🌾 Growing on Regenerative Agriculture #014

returning to nature, but with modern knowledge and technology

TLDR: Modern farming has messed up both human and planetary health. Soil contains 2,500 gigatons of carbon, or triple of what’s in the atmosphere. We’ve already lost the majority of soil carbon due to conventional agriculture. To balance increasing demand for food production and restore the soils, the entire industry needs to transition to regenerative practices.

I just had lunch, but I still can’t seem to stop thinking about food. For myself and wealthier parts of the world, feeding ourselves is mostly a solved problem. We might wake up hungry, but all we need to decide is what to eat rather than how to actually obtain those calories. How our food actually gets produced is so many layers of abstraction from us that we take it for granted.

In fact, we’ve never been more detached from how our food is actually grown. With the press of a few buttons on an app, we can get a delicious, hot meal delivered to our doorstep (and without any human interaction if that’s what we prefer). Or even better, we stroll two minutes from our desk down the hallway to our tech company’s cafeteria. In one (privileged) corner of the world, overworked investment bankers and consultants trade stories about their comped fancy steak dinners. In another not-so-fortunate corner, farmers struggle to make a living and famine is a part of everyday life. Things don’t add up.

We live on a planet that increasingly demands more and more food. In the last 50 years, the global population has doubled. But we also rely on a strained agriculture system that’s been perverted by conglomerates that myopically optimize for short-term profits over long-term wellbeing. We need to take care of our air, soil, and waterways but we also need to make sure we can feed everyone. How do we balance planetary health with global human health?

In order to feed a rapidly growing population with limited resources, we have two levers to grow more food: Expand or Intensify. We could increase the surface area that crops are grown on, but land use in agriculture threatens wildlife and biodiversity through deforestation. The dodo bird was long gone by the time I was born and I wouldn’t want the same to happen to pandas, rhinos, and tigers. To put it in perspective, of the 28,000 species threatened with extinction, 24,000 (86%) of them are threatened by agriculture.

The other option, Intensify, seems to be working. Compared to 60 years ago, we’ve managed to triple crop yields in cereal while using less land on a per person basis. But that came at a cost. Starting in the 1960s, the ‘Green Revolution’ unraveled, resulting in the proliferation of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, machinery like tractors, irrigation technologies, and high-yielding crops (GMOs). While these innovative practices and a global supply chain fulfilled a necessary goal of feeding a growing population, the pendulum has swung too far. Realizing this, the industry is inching (too slowly) towards ‘regenerative agriculture’ (we’ll unpack what that actually means).

Peeling back the layers of agriculture is a series of never-ending discoveries of increasing complexity and interconnectedness. To make matters more convoluted, there isn’t a single, shared vision for sweeping adoption of regenerative practices. To uncover why, let’s dive into:

• The Problem - How Did We Get Here?

• An Umbrella Of Solutions

• Challenges With The Regenerative Vision

• How Can Software Help?

• Open Questions

The Problem - How Did We Get Here?

First, a snapshot of where we’re at. Today, 26% of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) come from food, 50% of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture, and 71% of all birds are poultry. That’s a heavy contributor to global warming, literally half our land, and a shit ton of chickens.

What ultimately caused all these problems with emissions, pollution, and reduced biodiversity? Looking back, we have the perspective to connect the dots. There’s not one clear answer. In terms of specific practices, it’s some amalgamation of monocropping, tillage (plowing farmland with tractors), lack of cover-cropping, wasted freshwater, and too much synthetic fertilizers. Did large agricultural corporations know what they were doing? Or did they choose to ignore the facts just like how Exxon knew about climate change but kept it from the public for decades?

Luckily, we don’t need to dive into conspiracy theories in order to find out. The incentives and data speaks for itself. Today, half of the 300 million farmed acres in the US are planted with corn and soy. With policies like the Farm Bill that subsidize commodity crops (corn, soy, wheat) with more favorable insurance and pricing programs, farmers are steered towards monocropping. With policy playing such an important role, power has become concentrated in just a few mega agribusinesses.

One concrete example is Cargill, the largest private US company with 160,000 employees and $165 billion in revenue for 2022. In order to produce that much food, Cargill needs a ton of land and it’s not always properly cared for. Their massive global soybean and palm oil supply chains have been linked to deforestation activities in the Amazon rainforest. They’ve also been sued by the US government for violating the Clean Water Act for discharging pollutants into waterways without proper permits. It’s hard to believe that these are just accidents when they have a track record of consistently F’ing things up - such as spilling toxic waste into the Bay Area waterways six times in seven years. I picked on Cargill because they’re the biggest culprit, but it’s not just them. The industry as a whole needs to get its act together before it’s too late.

There’s further evidence that conventional farming methods are approaching their breaking point. Soil erosion is a serious problem and topsoil, the layer that we grow crops on, is being destroyed at an unsustainable rate. Synthetic fertilizers, which release nitrogen into runoff, result in algal blooms that block sunlight from vital underwater grasses. When these plants can’t do photosynthesis, pH levels rise, oxygen diminishes, and carbon dioxide remains which results in dead fish. For us humans, we also experience harmful effects of synthetic fertilizers through groundwater contamination and air pollution.

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Synthetic fertilizers shouldn’t be blindly painted as the villain. In fact, they’ve played a crucial role in global development. The Haber-Bosch process which is required to create synthetic fertilizer is considered one of humanity’s great inventions. Case in point: currently, nitrogen-based fertilizers support approximately half of the global population:

The introduction of fertilizers, along with other farming techniques, enabled us to increase crop yields without a significant increase in land use. Many would argue that this wouldn’t have been possible without synthetic fertilizers. The same substance that’s also causing these environmental problems today.

In addition to it’s not that simple, another key theme in agriculture (and climate, to be honest) should be It’s not all about the gigatons referring to the fixation on GHG emissions as the primary success metric. While a shared goal is necessary to coordinate change, fixating on carbon emissions overlooks harmful ecological effects, many of which are harder to quantify.

For instance, take biodiversity - something that I haven’t seen any climate tech people talk about. There’s two angles to this. As corn, soy, and wheat continue to dominate, what we grow and eat will become more concentrated in these monocrops. Wildlife is also at risk if we don’t improve crop yields as the pressure for food production will push governments and businesses to encroach on wilderness habitats.

Whether it’s through the lens of emissions, land use, pollution, or biodiversity, it’s clear we need to do something. Not just something, but actually several things…

An Umbrella Of Solutions

Out of all possible descriptions, Natural Resources Defense Council’s best captures the ethos of regenerative agriculture (emphasis mine):

As a philosophy and approach to land management, regenerative agriculture asks us to think about how all aspects of agriculture are connected through a web—a network of entities who grow, enhance, exchange, distribute, and consume goods and services—instead of a linear supply chain.

Rather than a well-defined playbook or set of quantifiable metrics, regenerative agriculture is a mindset that recognizes the interconnectedness of agriculture. Therefore, the changes that embody regenerative principles are a holistic suite that impacts fertilizers, water, crops, livestock, and soil. I couldn’t help but notice that the menu of regenerative improvements tends to be more qualitative and less prescriptive than other climate areas, like energy. This is in stark contrast to organic farming which has a dedicated Standards Board that’s a part of the Department of Agriculture. While we can easily spot the certified organic stickers (and prices) on organic produce at Whole Foods, “certified regenerative” has yet to become a thing, which is reflected in the actual list of regenerative solutions. We know that all the following solutions are helpful, but to what extent and in what proportion, we don’t know.

Fertilizers play an important role in increasing food production without having to expand in land use, but there’s also consequences. Synthetic fertilizers are derived from fossil fuels via the Haber-Bosch process and excess runoff leads to pollution and algal blooms. An obvious critique of reducing fertilizer use is the potential reduction in crop yields. However, in a decade-long study with 21 million smallholder farmers, yields increased by 11% while nitrogen fertilizer use decreased by around 15%. The result of producing more goods while also reducing costs: $12.2B. The results, accomplished through evidence-based management recommendations indicate that it’s totally possible to reduce fertilizer use without having to sacrifice yield size.

How we manage crops also plays a huge role in this complex web of systems. Today, the vast majority of farms grow one crop (often corn, soy, wheat or cotton) and one crop only. This monocrop approach wrecks soil health which is highly correlated with carbon sequestration potential. To solve this, just do the opposite. In between harvest and planting seasons, grow cover crops which help with soil erosion, nutrient management, and weed suppression.

Since crops each have their own specific nutrient requirements, growing too much of one crop type can lead to nutrient depletion. Rotating between cereals, legumes, oilseeds (and cover crops) is an effective mitigation. Especially legumes because they can actually offset synthetic fertilizers through this nifty process called nitrogen fixation. Avoiding tillage is also key because plowing through farmland to prepare it actually destroys soil structure which exacerbates erosion.

crop rotation

To me, water is an underemphasized part of climate because it often isn’t considered a direct part of the emissions equation. Which is kinda ironic because the planet is mostly water (71%) and so are we (60%). Globally, we use 70% of freshwater withdrawals for agriculture with the proportion decreasing as a country becomes wealthier and presumably more advanced in agricultural practices. In order to avoid erosion, droughts, and further risks, efficient irrigation is critical. In keeping up with the theme of interconnectedness, it turns out when soil is healthy, it retains water more effectively. We can also draw on the wisdom of our ancestors. Across the world, farmers have relied on contour cultivation (terracing) to control water flow efficiently and reduce erosion. You may have already seen this if you’ve been to Bali or Cusco:

left: Bali rice paddies, right: Moray in Cusco, Peru

Here’s where it starts to get interesting. The integration of livestock is the most controversial aspect of regenerative agriculture because it doesn’t perfectly fit the rest of the climate narrative. In this situation, what’s good for the crops and soil is also introducing emissions. However, bringing in livestock like chickens in conjunction with cover cropping is actually quite helpful. Livestock takes plant biomass and converts it into nutrients for soil via their “natural fertilizer”. This just goes to show that it’s not as simple as getting rid of all livestock. In reality, the buzzword-y “integration of livestock” is simply going back to the natural way of letting animals eat and poop.

Last, but certainly not least: Soil - the most critical piece of the agricultural pie. Soils remove ~25% of global emissions each year and sadly, modern agricultural practices have already led to the loss of 50-70% that they once held. The scale we’re talking about is massive:

The Earth’s soils contain about 2,500 gigatons of carbon—that’s more than three times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and four times the amount stored in all living plants and animals. - Columbia Climate School

A quick primer on how soil carbon sequestration works:

Carbon180

From an emissions perspective, soil is the most important of all the aspects of regenerative agriculture. Crops, fertilizers, water management, and livestock integration all ultimately impact soil health and carbon sequestration potential. Once again, everything is interconnected in this complex system. A helpful framework is: increase carbon inputs into soil, decrease the output of carbon from soil, and increase efficiency of soil’s ability to store carbon:

Carbon sequestration in soils | Francesca Cotrufo

Everything under the umbrella of regenerative agriculture seems to point towards returning back to the natural way of farming. In theory, we could scrap all of these modern techniques like synthetic fertilizers that were once heralded as humanity’s greatest inventions, but I don’t think that’s the solution. Sure, in theory a farmer could be regenerative without any sensors or sophisticated equipment, but this viewpoint fails to remember something critical: we need to feed the global population and care for the planet. In my own words, regenerative agriculture combines the wisdom of historical (and often indigenous) farming practices that honored and respected the land, water, plants, and animals with modern tools that help us understand and leverage long-view farming practices.

Challenges With The Regenerative Vision

Keeping it real, there’s a long way to go. The vision of regenerative agriculture sounds amazing, but there’s a number of hurdles. To start off, there’s no standard definition for regenerative agriculture. Without any legal or regulatory definition of the term, it’s harder to make collective progress. If it can’t be defined, then how will we create a shared playbook that can be deployed across the 500 million farms around the world?

Even if we have a sense of what we should do, that doesn’t equate to reality. The majority of farms operate fixated with conventional practices and mindsets. Switching from conventional to regenerative (still to be clearly defined) requires upfront capital and farmers need to be convinced that it’ll be worth it. Another common concern is potentially lower yields, but research shows that regenerative farming can actually increase and stabilize yields, although the breakeven point may take several years to realize. To make the transition process easier for this already tough, low-margin business, policies like the IRA help smooth out the investment payback period.

Lastly, with soil carbon sequestration, we still lack the proper measurement, reporting, and verification tools to confidently and accurately prop up a soil carbon market. This is not consensus within the climate community and just my opinion, but I don’t think you can charge for carbon sequestration if you aren’t sure how much carbon is actually being stored and how long it’ll be stored for. To be clear, just because we can’t measure it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. We just probably shouldn’t sell it as a product to companies with ESG commitments.

How Can Software Help?

Although most of the solutions seem quite physical at first glance, software still has a role to play. Precision technologies like GPS, remote sensing, and drones help us to measure and monitor soil health. Analytics and modeling tools incorporate soil health data with pest & disease patterns as well as weather forecast to inform farmers on risks and influence decision making. General farm management software, like any vertical-specific project management tool, helps to streamline operations. There’s also an entire soil carbon market full of startups, but after 93% of the carbon offsets Chevron turned out to be junk, I’m hesitant to advocate for anything related to the voluntary carbon offset space.

Open Questions

• Can regenerative agriculture still advance even without the carbon market? Does the math still work for farmers to transition even if they can’t get paid for carbon sequestration?

• Is it realistic to try and make “certified regenerative” a thing? As consumers, we associate organic food to be healthier and better tasting, but is the same true for regeneratively farmed food?

• Can the soil carbon market thrive even if soil carbon MRV remains not 100% verifiable / permanent? What is the margin of error that buyers, verifiers, and regulators are comfortable with assuming that 100% is very hard to achieve?

• What is the stack rank of regenerative farming practices and in what order? Throughout my research, I couldn’t find this which suggests maybe it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach.