“Regenerative Ag is a Hoax” My response…

The regenerative farming movement is constantly under siege from the powers that be whos foundation of course was built on the wealth of an extractive, exploitive industrial system.  I know this kind of thing shouldn’t get under my skin, but sometimes when I read articles like this written by “professional journalists” its hard not to get just a little irked…so bear with me and take the time to read this excerpt and then I will share my opinion on it….

“Agriculture in general does have real environmental downsides. It’s the leading driver of water pollution and shortages, deforestation and biodiversity loss. It generates one-fourth of the greenhouse gases that heat up the planet.  And it’s eating the earth. It has already overrun about two of every five acres of land on the planet, and farmers are on track to clear an additional dozen Californias worth of forest by 2050. That would be a disaster for nature and the climate, because the carbon dioxide released by converting wild landscapes into farms and pastures is already the most damaging source of agricultural emissions, worse than methane from cow burps or nitrous oxide from fertilizer.  But industrial agriculture in particular has one real upside: It produces enormous amounts of food on relatively modest amounts of land. And that will be agriculture’s most vital job in the coming decades. The world will need even more enormous amounts of food by 2050, about 50 percent more calories to adequately feed nearly 10 billion people. The inconvenient truth is that factory farms are the best hope for producing the food we will need without obliterating what’s left of our natural treasures and vaporizing their carbon into the atmosphere… Ideally, Big Ag could make even more food with even less land while doing less to harm the environment. But these days, the politically correct stance toward Big Ag is not to reform it but to replace it. Environmentalists such as Al Gore and Jane Goodall, foodies like Alice Waters and Michael Pollan and even agribusinesses and food conglomerates like General Mills and Danone talk about supplanting industrial methods with kinder and gentler “regenerative agriculture” that revives the pastoral wisdom of our ancestors. The Biden administration has blasted more than $20 billion into “climate-smart agriculture” focused on regenerative practices. Mr. Kennedy has called for a Trump-led regenerative revolution.  But that’s a formula for agriculture to devour even more of the earth. Old MacDonald-style farms where soil is nurtured with love and animals have names rather than numbers may sound environmentally friendly. But their artisanal grains and grass-fed beef are worse for nature than chemical-drenched corn and feedlot-fattened beef because they require much more land for each calorie they produce.” To read the full article: www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/opinion/food-agriculture-factory-farms-climate-change.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare -NY TIMES

This article goes way more in depth into each of the issues stated in the above intro but for the sake of all of our time I am going to just respond to the main arguments…the quoted section is from the article and my response follows.

“Agriculture in general does have real environmental downsides. It’s the leading driver of water pollution and shortages, deforestation and biodiversity loss. It generates one-fourth of the greenhouse gases that heat up the planet.  And it’s eating the earth. It has already overrun about two of every five acres of land on the planet, and farmers are on track to clear an additional dozen Californias worth of forest by 2050.” 

I absolutely agree with this statement about agriculture in general.  The Commoditized, Industrialized and Centralized food system that dominates our global supply chain has resulted in the utter disregard for our planets health.  The lack of equity in this system means that instead of the general population contributing to the process of food production and making decisions on how to treat the planet, animals and each other we have put that responsibility into the hands of the very few (less than 1% of the population).  These few leaders in this industry that relies on the use of natural resources are motivated 100% by profits and power, seeking to squeeze as much money as possible and gain as much market share as possible in order to continue paying off investors, politicians (and in the case of this article possibly journalists).  I really don’t think there is an end game in the current trajectory, I would estimate that human life on planet earth only could persist for a few more generations or so before the entire system implodes and widespread famine and disease wipes out large segments of our global population."

“But industrial agriculture in particular has one real upside: It produces enormous amounts of food on relatively modest amounts of land. And that will be agriculture’s most vital job in the coming decades. The world will need even more enormous amounts of food by 2050, about 50 percent more calories to adequately feed nearly 10 billion people. The inconvenient truth is that factory farms are the best hope for producing the food we will need without obliterating what’s left of our natural treasures and vaporizing their carbon into the atmosphere… Ideally, Big Ag could make even more food with even less land while doing less to harm the environment. But these days, the politically correct stance toward Big Ag is not to reform it but to replace it”

How do I even respond to this statement??? “relatively modest amounts of land???  Your kidding right?  All you have to do is take a drive across the country…Industrial agriculture is pretty much all you see in all directions!  Its taking all the farmland!!!  How is that modest?  Ok what about that big topic of feeding the future 10 billion people?  Consider this…agriculture is currently producing enough calories to feed 12 billion people but all that extra food ends up in the landfill. Not to mention the corn industries success in finding numerous industrial uses of corn that are often extremely inefficient take ethanol as one huge example or corn syrup as another example of a widely used ingredient whose only purpose is to make products super sweet and addictive resulting in a global health crisis, and of course the largest portion of that corn going to feedlots for fattening cattle which as we know are ruminants meaning they only need grass so survive and thrive. So many research papers and organizations who are helping “feed the world” always obsess over calories in and calories out and they say well the most efficient way to produce food is Factory Chicken or maybe we can grow food in labs using fossil fuels.  The problem with so much science is its narrow minded tunnel vision focus.  We are not calories, the planet is not calories…healthy human beings and a healthy planet require complex relationships working with nature, constantly changing and evolving…industrial agriculture does the opposite!  The result of course is unhealthy people and an unhealthy planet…this journalist wants more of that!!  Luckily new research is coming out that is not only showing that regenerative methods of agriculture are not only sinking carbon out of the atmosphere, producing more nutrient dense foods while also enhancing the overall biodiversity and health of the ecosystem but they often times are producing more calories per acre than the efficient industrial ag model!!!  This research is taking a more wholistic approach, looking at the whole rather than narrowly focusing on one individual data set on one individual resource.  Check out Roots So Deep https://rootssodeep.org/ , Thousand Farms Initiative https://www.ecdysis.bio/featured-project and Understanding Ag https://understandingag.com/

Old MacDonald-style farms where soil is nurtured with love and animals have names rather than numbers may sound environmentally friendly. But their artisanal grains and grass-fed beef are worse for nature than chemical-drenched corn and feedlot-fattened beef because they require much more land for each calorie they produce.

The main premise of this entire article is about how we are clearing more and more land mostly in places like the Rain forests of Central and South America because we need more and more land.  Lets be clear, nobody is clearing the rainforests because they are thinking oh man we sure need to grow more food to feed this growing population!  No this is an obvious continuation of the extractive, exploitive imperialist mindset  led by large greedy corporations who are seeking cheap land grabs and fueled by a food system that has an unquenchable thirst for cheap food...yes we are talking about industrialized agriculture here…I think the author would be hard pressed to find a single Old Mcdonald style farm anywhere that is clearing forestlands to produce more food like he states.

Here’s the deal:  it really doesn’t feel productive for me to just sit around and whine and try to defend my personal beliefs on the subject, and this article isn’t just one outlier, it represents a certain way of thinking about the world, one where relying on technology and on the powers that be to take care of the rest of us is the foundation.  I am of a mind that we should learn from the lessons of our past…humans have been around for nearly 200,000 years and agriculture has been around for 10-15,000 years.  Industrial agriculture has been around for less than 100 years since the rise of the use of fossil fuels and electricity.  If you were to look at human history on a graph and consider how long we have lived disconnected from nature and from our food sources, you would have to have a microscope to see the segment that represents “the modern world and industrial agriculture”.  My question is do we really want to put 100% of our faith in the continued existence of our species in the hands of the very few at the top of the imperialist pyramid that is built on a foundation of new technologies that have an array of unintended consequences that we are only beginning to learn about?  Or do we put our faith in nature and in working in harmony with the mother earth that has been around for millions and millions of years and will continue to be around whether or not we as a species are one of its inhabitants?  I feel like as a farmer, one who lives on and tends to the land and the animals, I have a distinct responsibility to share my thoughts and philosophies on this topic because I realize that farmers being in the 1% range of our population means that 99% of other people simply do not have the same experiences and world views that I have.  So take it or leave it, this is my opinion.