Dear #RegenerativeAgriculture community,

Maybe your efforts to promote improved farming techniques would be taken more serious if you'd use less hyperbole.

JFK. It should be possible to present the benefits of regenerative agriculture _without_ selling hot air.

#RegAg #Permaculture #Horticulture #Agriculture #SustainableAgriculture #AgriculturalTransition #Agroecology #NoTill #Mulching #BioChar #Keyline #Agroforestry

Some days I explain concepts of regenerative agriculture to others. Other moments I feel the regenerative agriculture business bubble as my nemesis. 🤪

Let me explain:
As input-maximised and yield-optimized industrializ agriculture is so horribly bad at preserving the environment, including its own basic requirements (soil & water, biodiversity, climate), the bar for doing things better is really not that high.
Regenerative Agriculture (#RegAg) additionally builds on traditional knowledge, pionering farmer's experience and good science. "Conventional" agricultural science doesn't really collaborate with farmers. At Universities, most stuff is investigated epistemologically, meaning cutting a system into single, tiny, easier-to-handle bits to understand and classify how they work. The sum yields then the whole.
Biology does not work like this. Hypercomplex ecosystems don't work like this. You need a holistic vision and look at the system. The direct benefit from understanding is that you work with nature, not against her. We call this "ecosystem services" and try to quantify the economic benefit of functional biodiversity.
This is complex and it is more difficult to sell stuff (therefore the industry is not so interested) or to write scientific publications (therefore scientists are not so interested).
Every some decades since around 100 years, somebody finds out that the reductionist approach is a very bad Idea and very cool people develop together new ideas.
As the more established researcher institutions have some problems with the newcomers, these alternative fields attract brillant independent researchers and pioneer farmers. This time it is RegAg (the climax of thepermaculture wave seems to be over). However, a new field of endless possibilities attract also entrepreneurs. As the regular systems of control do not work properly because most of the more established academia doesn't want to engage with these new & 'esoteric' techniques, it ibecomes easy for snake oil sellers to make great, hyperbolic promises. Together with charismatic personalities using effective communication techniques they reach a large audience of practitioners that are worried because they notice that industrial agriculture ruined their fields visibly already in their lifespan.
Many of the techniques make totally sense. Others less. Or just in some cases: in agriculture, there is no silver bullet. Even my most beloved combination of techniques (cover crops, reduced tillage & mulching) does not work in many places (too wet, too dry, too cold...).
But most RegAg-ideas are still much better than the conventional techniques. Therefore, I can (and have to) accept a lot of hot air from RegAg prophets. Although many of their claims are totally exxagerated, often they do more good by convincing many people. And real farmers anyway do what they want and adapt their systems.
I just hope that not too many will get frustrated when the expensive courses and great promises don't play out as expected.

@ramonita @un_blaze

#RegAg #RegenerativeAgriculture #Agroecology #NoTill #Mulching #Horticulture #ElaineIngham

The Stock-based Regenerative Agriculture claim is that de-intensifying animal agriculture is 'good for the environment'. No. At scale, it requires more space, more loss of wild habitat, and alters ecology with fake animals. The answer is not eating meat.

#RegAg #Stock #Farming #PlanetaryHealth #Greenwashing #BiodiversityLoss #Extinction #ClimateChange

Tofu trumps any kind of beef production for carbon emissions.

Grass-fed cows grow slower and burp methane and crap in the environment for longer.

All cattle occupy land from nature and often from indigenous people.

Animals convert food to muscle inefficiently.

Less land is taken up by plant crops grown to be eaten directly eaten by people instead of this unnecessary intermediary stage. That includes soy.

#TofuEatingWokerati #GoVegan #FakeAnimals #RegAg #Greenwashing