Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

montanafreepress.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 297 posts

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#161

Post by lostlogin »

jdavis703 wrote: post #78
chris_va wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No-till agriculture, as an example, usually requires different capital equipment for the farm. It's not a blocker, but financing the capital equipment takes some investment and risk. Farms are fairly dialed into their operations already, and getting people to change (especially when they need to pay money to do it) is a slow process.

So then is it reasonable to conclude government subsidies for regenerative agriculture could increase adoption?

Would taxing poor practices be a better approach? Eg Excess water usage, runoff, water pollution, pesticide use, fuel use or some other metric?

That way the cost of food would rise, but the cost of regenerative practices presumably wouldn’t rise as much and would earn more.

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#162

Post by athms »

songzme wrote: post #134

If you are still buying groceries from supermarkets, it is in your best interest to change that habit and buy organic only. Food co-ops usually tend to store organic only so they are great places to buy your groceries. Organic ensures that the soil where your food came from had no prohibited substances (most synthetic fertilizers and pesticides) applied for three years. Chances are, if you are buying food from superm…

How did you make it through high school while failing in chemistry and biology?

Organic is a scam for the natural is better crowd that occupies the human experience. A chemical is the same whether it is natural or synthetic. Plenty of natural substances are toxic. There is no difference in taste or nutrition between organic and non-organic, however GMO can be made more nutritious.

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#163

Post by vicarrion »

At Indigo we're working on incentivizing farmers to adopt regenerative practices and get paid for sequestering carbon.

There's a number of open positions, most with the option to be remote!

https://www.indigoag.com/carbon

https://www.indigoag.com/join-us

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#164

Post by lostlogin »

mathgladiator wrote: post #69
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #57

What is the best criticism of regenerative ag? Everything I see about it is so positive that it seems crazy everyone hasn't switched. Are there really no downsides and it's just institutional inertia/caution holding everyone back?

The key criticism is that it yields less, so it doesn't scale. Furthermore, it generally lacks uniformity, so you can't automate either.

American farms can be truely vast, so any statement on averages is swayed by this. The article says they are planting 4,500 acres this year. When you look up average US farm sizes it is hard to know what to compare it to as monocropping or single breed farming seem to be the standard. However you do it, the farm planting is a lot smaller than 4500 acres.

They might not be farming at a scale big ag run at, but it’s no small operation.

The below link says “The midpoint acreage for U.S. cropland nearly doubled between 1982 and 2007, from 589 acres to 1,105.”

https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/45108/39359_er...

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#165

Post by snark42 »

zachware wrote: post #158
kickout wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair comments. I'm mulling whether we have enough land (at 100% regen practices). I almost think we do. From a system-level, we're over saturated because of ethanol and other things that realistically could disappear and society would be better off. Just need to recalibrate our acres a bit

I don't know the number but I suspect some material % of corn production could go away if we stopped subsidizing that industry for insane things like making gasoline for electoral reasons. :-)

I think a material % would go away if we stopped feeding it to cows as well, a la regenerative ag.

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#166

Post by debacle »

jdavis703 wrote: post #78
chris_va wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No-till agriculture, as an example, usually requires different capital equipment for the farm. It's not a blocker, but financing the capital equipment takes some investment and risk. Farms are fairly dialed into their operations already, and getting people to change (especially when they need to pay money to do it) is a slow process.

So then is it reasonable to conclude government subsidies for regenerative agriculture could increase adoption?

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.

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#167

Post by kickout »

zachware wrote: post #158
kickout wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair comments. I'm mulling whether we have enough land (at 100% regen practices). I almost think we do. From a system-level, we're over saturated because of ethanol and other things that realistically could disappear and society would be better off. Just need to recalibrate our acres a bit

I don't know the number but I suspect some material % of corn production could go away if we stopped subsidizing that industry for insane things like making gasoline for electoral reasons. :-)

its about 33% of acres of corn that go to ethanol.....this should go away even before electric cars MAKE them go away

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#168

Post by kickout »

thehappypm wrote: post #156
kickout wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweet, there is only approximately 300 million acres of cropland in the United States alone. Sun == free, rain == free How does indoor ag plan on scaling up for anything other than super high margin vegetables and spices when their competitor (outdoor ag) has no cost associated with sun or rain? Not even to mention soil. edit: I like indoor/vertical ag a lot (when applied correctly) When people try to propose produci…

Sure, sun and rain are free, but the costs for outdoor farming are huge too. Irrigation, pesticides, fencing, harvesting equipment, anti-weed chemicals. Then your yields are super volatile -- weather can be bad, you can just get unlucky, you can have weeds/bugs/mice eating into your yields. Then you need to get your crops all the way from Montana to big markets hundreds or thousands of miles away. Indoor farming sure…

Those costs are known, and outside of California and Nebraska, almost no crops are irrigated.

As far as transporting crops to markets? That's actually a success story. Rail hauls most of the crops from Montana to the PNW (if exporting to China). Rail is dirt cheap and efficient, as any true HN reader will know. :)

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#169

Post by neuromancer2701 »

snark42 wrote: post #165
zachware wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know the number but I suspect some material % of corn production could go away if we stopped subsidizing that industry for insane things like making gasoline for electoral reasons. :-)

I think a material % would go away if we stopped feeding it to cows as well, a la regenerative ag.

make all the corn fields back into grasslands that they were and the cows will help rebuild the soil.

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#170

Post by kickout »

vicarrion wrote: post #163

At Indigo we're working on incentivizing farmers to adopt regenerative practices and get paid for sequestering carbon. There's a number of open positions, most with the option to be remote! https://www.indigoag.com/carbon https://www.indigoag.com/join-us

Indigo and every other ag player. Space saturated quickly. Now people need to find ways to fund the 10-40 per acre benefits long-term...
Post reply on HN