Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies • Hacker News Board

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#191

Post by cushychicken » Mon, Jul 12, 2021, 9:22 PM UTC

blueyes wrote: post #24

Montanan here: This is true. One of the regenerative crop types are pulses (lentils, chick peas), and MT produces a lot. https://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/pulse-info/resources-pdf/Growing... The state often appears in stories about agriculture in precarious environments (See Jared Diamond's "Collapse" for one example.) Montana is largely a semi-arid desert, especially over the 2/3's of the state that are northern Great Pla…

Cherry crops on the Flathead have been destroyed two of the last three years

Very sad. I grew up in Bozeman, and I loved Flathead cherry season.

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#192

Post by debacle » Mon, Jul 12, 2021, 9:30 PM UTC

benboughton1 wrote: post #187

debacle wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the problems with no till is that the equipment, or at least some of it, hasn't been invented yet and could be considered 'cutting edge' in that manner.

No till farming is widespread especially in Australia for decades. Nearly all dryland farms take this approach. It just means controlling fallow weeds without tillage, usually with herbicide. Then plant straight through the previous crop residue. This preserves moisture in the soil and the soil structure. Planters mostly do this fine. I'm not sure what has not yet been invented elsewhere.

How do they handle compaction? The biggest thing I have seen is work toward finding a way to introduce large equipment to a no till or RA farm.

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#193

Post by azernik » Mon, Jul 12, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

samstave wrote: post #188

zachware wrote: post #80

Organic and regenerative ag are built on the assumption that crops must be grown in open air soil. The reality is that crops can be grown in open air soil and, if they are, regenerative ag in particular is significantly better for soil longevity. That said it is not necessarily better to produce all crops in low density, high volatility, season dependent environments. Some material % of crops can move to more intelli…

>>*What I hope will continue is crops that are capable of producing profitable and predictable yields in indoor environments will move more and more in that direction. a* WTF - I hope ZERO of this happens... Don't attempt to think that youre smarter than ~5BILLION years of earths bio/eco balance until we were weaponized by fungi... We dont need "higher yields" -- we need more efficient consumption and distribution...

Predictable yields at controllable times are how you get efficient consumption and distribution.

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#194

Post by emilywolfe » Mon, Jul 12, 2021, 9:37 PM UTC

Emily Wolfe here, I’m the person who wrote this story. As I plan the second story in the series, which will be about new markets related to organic and regenerative, I’m curious to know a couple of things:

-isn’t this a tech/VC blog? How is it that so many of you are so interested in and knowledgeable about agriculture?

-what about this story made you want to discuss it here?

Looking forward to learning more!

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#195

Post by underdeserver » Mon, Jul 12, 2021, 9:41 PM UTC

emilywolfe wrote: post #194

Emily Wolfe here, I’m the person who wrote this story. As I plan the second story in the series, which will be about new markets related to organic and regenerative, I’m curious to know a couple of things: -isn’t this a tech/VC blog? How is it that so many of you are so interested in and knowledgeable about agriculture? -what about this story made you want to discuss it here? Looking forward to learning more!

It's not a blog, it's a user-submitted news story aggregator.

And we the users are nerds, and while most of us work in software engineering, we're interested in everything and anything deep and tech/science related.

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#196

Post by evv555 » Mon, Jul 12, 2021, 9:49 PM UTC

emilywolfe wrote: post #194

Emily Wolfe here, I’m the person who wrote this story. As I plan the second story in the series, which will be about new markets related to organic and regenerative, I’m curious to know a couple of things: -isn’t this a tech/VC blog? How is it that so many of you are so interested in and knowledgeable about agriculture? -what about this story made you want to discuss it here? Looking forward to learning more!

>isn’t this a tech/VC blog? How is it that so many of you are so interested in and knowledgeable about agriculture?

It's a moderated forum of scientists, engineers, and intellectuals. ycombinator was one of the original VC funders of reddit and decided to use the same idea for its VC community.

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#197

Post by te_chris » Mon, Jul 12, 2021, 9:50 PM UTC

emilywolfe wrote: post #194

Emily Wolfe here, I’m the person who wrote this story. As I plan the second story in the series, which will be about new markets related to organic and regenerative, I’m curious to know a couple of things: -isn’t this a tech/VC blog? How is it that so many of you are so interested in and knowledgeable about agriculture? -what about this story made you want to discuss it here? Looking forward to learning more!

Personally, I’m fascinated by the system aspect of regenerative (etc.) ag. A lot of what I do as a tech CTO is systems based, but realistically we’re just mere amateurs compared to nature. Plus screens are boring.

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#198

Post by akeck » Mon, Jul 12, 2021, 9:54 PM UTC

Gabe Brown's talk is my favorite introduction to regenerative ag: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUmIdq0D6-A

He did a book on it: https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/dirt-to-soil/

I also like Geoff Lawton's work on food forests:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgF9BU4uYMU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCJfSYZqZ0Y

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#199

Post by tagami » Mon, Jul 12, 2021, 9:55 PM UTC

emilywolfe wrote: post #194

Emily Wolfe here, I’m the person who wrote this story. As I plan the second story in the series, which will be about new markets related to organic and regenerative, I’m curious to know a couple of things: -isn’t this a tech/VC blog? How is it that so many of you are so interested in and knowledgeable about agriculture? -what about this story made you want to discuss it here? Looking forward to learning more!

We run astrobiology experiments aboard the ISS for students around the world. In addition to making life better here on Earth, regenerative Ag is critical for off-world sustainability.

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#200

Post by DubiousPusher » Mon, Jul 12, 2021, 9:55 PM UTC

emilywolfe wrote: post #194

Emily Wolfe here, I’m the person who wrote this story. As I plan the second story in the series, which will be about new markets related to organic and regenerative, I’m curious to know a couple of things: -isn’t this a tech/VC blog? How is it that so many of you are so interested in and knowledgeable about agriculture? -what about this story made you want to discuss it here? Looking forward to learning more!

I actually come here more for these kind of stories than the tech news. From the hacker news guidlines:

What to Submit

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.