Efficient, or Effective Agriculture?
This article first appeared in the Leader Vindicator newspaper.
Efficient, or Effective Agriculture?
Agricultural economists deem specialization ‘efficient’. Farms are a good example of specialization: dairy farmers make milk, and crop farmers grow large acreages of crops, and hog farmers fill barns with innumerable hogs, and beef producers grow beef like crazy. Even those farmers who grow grain and forage for their stock treat the livestock and cropping operations as separate, specialized enterprises.
On paper, number crunchers make specialized farms appear favorable. I have friends who can tell me exactly how much their equipment will be worth in four years or precisely how much it costs to keep an animal for one day on their farm. I feel like a kindergartner in the presence of someone who is number savvy. Though I value sound bookkeeping for a farm, uneasiness creeps into my gut when agriculture is reduced to numbers.
By specializing farms, we’ve cherry-picked a fragment of an ecological whole and concentrated it, thus removing any benefit of a complete ecosystem. As a result, farmers fail to take advantage of the free resources surrounding them in abundance on their home place, choosing instead to rely on an industry of suppliers. That’s like ignoring a dump truck load of money in the back yard while walking out the front door to ask a banker for a loan. In order to take advantage of nature’s freebies, we must trade spreadsheet efficiency for natural effectiveness.
With such a notion in mind, I’ve devoted a significant portion of my time to understanding and incorporating methods of effectiveness into our farm model.
My passion is to nudge the fragments of agriculture back into a complete whole. Our grassfed herd of cattle is a centerpiece of the plan. Perennial grassland is the most stable crop a farmer can grow. The ecosystem in a meadow holds soil and fertility in place, increases natural diversity on the property, stabilizes the environment, and can be grown without mechanical intervention. In other words, pasturing is the fertility vehicle in a farming operation, yet it’s nearly unheard of in the realm of field cropping because crop farmers without livestock have no use for grassland.
A friend and I are in the early stages of developing a long-range pasture-cropping system that ameliorates this situation. By fencing in cropland, he can grow a crop one year and return the field to grasses the next, which will be profitably utilized by our cattle. As his crop fields rotate around the property, so do our cattle, so no space is subjected to cropping for more than one season at a time. There is significant evidence that such interruptions in a planting cycle will effectively disrupt pest lifecycles, so in addition to natural fertility and soil structure, my friend gains the assurance of reduced pest invasions.
On a similar note, another friend has established a produce business on our property that leverages livestock, too. Eliot Coleman states bluntly that a major hurdle to produce growers is their ‘pest negative’ approach to farming. He suggests that a ‘plant positive’ methodology yields far better results. ‘Plant positive’ growers recognize that only stressed and unhealthy plants are subjected to torment by pests, in much the same way as stressed and unhealthy people are more prone to immune system failure. Providing plants with the best possible growing conditions requires intense focus on soil fertility and intricate knowledge of species interactions. One of the most common recommendations from organic vegetable farmers is the incorporation of meadow into growers’ production models, and many lament the lack of profit opportunity from meadowland in the absence of meat animals that can utilize it. Here is another opportunity for two entities to work together: I can graze cattle on the fallow meadows that Mark relies on. In this way, we can reduce risk and expenses for both parties while improving soils and increasing productivity from a piece of land.
Grassland interludes are an excellent opportunity to impregnate the soil with fertility. Biological activity is required to digest organic material into the earth. Continuously cropped fields lack biological activity, but grassland encourages it. We go crazy with manure applications from our grainfed cattle during the meadow phase in order to stimulate grass growth. The grasses take up and hold the nutrients, which are returned to the soil during grazing cycles of our grassfed cattle. Fungi and bacteria thrive in the environment and make ready the resources required for healthy annual crops when they arrive. Each process amplifies the next.
I’ve discussed the tip of the iceberg, leaving intricacies of our work for another conversation, another day. What I hope to make clear is that all of the ideas we’re pursuing fly in the face of streamlined, number-crunching, singular efficiency. Our rotational planning is not easy, because every year all of our crops are somewhere different. It takes meticulous planning to sit down and figure out, a year in advance, who is doing what, where, and in which season. There is no hope of the process becoming easier, because, as we hone our skills, the details will become more complex as the system mimics the diversity of nature. I see no reason to revert to simplicity, however, because the effort yields tremendous rewards. We’re building the kind of strong relationships only available to those who work at something difficult together, and in the process we’re effectively changing the trajectory of tomorrow for the better.