, right? Yes.
Chemical: The next thing we need are nutrients, or food for our crop. This is our nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, etc. We need plenty of plant food out there to feed our record crop, so we better pour on that fertilizer...that is where plant nutrients come from, right? Well...not exactly.
Biological: Finally, we have our soil biology. The tiny little critters that live in our soils. They help cycle nutrients by eating plant material, among other things, and convert them to a form that is available to the plant.
So, we have these three main categories...they probably all contribute about equally to our record crop, right? Probably looks something like the venn diagram below?
Well, Ray Archuletta has a different understanding of the Physical/Chemical/Biological balance in our soils. Ray believes the Biological contribution is much greater than the physical or chemical portions. This is because the biology is what drives the whole process. Without soil biology, we wouldn't have a chemical portion as there wouldn't be anything to break down the plant material, or produce the acids that break down the soil aggregates to provide plant available nutrients. Don't get me wrong, the physical and chemical components are important...but most of us are underestimating the importance of the biological component by focusing almost entirely on the physical and chemical components...which is a huge mistake.
We do this because we have a pretty good understanding of, and can monitor the physical and chemical components through soil testing...and can make adjustments to the chemical component through fertilizer applications. The monitoring & adjustment process is much less refined, and really less understood in general when it comes to the biological component. There isn't a quick fix that we can go apply and get our soil biology back to it's native form. That is going to take time, along with knowledge of the native system and a willingness to adapt our cropping system accordingly...and that is what regenerative agriculture is all about.
The Elephant in the Room: Fossil Fuels
What's the old saying? Bad news always comes in threes?I think it is rather easy to see that regenerative ag practices are helping us grow food in a manner that increases long term sustainability our production system. But why is it important to make the implementation a priority right now? Why not just stick with our current, conventional system and work the bugs out as they come? Today's farmers are growing more crops with less inputs than ever before...something is working, right?
Well, here is where it gets complicated because yes, we do have a fairly reliable, efficient production system in place right now...BUT...this current system is very reliant on fossil fuels to function. I'm going to repeat that to make sure it sinks in, because this is important: OUR CURRENT PRODUCTION SYSTEM IS VERY RELIANT ON FOSSIL FUELS TO FUNCTION. That is OK for now (I guess), but we need to understand that fossil fuels are a finite resource and we are burning through our supply very quickly...and once that supply is gone, we aren't getting it back...its gone forever. This problem applies to almost every aspect of our society, but I'm just going to focus on how it applies to agriculture.
Even if we ignore the diesel fuel we need to run our trucks, tractors, and harvesters; we still use a lot of fossil fuel based products in the growing process itself...synthetic fertilizer, herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, etc...you name it, if it is something other than a seed, chances are good that it either is a fossil fuel based product or it is produced using fossil fuels...and even the seeds are not completely innocent as they were probably grown in a fossil fuel intensive system and typically contain seed treatments. Man, talk about pissing in everyone's Cheerios, right? Well folks, we all need our Cheerios pissed in from time to time or we get complacent.
Humans are inherently terrible at looking into the future. Most of us can handle looking ahead a couple months, but we have a hard time looking ahead a couple years, let alone a couple generations, or heaven forbid a couple centuries. We have this terrible habit of saying, "Yeah that's going to be a problem someday, but I won't be around to see it so why should I care?" Here's the thing though, with every generation that passes we get that much closer to the people that WILL be here to see the problems we are causing come into fruition...heck we might even be those people. Do we want to be part of the solution to this problem, or do we want to continue to be part of the problem?
Source: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-fossil-fuels-are-formed/
Another Dwayne Beck analogy here: Its like we are driving our car down the highway and all we are looking at is the white line right in front of us. We can do an OK job of keeping our car on the road, but if a deer or some other obstacle is in the middle of the road in front of us, we don't see it until it is too late and BOOM...we suddenly have a major problem on our hands. On the other hand, if we can look out the windshield and focus farther down the road, those obstacles in our path suddenly aren't as big of an issue and easier to navigate. That analogy applies to many aspects of our lives, but especially agriculture.
If we continue to use our current production system without making an attempt to become more sustainable, then we are going to be very unprepared for and susceptible to problems in the future...we are just staring at that white line hoping nothing gets in our way. If we begin learning to farm in nature's image...in a sustainable way...we will be much more prepared for the problems & obstacles in our future.
Another Dwayne Beck analogy here: Its like we are driving our car down the highway and all we are looking at is the white line right in front of us. We can do an OK job of keeping our car on the road, but if a deer or some other obstacle is in the middle of the road in front of us, we don't see it until it is too late and BOOM...we suddenly have a major problem on our hands. On the other hand, if we can look out the windshield and focus farther down the road, those obstacles in our path suddenly aren't as big of an issue and easier to navigate. That analogy applies to many aspects of our lives, but especially agriculture.
If we continue to use our current production system without making an attempt to become more sustainable, then we are going to be very unprepared for and susceptible to problems in the future...we are just staring at that white line hoping nothing gets in our way. If we begin learning to farm in nature's image...in a sustainable way...we will be much more prepared for the problems & obstacles in our future.
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Concluding Thoughts
A lot of the above points on our fossil fuel dependence and degraded ecosystems are not pleasant to think about; they aren't convenient, and they aren't going to be easy to overcome. If we as humans want to not only survive, but continue to thrive for many centuries to come then we need to tackle this problem head on. So instead of taking the easy way out and saying, "I'll let someone else figure it out," or "I won't be around to see it become a problem," I challenge you to get the ball rolling on your own operation. This isn't going to be an overnight makeover, or a deal where you can flip a switch and everything is going to work like you want it to. It is going to take time to figure out what works and what doesn't work on your operation. It is going to take time to rebuild the severely degraded ecosystem, and that is why we need to get started now.
Thanks for reading.
-Michael
