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

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#291

Post by emilywolfe » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

goldenshale wrote: post #290

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'm a software engineer with a passion for botany and growing vegetables. I mostly attribute this interest to growing up with a gardening mother, but I think the mixture of engineering systems, working with equipment, and trying to balance complex trade-offs all lend themselves to the kind of person who likes to create virtual worlds in their mind. Writing software is like creating a little ecosystem of moving parts…

These are fantastic questions!!! I am bookmarking them for later.

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#292

Post by emilywolfe » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 2:37 PM UTC

Now that I see there’s such a hunger for this kind of storytelling, I want to build on what I’ve done in part 1. To do so, I’m seeking to fully fund parts 2 and 3 of this series, so I can continue digging deeply and telling stories of great characters. What ideas do you have for individuals/entities that might be interested? The money would go through the publisher, which is a 501 c3 nonprofit.

Thank you all for such a great conversation here and asking such thought-provoking questions!

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#293

Post by therealdrag0 » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 1:19 AM UTC

Floegipoky wrote: post #208

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!

Speaking in generalities but hackers love hard problems, and implementing a 21st century food system is the intersection of most of the biggest problems of our time- climate change, population growth, sustainable energy. The fact that the best solutions seem to involve decentralization, taking a big chunk out of the market cap of destructive megacorporations, and transferring power down the class hierarchy aligns clo…

Engineers are also notorious for having opinions about everything regardless of the depth of their expertise :)

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#294

Post by evv555 » Sun, Jul 18, 2021, 7:41 PM UTC

emilywolfe wrote: post #292

Now that I see there’s such a hunger for this kind of storytelling, I want to build on what I’ve done in part 1. To do so, I’m seeking to fully fund parts 2 and 3 of this series, so I can continue digging deeply and telling stories of great characters. What ideas do you have for individuals/entities that might be interested? The money would go through the publisher, which is a 501 c3 nonprofit. Thank you all for such…

There's a ycombinator startup for this.

https://substack.com/

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#295

Post by groby_b » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 4:30 PM UTC

kickout wrote: post #189

groby_b wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind elaborating what you meant with that comment? What are the "10-40 per acre benefits"?

Whoops. Meant to be 10-40 $$, USD per acre. That range seems to be the most common direct payment for farmers to adapt regenerative or sustainable practices on their farm. It depends where in the country and what method is used to determine payment (usually). It’s a very, very new method but it basically means paying farmers—- that money has to come from somewhere as usually farmers pay companies

Ah, got it - thank you for the explanation. I’m not familiar with this space, so I had no idea that practice existed!

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#296

Post by gdubs » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 6:21 PM UTC

floren wrote: post #73

gdubs wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife and I bought a farm in Oregon and we're in the process of doing exactly this. We don't have a blog yet – working on it - but we do have an instagram account if anyone's interested: http://instagram.com/cleryfarm/ The previous owner had a soil test done, and through that we were able to assess how eroded it was (very). We switched the hay fields over to organic practices, but the biggest projects so far have b…

I'd really like to know more about your farm--specifics about acreage, crops, location, etc. There's contact info linked from my profile, or if you don't mind dropping your email here, I'd love to pick your brain!

Sorry for the late reply but DMs on the Instagram page are open if you ever wanted to reach out.

Re: Organic and regenerative agriculture are revitalizing rural Montana economies

#297

Post by emilywolfe » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 3:23 PM UTC

mgsouth wrote: post #286

emilywolfe wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for these ideas. I think the right to repair is going to get a lot of traction right now with the new executive order—or at least I hope so. The robotics for weeding are definitely interesting too. In terms of reporting on problems or potential solutions, this project is “solutions journalism,” which means rigorous reporting on responses to a problem. The problem part is built in as you look at the how well (o…

...and "solutions journalism" itself sounds like an interesting topic. There are lots of posts on HN discussing journalism in general, challenges faced by "serious" news orgs, and fresh takes. Searching for "journalism" (search box is at bottom of the main page) turns up lots, such as [0], [1], [2], [3], and [4]. And now I'm off down the "Blendle" rabbit hole... [edit] Arggh. Homepage blendle.com, subhead "To our Bet…

These are interesting, and I second a lot of the journalist’s comments in the Lehrer discussion. I see that Blendle is one response to the problem of the lack of funding for journalism, and someone here suggested Substack as another. I’d love to see this group hack how to pay the real cost of in-depth journalism. I spent 450+ hours on that first story. Which is great, and I’ll do it again, but we can’t expect journalists to always shoulder that load.