Building on soil in Big Sandy: Regenerative organic farming in rural Montana • Hacker News Board

Re: Building on soil in Big Sandy: Regenerative organic farming in rural Montana

#21

Post by specialist » Tue, Oct 19, 2021, 1:25 PM UTC

rmason wrote: post #9

emilywolfe wrote: post #2

Hey HN! This is Part 2 of my regenerative/organic agriculture series, Common Ground. You all had such an interesting, in-depth conversation about Part 1 ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27809279 ), that I wanted to see what you think about the next installment. It's a combo of solutions journalism and a profile (always trying to break things over here), in which I explored the 40-year career of pioneering organ…

While it's great this guy has the money to run his own research farm it's a bit unusual. In the Midwest where I live it's far more common for universities to do this task. Coupled with cooperative extension agents to spread adoption at a county level when they find something that works. Universities do basic science very well. When something's brand new like no-till was in the eighties and precision ag in the ninetie…

Yes and:

> ...farmers often get out ahead of the ag schools.

Rogers' book Diffusion of Innovations is the seminal text. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations

"The study of diffusion of innovations took off in the subfield of rural sociology in the midwestern United States in the 1920s and 1930s. Agriculture technology was advancing rapidly, and researchers started to examine how independent farmers were adopting hybrid seeds, equipment, and techniques. A study of the adoption of hybrid corn seed in Iowa by Ryan and Gross (1943) solidified the prior work on diffusion into a distinct paradigm that would be cited consistently in the future. Since its start in rural sociology, Diffusion of Innovations has been applied to numerous contexts..."

My introduction to "innovation" was Geoffrey Moore's pop biz book Crossing the Chasm. Derivative work that doesn't even cite Rogers' work. Moore spins "just so" stories. Rogers explains the research, concrete and actionable.

Imagine my chagrin when I stumbled onto Rogers. If it's not obvious, I'm still grumpy about Moore's omission. I don't mind that he profited from popularizing important ideas. Not acknowledging the precedents is something like theft.

Re: Building on soil in Big Sandy: Regenerative organic farming in rural Montana

#22

Post by dccoolgai » Tue, Oct 19, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

toper-centage wrote: post #18

dccoolgai wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great reporting and great work! I'm really interested in some of the "less-cultivated" plants mentioned in the article (like Kernza). It seems so weird that of all the plants that exist, we grow like 10. Seems like there's a lot of room for that "fail-fast" mindset to locate new plants we could grow that suit a particular need (or are really delicious and we had no idea!).

There was a picture going around o reddit of 50 totally different varieties of potatoes grown in Peru. How many varieties do we grow that are significantly distinct? This is probably caused by the optimization of industrial farming selecting for best yield (kg) with very little regard for looks, taste, or even nutricion. It's also harder to stock supermarkets with 50 different types of potatoes, carrots, lettuces, an…

Exactly. But with like 40%ish of food completely wasted/thrown away on the consumer side "total Kg" is not the only thing to optimize for any more. It feels like there's an opportunity there to optimize for things like "better taste" and sell them into markets with more disposable income. One of my favorite Youtube channels is "weird fruit explorer" where this guy goes to all these different countries and eats fruit you never see in the U.S.

Re: Building on soil in Big Sandy: Regenerative organic farming in rural Montana

#23

Post by troyvit » Tue, Oct 19, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

emilywolfe wrote: post #10

rmason wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's great this guy has the money to run his own research farm it's a bit unusual. In the Midwest where I live it's far more common for universities to do this task. Coupled with cooperative extension agents to spread adoption at a county level when they find something that works. Universities do basic science very well. When something's brand new like no-till was in the eighties and precision ag in the ninetie…

So, this is just a pilot project, and he's actually trying to fund the research center. I'm pretty sure that's why he was willing to spend so much time with me on this project. The big thing is that each farmer or region needs to be experimenting to see what works there, since every place is different (climate, land management history, culture, resources, etc), and things are always changing. The universities mostly…

My partner is figuring a lot of the same things out through https://farmsproject.org. Farmers are taking huge risks, literally "betting the farm" on their regenerative practices because as you say the universities focus on commodity crop research.

Your note somewhere else in this thread about comparing farmers to silicon valley entrepreneurs was a cool moment of clarity; they don't get several rounds of VC financing to try their ideas, just regular loans and a lot of paperwork tied to crop insurance.

Down in eastern Colorado/western Nebraska & Kansas farmers are having a harder time being regenerative _and_ organic but a part of that is because they're also dryland farmers.

Anyway it's exciting to see your stories hit hacker news! The innovation and work of the farmers you're covering are going to have a huge positive impact on US agriculture.

Re: Building on soil in Big Sandy: Regenerative organic farming in rural Montana

#24

Post by Causality1 » Tue, Oct 19, 2021, 10:35 PM UTC

emilywolfe wrote: post #15

colechristensen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I skimmed, I didn’t see anything about “regenerative” besides a casual mention of cover crops which you wouldn’t do anything in particular to already (no pesticides or fertilizer or genetic engineering). The other bit was about being very local about picking where and how to grow nontraditional crops (think farmers market faire) in difficult locations that would otherwise grow nothing. Transgenic watermelons ar…

You're right, this one was focused largely on the work of one organic farmer, although I would argue that much of what he does is actually regenerative in the sense of regenerating local commerce and economies. And he was one of the first to grow his own soil nutrients by planting dryland alfalfa as a cover crop, and rotating his cover crops. I would also say that while you're right about progressives moving to Monta…

regenerative in the sense of regenerating local commerce and economies.

That is wildly outside the definition of "regenerative farming" given by the article.

Re: Building on soil in Big Sandy: Regenerative organic farming in rural Montana

#25

Post by emilywolfe » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 4:39 AM UTC

Causality1 wrote: post #24

emilywolfe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, this one was focused largely on the work of one organic farmer, although I would argue that much of what he does is actually regenerative in the sense of regenerating local commerce and economies. And he was one of the first to grow his own soil nutrients by planting dryland alfalfa as a cover crop, and rotating his cover crops. I would also say that while you're right about progressives moving to Monta…

regenerative in the sense of regenerating local commerce and economies. That is wildly outside the definition of "regenerative farming" given by the article.

It is. I use the definition that most farmers in the state use in the article--working on soil health through a suite of techniques, while also still spraying in a limited capacity when needed.

There are a million ways to define regenerative agriculture. That's one of the main issues right now, and it's something I covered in part 1 of this series. It's covered in incredible depth here: https://thecounter.org/regenerative-agriculture-racial-equit...

That article also leads to the same point I was trying to make in the above comment. If agriculture is going to be truly regenerative, it needs to support communities. I did not get into that explicitly in the story, but it informs the entire framing of it.

Re: Building on soil in Big Sandy: Regenerative organic farming in rural Montana

#26

Post by emilywolfe » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 4:41 AM UTC

chubot wrote: post #16

Great topic! I will be reading part 1 as well. I just watched "Kiss the Ground" on Netflix, a 2020 documentary about regenerative agriculture. https://www.netflix.com/title/81321999 Lots of smart people interviewed there. The side-by-sides of the industrial farm and regenerative farm were striking. And the demo of the egg might convince a few people. During the pandemic I tried to get about 50% of my calories from th…

thank you! and thank you for reading part 1, as well.

Re: Building on soil in Big Sandy: Regenerative organic farming in rural Montana

#27

Post by mikewarot » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

I was surprised that there was still tilling happening. My understanding is that tilling the fields helps dry out the soil, and breaks down part of the beneficial fungi and other biota in the soil.