Emily Wolfe here, I’m the person who wrote this story. As I plan the second story in the series, which will be about new markets related to organic and regenerative, I’m curious to know a couple of things:
-isn’t this a tech/VC blog? How is it that so many of you are so interested in and knowledgeable about agriculture?
-what about this story made you want to discuss it here?
Speaking in generalities but hackers love hard problems, and implementing a 21st century food system is the intersection of most of the biggest problems of our time- climate change, population growth, sustainable energy. The fact that the best solutions seem to involve decentralization, taking a big chunk out of the market cap of destructive megacorporations, and transferring power down the class hierarchy aligns closely with the hacker ethos as well.
I actually come here more for these kind of stories than the tech news. From the hacker news guidlines:
What to Submit
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
It's not a blog, it's a user-submitted news story aggregator.
And we the users are nerds, and while most of us work in software engineering, we're interested in everything and anything deep and tech/science related.
The state often appears in stories about agriculture in precarious environments (See Jared Diamond's "Collapse" for one example.)
Montana is largely a semi-arid desert, especially over the 2/3's of the state that are northern Great Plains. East of the continental divide, it gets about 10" of rain per year, which is about a quarter of the US average.
And with climate change, it is more precarious. Temperatures have been unusually high this summer, and it's fire season now. Weather has become more volatile. (Cherry crops on the Flathead have been destroyed two of the last three years.)
Organic and regenerative ag are built on the assumption that crops must be grown in open air soil. The reality is that crops can be grown in open air soil and, if they are, regenerative ag in particular is significantly better for soil longevity.
That said it is not necessarily better to produce all crops in low density, high volatility, season dependent environments. Some material % of crops can move to more intelligent indoor settings where yields are higher, weather isn't a factor, and production yields can be scheduled without risk of weather impact. I'm actually a partner in one of these high volume operations in Montana (randomly). Uses less water, has zero soil impact, requires little to no chemical agents and is predictable.
What I hope will continue is crops that are capable of producing profitable and predictable yields in indoor environments will move more and more in that direction. This could serve to reduce soil stress and leave soil for crops that need more space (e.g. tubers) and livestock to aid in improving soil longevity.
Note this is not a plug for vertical farming. That's an entirely different mirage of financial engineering.
I found it an interesting listen. Of course it's a fairly shallow entry into the topic, but that's what they are about after all; get you interested, give you pointers for more if you feel like it.
Just too bad they'll go spotify-only and thus seize to be a podcast... I'll have to stop recommending (and listening...)
Now that I see there’s such a hunger for this kind of storytelling, I want to build on what I’ve done in part 1. To do so, I’m seeking to fully fund parts 2 and 3 of this series, so I can continue digging deeply and telling stories of great characters. What ideas do you have for individuals/entities that might be interested? The money would go through the publisher, which is a 501 c3 nonprofit.
Thank you all for such a great conversation here and asking such thought-provoking questions!
What is the best criticism of regenerative ag? Everything I see about it is so positive that it seems crazy everyone hasn't switched. Are there really no downsides and it's just institutional inertia/caution holding everyone back?
Your carbon site explains the "how it works" as essentially a reactive process, i.e. a farmer adopts regen practices and then gets paid for the results -- what about any proactive processes to help incentivize and facilitate farmers' transitions to regen ag?
I ask because I've been researching regen ag for smallholder farms -- a few programs exist, primarily through microfinance, but I've yet to see any quality + accessible programs to accomplish this proactive approach tightly knit with carbon credit markets.
An obvious difficulty with this approach is verifying the transition actually occurs and more carbon is sequestered, but it does seem to be an essential component if we want to move more farms to regenerative ag.
Curious if you have any further thoughts on this space, I'd love to speak more about this.
FWIW, I've been following Indigo and the regenerative ag space for a while and IA is doing some great work, so I don't mean to undermine the impact these programs already have.
Sounds like an interesting approach. I'm glad there are people working of these issues. When I read this article I was thinking something like this is needed to incentivize the farmers.
Like everything there are costs and benefits; sometimes people only focus on the benefits of "modern" practices and forget the costs associated with them, like stripping the soil, and the expense and side effects of chemicals. Finding a better approach means taking risks and trying new ideas. This applies to programming as well as growing food.
Correct, but the current economic incentive structure is set up for short term profits and nobody really cares about the soil quality (except perhaps farmers that own the ground they farm; which even then they are to survive long enough to adapt soil-healthy practices).
Right now, farmers (corn/soy/wheat/cotton) are reward on quantity, so they need to increase production and keep costs down. Rightly or wrongly, the prevailing thought is to increase yields rather than cuts costs.
There are news systems thinking approaches slowly gaining steam (as the original article is about), but the reality is these things are economically risky. This is why the government needs to divert agricultural subsidy money from its existing criteria to one that requires practices like cover cropping. Importantly the money is already there, we just need to shift how its disbursed and start incentivizing more sustainable practices
If you're a UI/UX designer, and this area excites you, please drop me a line.
We're tackling this exact problem at Yard Stick (https://www.useyardstick.com/) - developing a new way to measure soil carbon that is fast, accurate and affordable, with backing by ARPA-E and in collaboration with the Soil Health Institute.
Later this week, I'm going to post a contract-to-hire position. In the meantime, email me at [email protected]
I work for a design consultancy with a heavy emphasis on user research. Are you only open to working with individuals or would you be open to working with a consultancy? This sounds like an awesome design problem.
Has anyone here undergone a soil restoration project (big or small)? Did you happen to blog about the progress? There's so much I don't know, like how you even determine that your soil is degraded, or how you measure progress.
My wife and I bought a farm in Oregon and we're in the process of doing exactly this. We don't have a blog yet – working on it - but we do have an instagram account if anyone's interested:
The previous owner had a soil test done, and through that we were able to assess how eroded it was (very). We switched the hay fields over to organic practices, but the biggest projects so far have been roughly 20 acres that we've put into conservation, including an oak woodland and an 'upland prairie' - both vanishing ecosystems in the state of Oregon.
Long term we're moving towards agroforestry practices, and thinking through the lens of carbon sequestration. In the short term, we've been heavily focused on brush removal, tree limbing, etc, for wildfire prevention and suppression.
Get a shovel and dig a hole where there are some plants growing. You will see a darker layer (soil) on top of a lighter layer. The lighter layer is dirt (sand, silt, clay) without carbon in the form of life and carbohydrates. Progress is measured by the depth of the darker layer. The native prairie had a dark layer filled with roots 30 feet deep. To determine exactly how healthy your soil layer is you will need a microscope to survey the microbiota. If you dont have a microscope you can get an idea of how you are doing by observing how well the soil aggregates and is bound to roots. In healthy soil plants will have soil aggregates stuck to their roots that have to be manually removed. The aggregates are formed by glomalin produced by fungus and bacteria.
The more life you see in the soil the healthier it is. Predatory arthropods are a really good indicator. If they are around that means there is food for them.
To determine the quality of your soil, you can perform a soil test. In the US, you will most likely find your local university offering this service through their extension agency. It will probably cost around 30 dollars, and you will need to probe samples from different locations on the property. They will assess and give you results. Some of the metrics are: concentration of major nutrients, organic matter content, pH, and CEC (cation exchange capacity). You will also probably receive a list of recommendations.
Not on my own, but I spent some time working on a farm that had been working on soil restoration for roughly a decade. As time went on they had expanded the restoration efforts to new fields, What was awesome though was that they had soil cuts at each field so you could visually see the difference the years were making as the topsoil layer kept getting deeper and deeper.
My wife and I have been heavily influenced by Sepp Holzer, Elaine Ingham, Fukuoka Masanobu, and others in the permaculture/regen ag scene.
We bought a plot of land here in Arkansas a year and a half ago and have been working it, and plan to continue doing so with the aim of creating a self sustaining food forest and garden, one outcome of which will necessarily require healthy and strong soil. The ground is rocky and the rain runs off fast. We have been planting trees, bringing in leaf mulch, and leaving the cut grass when we mow.
There are a shockingly large number of techniques and things to know about this kind of work. Join some groups on Facebook or IRL, visit with farmers at your local farmers market, and search around and you will be able to get your hands on more info than you can handle.
My father is trying to do this on 17 acres of land in Mallorca, Spain. He hasn't been able to find anyone on the island who can do a soil carbon test, but there are ways of visually identifying water retention, insect and fungal life in the soil, etc. Here's his website and instagram if you're interested:
I am doing it on a small and unscientific scale. My soil is silty sand with a pretty neutral PH. I need to add quite a bit of organic material to get plants to thrive. In the past, I'd turn everything over with a shovel each year. This year I went to a no-till method for my annual crops putting down cardboard and woodchips as mulch. If a plant gives me an indication of a deficiency, I will address it. For example, sometimes my tomatoes need a little extra magnesium.
Things like soil organic carbon (SoC) are commonly used measures of progress. Also things like humic acid and other secondary measures of biological can be used. No two patches of 'good' soil are the same, so there is some intuition involved
I try and blog a little bit about sustainable ag on thinkingagriculture.io as I work in ag research and am interested in how this meta evolves.
I've started a small market garden here on the far north coast of Scotland (https://www.instagram.com/burnlea.farm). Growing veggies for the local community, trees from local seed stock and this year I'm growing some old local varieties of barley (bere barley).
The soil on our croft is in a good way, having been left undisturbed for decades (aside from being cut for hay). However, we still need to build fertility and are doing so through compost, ramial woodchip and biodynamic preparations. This combined with a no-till (or minimum till) approach is helping to develop build soil and enhance soil structure. One issue we need to address with this is water management, as it can get very wet here (although we are a few weeks without rain now).
For keeping track of fertility in your soil a simple test that many people do is measure organic matter. This isn't something I've done yet. You can also do worm counts. And more detailed soil tests.
There are apps out there such as SoilMentor by Vidacycle that guide you in tracking this. Here's a good overview of their tests, which can be done by farmers on site with minimal equipment https://soils.vidacycle.com/soil-tests/
You can get a sense of the baseline when starting a project by doing this. But a good indicator would be looking at what plants are growing there already (if any) - weeds etc are indicators of soil characteristics. For example, compaction and drainage.
Personally I haven't taken any soil tests yet, I'm just keeping an eye on our crops and getting the sense of things that way. I'll take some tests at some point soon. Simple approaches to this can be pretty handy, for example I've been scything our 2 acre field and it allows me to step over each part of the field noticing how the vegetation changes species-wise and in vigor.
Supporting this, I'm also developing an app for market gardens to use for crop planning and record keeping. It's great to be your own customer, plus I'm tapping into a good network of established markets gardens here who are helping to shape the product.
I recommend anyone starting a project should read Mark Shepard's new book Water For Any Farm. His master line system, built upon PA Yeoman's keyline and scale of permanence is valuable, especially at an early stage. Equally valuable in dry climates as it is in wet ones.
I just got back from touring Oregon and Washington and I got to see a lot of fascinating agriculture. Primarily hazelnut trees along with some berries other speciality crops and "hay."
The nut tree farmers need some help. They are spraying water scattershot to soak the ground. What's more is that they have the ground prepared as perfectly flat bare soil--I presume to make automated harvesting possible.
It looks like a lot of resources are allocated to this rather imprecise method of irrigation and as the droughts and heat persist I could see this failing to scale. It doesn't look like it scales very well even in good times.
I was wondering, given the very organized situation of the trees and ground, why are they not using direct or site-based (drip?) irrigation? It would definitely change the watering process from one of rolling and unrolling irrigation line and towing of sprinklers (water canons?) to one where you would automate water delivery via a network of lines with computers and have workers monitor and repair lines as needed.
Drip irrigation works best when delivering water directly to the roots of small annual plants. Trees have large root systems, and are planted closely enough that you need to water the entire ground. Perhaps a network of smaller sprayers below the leaf canopy would reduce evaporative losses.
Is there an economic argument to be made for increasing the amount of money spent in the local economy?
I often hear it cited as a benefit in situations like this, and it has a certain feel-good quality to it, but instinctively it feels like it means people pay higher prices: if you're buying seed from the local seed & feed, it's almost certainly more expensive than if you buy it from XYZ megacorp.
Money given to a megacorp leaves the local economy, leaving the local area poorer, overall. Money given to your neighbors stays in the local economy.
A well-off local economy supports more things than a poor one. Local seed & feed shops are a start, but think of every other business that might be part of a small town: grocery stores, bookshops, art galleries, clothing, musicians, movie theaters, children's party entertainers, furniture makers, car dealerships, repair shops... how many of these things used to be made locally, and are now made by people working under dubious conditions somewhere in Asia, then shipped across the world at a huge, but completely-ignored cost to the environment? How many local shops has Wal-Mart ruined by being large enough to cut predatory deals with suppliers that let them sell stuff below any sane price point? How much money left the entire US economy for Jeff Bezos' pockets during the pandemic?
Keeping money in the local economy leads to better-off neighbors. Better-off neighbors are less likely to resort to criminal acts to feed your family; better-off neighbors are more likely to be able to help you out if something bad happens.
The metaphor that comes easily to mind is water: each local economy is a pool, with the locals the fish swimming in it. Buying stuff from a megacorp may be cheaper in the short run, but every time you do that, the corporation is pumping a bit of the water out of your pond and putting a little of it in their pond, far far away, and most of it in their giant storage tank even further away, where it sits, unused. Ultimately your pond dries up and either you leave for a larger pond that hasn't been sucked dry by corporations, or you end up baking in the sun and dying.
Following on your example, if you buy seed from the local seed & feed, you :
- build resilience, for example if a global pandemic prevents far-reaching import-export
- are less subject to geopolitics
- money invested have a higher chance to stay in the local economy : the owner of the local seed & feed may buy its vegetables from you
- create local jobs : this seed & feed owner may be able to create jobs for people
- overall avoid the lock-in that you can have being tied to XYZ megacorp, for example if they now decide to only sell you seed that will grow with their newly branded feed
- preserve local folklore : maybe there is a kind of seed that grows really well on your soil, but not so much in the others, so XYZ has decided to discontinue it because the market is too small to be profitable
Consider a single (physical) twenty dollar bill. If it enters a small town (remote worker for FAANG withdraws it out of an ATM) and then immediately leaves (from the Walmart till onto an armored truck to the local city center), that's $20 in economic activity.
If it passes between five hands locally before it ends up on that truck, that's $100 of economic activity, five times as many opportunities for people to exchange what they have for what they want.
This is a toy model, there are a ton of things wrong with it, but it does illustrate a real point. In the six-hands scenario, more of the residents are offering goods and services to each other, in the two-hands scenario, everything is being provided to and by the larger economy. Less resilient, less locally-scaled, and it's easier to replace the small town with any other set of producer/consumers who offer lower prices or thinner wages.
Beyond just the an outsourcing-style one? Where the local circulation is more important than the immediate sticker price? Giving your money to someone else local means they can purchase stuff from someone else local who then can purchase stuff from someone else local, etc... vs that money being out of the local economy entirely.
Maybe not a strictly economic one, but probably a socioeconomic one: that keeping more money in local communities helps those communities to be better places to live.
Whether that is true or not, I don't know. It's definitely true that corporate concentration has been increasing and that many of these communities are in decline.
People might pay higher prices, but they also get better wages and the economy becomes more resilient against killing the whole area because the local economic network gets more edges. So there is a better chance to find a new job should your current job go away for some reason.
On this topic, I would suggest reading Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal [1]. It's a great book on an issue that everyone should understand.
I'm glad to see formerly conventional farmers adopting no-till and other regenerative practices, but it's crazy to me that they're still trying to plant hundreds of hectares in monocrop. Baby steps, I guess. Maybe there's just no other way to make the economics work with so little rainfall?
There's a guy in Montana called Paul Wheaton who spent the last 6 years building soil rich in organic matter using no chemicals (pesticides & biocides) in his 200 acre plot of land. There were giant hugelkultur beds 15 ft high it was a crazy sight. He believes that in a decade the soil will be so rich in organic matter with healthy microbial activity (with no chemical history) could produce food that cures cancer. I believe that in an environment where human body is not weakened by the constant bombardment of chemical compounds, it could heal itself from cancer.
He has a bootcamp and I took 2 weeks off from work to try it out in January and I learned alot just by being there. https://wheaton-labs.com/bootcamp/
After that experience I couldn't focus on work anymore so I quit my job (I have 2 years worth of savings) and now my days are spent trying to restore the soil in my backyard.
The number is high, but farming in generally is a high risk bet.
I often say to people, I need to spend (i.e risk) $100,000 for the chance to make $20,000-$30,000 if everything goes correctly. One major event and you just lost 100K. Scale up or down depending on the size of the farm.
Presumably these expenses have benefits, otherwise companies wouldn't be using them? It's like saying a company saved $200k by dumping their computers... so they can do everything on paper.
[+] [-] emilywolfe|4 years ago|reply
-isn’t this a tech/VC blog? How is it that so many of you are so interested in and knowledgeable about agriculture?
-what about this story made you want to discuss it here?
Looking forward to learning more!
[+] [-] Floegipoky|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DubiousPusher|4 years ago|reply
What to Submit
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
[+] [-] underdeserver|4 years ago|reply
And we the users are nerds, and while most of us work in software engineering, we're interested in everything and anything deep and tech/science related.
[+] [-] blueyes|4 years ago|reply
This is true. One of the regenerative crop types are pulses (lentils, chick peas), and MT produces a lot.
https://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/pulse-info/resources-pdf/Growing...
The state often appears in stories about agriculture in precarious environments (See Jared Diamond's "Collapse" for one example.)
Montana is largely a semi-arid desert, especially over the 2/3's of the state that are northern Great Plains. East of the continental divide, it gets about 10" of rain per year, which is about a quarter of the US average.
And with climate change, it is more precarious. Temperatures have been unusually high this summer, and it's fire season now. Weather has become more volatile. (Cherry crops on the Flathead have been destroyed two of the last three years.)
[+] [-] iorek_dev|4 years ago|reply
Documentary on the Loess plateau in China: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjLV_aVRUmQ
Talk on the Caledonian Forest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAGHUkby2Is
Talk on using the "herd effect" in Africa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7pI7IYaJLI
A talk presenting a realistic view on soil reconstruction, what IMO is the best argument to convince farmers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUmIdq0D6-A
[+] [-] zachware|4 years ago|reply
That said it is not necessarily better to produce all crops in low density, high volatility, season dependent environments. Some material % of crops can move to more intelligent indoor settings where yields are higher, weather isn't a factor, and production yields can be scheduled without risk of weather impact. I'm actually a partner in one of these high volume operations in Montana (randomly). Uses less water, has zero soil impact, requires little to no chemical agents and is predictable.
What I hope will continue is crops that are capable of producing profitable and predictable yields in indoor environments will move more and more in that direction. This could serve to reduce soil stress and leave soil for crops that need more space (e.g. tubers) and livestock to aid in improving soil longevity.
Note this is not a plug for vertical farming. That's an entirely different mirage of financial engineering.
[+] [-] black_puppydog|4 years ago|reply
I found it an interesting listen. Of course it's a fairly shallow entry into the topic, but that's what they are about after all; get you interested, give you pointers for more if you feel like it.
Just too bad they'll go spotify-only and thus seize to be a podcast... I'll have to stop recommending (and listening...)
[+] [-] emilywolfe|4 years ago|reply
Thank you all for such a great conversation here and asking such thought-provoking questions!
[+] [-] jeffreyrogers|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vicarrion|4 years ago|reply
There's a number of open positions, most with the option to be remote!
https://www.indigoag.com/carbon
https://www.indigoag.com/join-us
[+] [-] lucas24|4 years ago|reply
I ask because I've been researching regen ag for smallholder farms -- a few programs exist, primarily through microfinance, but I've yet to see any quality + accessible programs to accomplish this proactive approach tightly knit with carbon credit markets.
An obvious difficulty with this approach is verifying the transition actually occurs and more carbon is sequestered, but it does seem to be an essential component if we want to move more farms to regenerative ag. Curious if you have any further thoughts on this space, I'd love to speak more about this.
FWIW, I've been following Indigo and the regenerative ag space for a while and IA is doing some great work, so I don't mean to undermine the impact these programs already have.
[+] [-] pkaye|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kickout|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldcode|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kickout|4 years ago|reply
Right now, farmers (corn/soy/wheat/cotton) are reward on quantity, so they need to increase production and keep costs down. Rightly or wrongly, the prevailing thought is to increase yields rather than cuts costs.
There are news systems thinking approaches slowly gaining steam (as the original article is about), but the reality is these things are economically risky. This is why the government needs to divert agricultural subsidy money from its existing criteria to one that requires practices like cover cropping. Importantly the money is already there, we just need to shift how its disbursed and start incentivizing more sustainable practices
https://data.ers.usda.gov/reports.aspx?ID=17833
[+] [-] driverdan|4 years ago|reply
What does that mean? Everything is made of chemicals.
[+] [-] evtothedev|4 years ago|reply
We're tackling this exact problem at Yard Stick (https://www.useyardstick.com/) - developing a new way to measure soil carbon that is fast, accurate and affordable, with backing by ARPA-E and in collaboration with the Soil Health Institute.
Later this week, I'm going to post a contract-to-hire position. In the meantime, email me at [email protected]
[+] [-] eightysixfour|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roldie|4 years ago|reply
What kind of involvement are you looking for design-wise?
[+] [-] kaycebasques|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gdubs|4 years ago|reply
http://instagram.com/cleryfarm/
The previous owner had a soil test done, and through that we were able to assess how eroded it was (very). We switched the hay fields over to organic practices, but the biggest projects so far have been roughly 20 acres that we've put into conservation, including an oak woodland and an 'upland prairie' - both vanishing ecosystems in the state of Oregon.
Long term we're moving towards agroforestry practices, and thinking through the lens of carbon sequestration. In the short term, we've been heavily focused on brush removal, tree limbing, etc, for wildfire prevention and suppression.
[+] [-] tastyfreeze|4 years ago|reply
The more life you see in the soil the healthier it is. Predatory arthropods are a really good indicator. If they are around that means there is food for them.
[+] [-] algoatecorn|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blacktriangle|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] artificialLimbs|4 years ago|reply
We bought a plot of land here in Arkansas a year and a half ago and have been working it, and plan to continue doing so with the aim of creating a self sustaining food forest and garden, one outcome of which will necessarily require healthy and strong soil. The ground is rocky and the rain runs off fast. We have been planting trees, bringing in leaf mulch, and leaving the cut grass when we mow.
There are a shockingly large number of techniques and things to know about this kind of work. Join some groups on Facebook or IRL, visit with farmers at your local farmers market, and search around and you will be able to get your hands on more info than you can handle.
[+] [-] willlma|4 years ago|reply
https://www.regencampos.es/
https://www.instagram.com/regencampos/
[+] [-] hahamrfunnyguy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kickout|4 years ago|reply
I try and blog a little bit about sustainable ag on thinkingagriculture.io as I work in ag research and am interested in how this meta evolves.
[+] [-] Dylanfm|4 years ago|reply
The soil on our croft is in a good way, having been left undisturbed for decades (aside from being cut for hay). However, we still need to build fertility and are doing so through compost, ramial woodchip and biodynamic preparations. This combined with a no-till (or minimum till) approach is helping to develop build soil and enhance soil structure. One issue we need to address with this is water management, as it can get very wet here (although we are a few weeks without rain now).
For keeping track of fertility in your soil a simple test that many people do is measure organic matter. This isn't something I've done yet. You can also do worm counts. And more detailed soil tests.
There are apps out there such as SoilMentor by Vidacycle that guide you in tracking this. Here's a good overview of their tests, which can be done by farmers on site with minimal equipment https://soils.vidacycle.com/soil-tests/
You can get a sense of the baseline when starting a project by doing this. But a good indicator would be looking at what plants are growing there already (if any) - weeds etc are indicators of soil characteristics. For example, compaction and drainage.
Personally I haven't taken any soil tests yet, I'm just keeping an eye on our crops and getting the sense of things that way. I'll take some tests at some point soon. Simple approaches to this can be pretty handy, for example I've been scything our 2 acre field and it allows me to step over each part of the field noticing how the vegetation changes species-wise and in vigor.
Supporting this, I'm also developing an app for market gardens to use for crop planning and record keeping. It's great to be your own customer, plus I'm tapping into a good network of established markets gardens here who are helping to shape the product.
I recommend anyone starting a project should read Mark Shepard's new book Water For Any Farm. His master line system, built upon PA Yeoman's keyline and scale of permanence is valuable, especially at an early stage. Equally valuable in dry climates as it is in wet ones.
[+] [-] datavirtue|4 years ago|reply
The nut tree farmers need some help. They are spraying water scattershot to soak the ground. What's more is that they have the ground prepared as perfectly flat bare soil--I presume to make automated harvesting possible.
It looks like a lot of resources are allocated to this rather imprecise method of irrigation and as the droughts and heat persist I could see this failing to scale. It doesn't look like it scales very well even in good times.
I was wondering, given the very organized situation of the trees and ground, why are they not using direct or site-based (drip?) irrigation? It would definitely change the watering process from one of rolling and unrolling irrigation line and towing of sprinklers (water canons?) to one where you would automate water delivery via a network of lines with computers and have workers monitor and repair lines as needed.
[+] [-] mastax|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amanaplanacanal|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akeck|4 years ago|reply
He did a book on it: https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/dirt-to-soil/
I also like Geoff Lawton's work on food forests:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgF9BU4uYMU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCJfSYZqZ0Y
[+] [-] durkie|4 years ago|reply
I often hear it cited as a benefit in situations like this, and it has a certain feel-good quality to it, but instinctively it feels like it means people pay higher prices: if you're buying seed from the local seed & feed, it's almost certainly more expensive than if you buy it from XYZ megacorp.
[+] [-] egypturnash|4 years ago|reply
A well-off local economy supports more things than a poor one. Local seed & feed shops are a start, but think of every other business that might be part of a small town: grocery stores, bookshops, art galleries, clothing, musicians, movie theaters, children's party entertainers, furniture makers, car dealerships, repair shops... how many of these things used to be made locally, and are now made by people working under dubious conditions somewhere in Asia, then shipped across the world at a huge, but completely-ignored cost to the environment? How many local shops has Wal-Mart ruined by being large enough to cut predatory deals with suppliers that let them sell stuff below any sane price point? How much money left the entire US economy for Jeff Bezos' pockets during the pandemic?
Keeping money in the local economy leads to better-off neighbors. Better-off neighbors are less likely to resort to criminal acts to feed your family; better-off neighbors are more likely to be able to help you out if something bad happens.
The metaphor that comes easily to mind is water: each local economy is a pool, with the locals the fish swimming in it. Buying stuff from a megacorp may be cheaper in the short run, but every time you do that, the corporation is pumping a bit of the water out of your pond and putting a little of it in their pond, far far away, and most of it in their giant storage tank even further away, where it sits, unused. Ultimately your pond dries up and either you leave for a larger pond that hasn't been sucked dry by corporations, or you end up baking in the sun and dying.
[+] [-] louis___|4 years ago|reply
Following on your example, if you buy seed from the local seed & feed, you :
- build resilience, for example if a global pandemic prevents far-reaching import-export
- are less subject to geopolitics
- money invested have a higher chance to stay in the local economy : the owner of the local seed & feed may buy its vegetables from you
- create local jobs : this seed & feed owner may be able to create jobs for people
- overall avoid the lock-in that you can have being tied to XYZ megacorp, for example if they now decide to only sell you seed that will grow with their newly branded feed
- preserve local folklore : maybe there is a kind of seed that grows really well on your soil, but not so much in the others, so XYZ has decided to discontinue it because the market is too small to be profitable
[+] [-] samatman|4 years ago|reply
Consider a single (physical) twenty dollar bill. If it enters a small town (remote worker for FAANG withdraws it out of an ATM) and then immediately leaves (from the Walmart till onto an armored truck to the local city center), that's $20 in economic activity.
If it passes between five hands locally before it ends up on that truck, that's $100 of economic activity, five times as many opportunities for people to exchange what they have for what they want.
This is a toy model, there are a ton of things wrong with it, but it does illustrate a real point. In the six-hands scenario, more of the residents are offering goods and services to each other, in the two-hands scenario, everything is being provided to and by the larger economy. Less resilient, less locally-scaled, and it's easier to replace the small town with any other set of producer/consumers who offer lower prices or thinner wages.
[+] [-] majormajor|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeffreyrogers|4 years ago|reply
Whether that is true or not, I don't know. It's definitely true that corporate concentration has been increasing and that many of these communities are in decline.
[+] [-] adrianN|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] metalliqaz|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Animal-Vegetable-Junk-Sustainable-Sui...
[+] [-] Floegipoky|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] worik|4 years ago|reply
I think that is going to be the property of this sort of agriculture that makes it really popular.
Pity they cannot get carbon credits for the increase in top soil. Or can they?
[+] [-] songzme|4 years ago|reply
He has a bootcamp and I took 2 weeks off from work to try it out in January and I learned alot just by being there. https://wheaton-labs.com/bootcamp/
After that experience I couldn't focus on work anymore so I quit my job (I have 2 years worth of savings) and now my days are spent trying to restore the soil in my backyard.
[+] [-] stevespang|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kickout|4 years ago|reply
I often say to people, I need to spend (i.e risk) $100,000 for the chance to make $20,000-$30,000 if everything goes correctly. One major event and you just lost 100K. Scale up or down depending on the size of the farm.
[+] [-] gruez|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hanniabu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slumdev|4 years ago|reply
There are ways to prevent the desertification of the United States, and they don't involve PhDs and lobbying.