[m_coder]

The comment farther up the thread (at this point anyhow)[1] references Gabe Brown. He is using very little to no commercial fertilizer on his farm and has been for years. I am guessing his audience among cash strapped young desperate farmers has increased a lot in the last 3 months.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31237965

[hinkley]

There are a couple of particularly noteworthy things about Gabe. His philosophy was a baptism by fire. He ran out of money via a combination of bad decisions and getting hit by a statistical cluster of bad years where the world seemed to be saying Fuck You in Particular (there were 4 years with catastrophic hail storms, and none of his neighbors got hit by more than 3 of them).

Some of his crops are targets of opportunity. They're a cover crop and if the weather is just right and he gets it planted in time, he might be able to harvest it, or at least graze some livestock on it, but if not, then that's fine too, because the dividends still made it worth doing.

He is a very frugal farmer, both in resources and energy. Mark Shepard, in contrast, seems to be more interested in the energy side of frugality, and is so open in his disdain for people throwing good money/time after bad that it's practically his personality. In particular he likes to rant about how utterly mathematically unsound the idea of rain barrels is, and the kind of cognitive dissonance it takes to keep telling yourself otherwise.

[kevin_thibedeau]

The 55 gallon rain barrels are near useless for small plot irrigation. Larger containers can hold a meaningful amount of water to be useful during sporadic dry spells.