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Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

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Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#81

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

tootie wrote: post #64
freeqaz wrote: post #16

I think that "mixed" farming like this article describes has a huge potential for automation by the software field. Monocrops[0] (homogeneous fields of crops like corn or soybeans) are easy to build automated robots for. We've been doing that for generations now, starting with combine harvesters[1]. But there are many problems with growing monocrops[2]. Pests are a problem -- they breed and spread disease. And on the…

How long until we can deploy fleets of microdrones capable of killing pests with computer vision and lasers?

"“Unprecedented” locust invasion threatens crops in East Africa " https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22205251 (not yet)

Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#83

Post by mikeg8 »

airstrike wrote: post #65
mikeg8 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm definitely not anti-technology as a whole, but I very much think many of the environmental problems we're facing in agriculture were caused by an over reliance on technology in the first place. We abstracted ourselves out of the process too much and it has had horrible consequences.

Citation still needed. The environmental problems we're facing in agriculture seems more closely related to our need to improve yield given limited land / proximity with customers. If you hate on agricultural technology, you're just hating on the effect, not the cause. Most people are against your so-called "environmental problems". It's just that solutions have to be financially sustainable besides being environment…

Top soil depletion, nutrient deficiencies in crops, watershed damage from excess fertilizer run-off, insect population decline from overuse of pesticides; these are all real issue. I'm accurate in hating the effect... the cause is ignorance and shortsightedness.

Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#84

Post by danans »

jeffbee wrote: post #51
rshnotsecure wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing people don't realize about the BLM and the Department of the Interior in general is that they maintain the world's largest airforce. This Airforce exists mainly as a mountain rescue and forest firefighting unit(s). Also, because we're now in the 2020s, they are the worlds largest purchaser of drones, even beyond the military. A lot of fascinating, cutting edge stuff is going on at BLM and DoI.

It doesn't bother me one bit that the BLM manages land. It's a major public benefit that we have so much information about our natural resources. I think the USDA soil survey, for example, a one of the great wonders of the information age. The thing that bothers me is how they lease out public lands essentially for free to stockmen who proceed to destroy the landscape.

> The thing that bothers me is how they lease out public lands essentially for free to stockmen who proceed to destroy the landscape.

They are all just giving the consumer what they want - low cost meat - which requires a ton of land both for grazing and for growing animal feed.

Asking them to raise the price on the stockmen is also to ask them to raise prices on consumers. I don't necessarily disagree with that idea, but (pun intended), the consumer has long been the holy cow of American politics.

Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#85

Post by AOsborn »

armenarmen wrote: post #67
konschubert wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t it be easier to just plant something else every other year? I thought this was solved literally 1000 years ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-field_system

I was always confused by this as well. Then I spoke to a person working in agriculture, apparently chemical fertilizers are cheap enough to make crop rotation redundant.

As a layman I assumed that was the case. But I understand the bigger issue now is that both soil and crop nutrients are dropping in farms due to soil depletion[0].

0: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-an...

Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#86

Post by jaggederest »

reginaldo wrote: post #75
konschubert wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t it be easier to just plant something else every other year? I thought this was solved literally 1000 years ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-field_system

The three-field system has the problem of leaving the soil uncovered which leads to erosion, which aggravates the nutrient depletion problem.

At least in my experience you plant cover crops there and plow them under at the end. My relatives used field peas. And the four-field system is considered a strict upgrade over the three-field system last I heard, basically just 3 productive fields and 1 planted in cover crops.

https://www.sare.org/Learning-Center/Books/Building-Soils-fo...

Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#87

Post by mikeg8 »

mikepurvis wrote: post #71
mikeg8 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm definitely not anti-technology as a whole, but I very much think many of the environmental problems we're facing in agriculture were caused by an over reliance on technology in the first place. We abstracted ourselves out of the process too much and it has had horrible consequences.

Biointensive gardening and earth-centric/organic/whatever methods definitely have their place, but it would be a huge shift to grow everything that way, and it's far from clear that it's even workable for the volumes needed for the big staple crops like corn, wheat, and soy. The idea of bringing companion planting, cover cropping, etc to conventional agriculture by way of increased automation is a fascinating one, in…

Thanks for your great comment, it's helping further the discussion and my own understanding.

> but it would be a huge shift to grow everything that way, and it's far from clear that it's even workable for the volumes needed for the big staple crops like corn, wheat, and soy.

Agree completely. But I think a huge shift is very much needed, and this shift may decrease our dependencies on staples like corn, much of which goes to cattle feed and fuel uses when we have other, more ecological methods like pastured beef, solar etc. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-to-rethink-c...

RE 2nd paragraph, also totally agree with, minus the "100x labor inputs". If done properly, bio-mimicry in Ag should decrease labor inputs as you leverage the advantages of natural plant/soil nutrient cycling, reduced watering and tillage from cover cropping and soil development, reduction of pesticide application by attracting animal/insect diversity etc.

From my understanding, "conventional" farming (I say ironically as we've really only been practicing these methods for ~60-70 years vs millennia of small scale farming that is the real "conventional"methods lol) has forced us to increase labor inputs - adding fertilizers, pesticides, annual tillage, managing irrigation systems - these are all things that can be eliminated, if the proper systems are put in place.

Gabe Browns book, Dirt to Soil was an eye opening read. Cheers.

Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#88

Post by jessaustin »

danans wrote: post #84
jeffbee wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't bother me one bit that the BLM manages land. It's a major public benefit that we have so much information about our natural resources. I think the USDA soil survey, for example, a one of the great wonders of the information age. The thing that bothers me is how they lease out public lands essentially for free to stockmen who proceed to destroy the landscape.

> The thing that bothers me is how they lease out public lands essentially for free to stockmen who proceed to destroy the landscape. They are all just giving the consumer what they want - low cost meat - which requires a ton of land both for grazing and for growing animal feed. Asking them to raise the price on the stockmen is also to ask them to raise prices on consumers. I don't necessarily disagree with that idea…

A vanishingly small percentage of beef comes from the lands under discussion. [0] The reason is simple: cattle were not evolved for the alpine desert. Consumers wouldn't even notice if cattle were outlawed completely on BLM land. Wildlife biologists certainly would notice!

In reality, these policies are political shenanigans. No Republican wants to be the first to stop providing welfare to the Cliven Bundy types that one can find lurking under many cowboy hats.

[0] https://beef2live.com/story-ranking-states-beef-cows-0-10818...

Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#89

Post by hosh »

The article doesn't mention permaculture. Permaculture has been used commercial settings (and its design principles includes agroforestry). Permies have been talking about resilient and regenerative systems for a long while now, going beyond sustainability.

Permaculture design looks at the whole system. So not just trees, but also things to plant with the trees. With planting along contours and adding swales to catch rainfall, and direct it to flow through everything. Incorporating animals into the system, such as grazers (cows, sheep, goats), and micrograzers (chickens, ducks, geese).

Probably the biggest thing not discussed in the article is how permaculture design can lead to decentralized food systems. A decentralized food system is not something that VCs can invest capital in and expect multiple returns on, but I think in the long run, that is where we as a civilization need to move towards.

Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#90

Post by einpoklum »

freeqaz wrote: post #16

I think that "mixed" farming like this article describes has a huge potential for automation by the software field. Monocrops[0] (homogeneous fields of crops like corn or soybeans) are easy to build automated robots for. We've been doing that for generations now, starting with combine harvesters[1]. But there are many problems with growing monocrops[2]. Pests are a problem -- they breed and spread disease. And on the…

The thing is, "market forces" (= large corporations) might "solve" it by relying on the use of cheap energy from fossil fuels for doing online vision processing. And then you've converted one sustainability problem into another.

(Which may not be a terrible trade-off, but still.)

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