Replace Dogma With Logic for Better Productivity

Author: Walt Davis | Published: December 21, 2016

Those of you who have read my ramblings over the years know that I am not a fan of industrial agriculture.

There are several reasons for this position but the main one is that industrial agriculture simply does not work. It is not sustainable, much less regenerative. It produces a lot of product but at a cost that is unacceptably high.

Agriculture, once the premier generator of new wealth in the world, is now wealth-consuming and dependent for its existence on subsidies from outside the system.

The problem goes beyond the cost of products being too high in dollars and cents. In many and perhaps most areas, we are trading our natural resources – top soil, water, biodiversity – for dollars. This is a mining operation, not a growth operation.

In less than two generations, the organic matter content of most of our soils has plunged. It is difficult to find an area that has half of its historic level of soil organic matter remaining. The production practices of what passes as conventional agriculture today: tillage, acid-salt fertilizers, and removal of grazing animals from the farm, guarantee that soil organic matter will deplete rapidly.

Yet it is this soil organic matter that provides the home and food for soil life. It is the soil life, from bacteria and fungi up to earthworms and burrowing mammals that create the conditions that allow soil to take in and hold water and air. Soil life does the heavy lifting of soil formation. Without robust biology, soil productivity plummets, mineral cycling slows as the decay cycle breaks down and both insect and disease damage increases. Attempts to kill these pests with poisons seem to work short-term, but creates the conditions which will cause even worst outbreaks of pests later.

It does not have to be this way; we can have a highly productive and profitable agriculture that is regenerative rather than degrading. The largest problem in bringing about this agriculture is not technology; we know how to make this happen on the land. There are producers all over the world who are highly productive and profitable and at the same time regenerating resources.

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