Ray Archuleta, Doug Peterson, and Raymond Covino come to mind as examples. Additionally, people such as Dave Brandt of Ohio, Gail Fuller of Kansas, and Gabe Brown of North Dakota, are just a three examples of many tractor-driving scientists whose laboratories are their pastures, fields, and farmsteads. These are people innovating to increase the income streams in their operations while simultaneously building soil, capturing and infiltrating water, and sequestering carbon. In other words, they are producing food and not destroying their local ecosystems in the process. The best part of eco-agriculture is that it is actually science based. The study of the soil food web is not only highly informative to how we should be practicing agriculture, it is also very sophisticated. Though the soil food web and understanding healthy soil is sophisticated, it leads us to agricultural techniques that are regenerative, rather than degenerative. It isn’t technology that most of the people in the regenerative agriculture movement decry. It’s just some technology that we feel isn’t appropriate. Certified permaculture design consultant, Michael Leonido wrote this recently about this topic:
The folks on the cutting edge of this movement are leveraging everything they can find that will help. Just look at the litany of devices Curtis Stone is using to maximize manpower in his urban gardens, or the ongoing research and tweaking Mark Shepard is dong to machines to harvest in his forest systems. We cannot afford to be anti-technology if we want to be successful. Hobby production? Sure. Backyard gardens? Whatever, plant away. But business? You will not find a business in regenerative agriculture that is successful without leveraging appropriate technology to the limits of its capacity. In fact, often we are talking about using these tools beyond their design specs because the folks pushing this to the limit are tinkerers and problem solvers.Pamela Dodsworth, a sheep farmer in Colorado has, through the science of microbiology, improved the health of her pastures. She reports the improvement is due to intensive rotation and minimal mechanical interference. “We are considering doubling our stocking density while I’m seeing neighbors pour commercial fertilizers onto their fields in order just to maintain production.” The case studies are growing daily of farmers and ranchers who are abandoning the industrial agriculture approach for more scientific and eco-collaborative means of production. I’ll beg forgiveness for some of my pioneering friends and say these case studies aren’t just back-to-the-landers, preppers, hippies, tree huggers or Earth worshippers. The people showing that alternative forms of agriculture are productive wear overalls and trucker hats and drive pickup trucks. The commonality among these mainstream farmers and ranchers is their realization that industrial agriculture is ecologically destructive and unsustainable as a business and the fact that they are bold pioneering people who won’t let the rhetoric of agribusiness blind them to other methodologies that make business sense. What disqualifies us as luddites is the fact that productivity is still the measure of success. However, the measure of productivity has changed for us. It’s not yield per acre, though some still use that as a measure of comparison. The best of these farmers and ranchers are measuring their productivity by built soil, enhanced soil food web, and increased biodiversity. These are all quantifiable measures that require sophisticated means of production, detailed planning, and an attuned awareness of the landscape one is operating within. The income streams occur as a natural result. The United Nations FAO, the Rodale Institute, and a host of other NGOs are increasingly reporting that industrial agriculture is not a viable future. Those of us who have realized this in philosophy and practice are now ahead of the game, certainly a progressive indication of evidence that we are not luddites. Lastly, the final evidence of the fact that we are not luddites is the fact that we are not easily persuaded by organizations and corporations that have a vested interest in agriculture being practiced in an industrial paradigm of monocrops. No, we are not luddites, but rather are independent, critically thinking agricultural professionals who have well demonstrated that healthful food can be produced at large scale through eco-collaborative methodologies that not only feed humans, but foster a broader spectrum of life on the planet.]]>