Allen grew up on a multi-specie farm in South Carolina; attended Clemson University intending to
return to the family farm. Instead he
was recruited into grad school on a research fellowship and ended up a tenured
professor, teaching at Clemson for fifteen years. He came to perceive that the trend in
Agricultural colleges was to research and treat “symptoms” -- rather than the
causes – of farm management issues, including lack of profitability. Leaving Clemson to return to the farm, his
college colleagues told him he was making a “disastrous financial
mistake”! He saw that attitude as an
indictment of the Ag college viewpoint, that anyone trained as they do could
not “make it” actually farming!!! Today
he is a recognized leading voice in “Regenerative Agriculture” concepts and
consults worldwide.
Allan has a regular column in Stockman Grass Farmer magazine. I am taking his online course “The Basics of Sound Genetics” and wanted to share some of his introductory
ideas with you.
Adaptive
Stewardship
In Allan’s grasp of Genetics
(the “Genetics” industry is basically trait statistics, not
biology) we are forgetting that
genotypes do not have a rigid response in all environments, but “adapt” to the environments we provide
(from our view, either positively or negatively). The emerging science of “Epigenetics” is
his current focus, and his term “Adaptive Stewardship” pushes us to be more
proactive in creating an environment in which the genetics of soil biology,
plant variety and animal breeding have a productive coexistence.
Compared to the North American continent when settlers first
arrived here, ALL our farmed and pastured land is a “degraded” resource --
supporting less bioactivity in the soil, fewer varieties of plants, and
thus animals that tend to need energy supplementation to reach market stages.
Degraded ecosystem
In specifics, the ratio of mycchorizal fungi to bacteria is way off the
optimum. Fungi produces the “glue”
that holds soil structure together, and aids in the transport of nutrients into
the root zone of our plants. The loss
of this fungal balance in soils has led us to an increasing volume of chemical
fertilizer use, increasing the cost of every crop we grow.
The goal in “Regenerative Ag” is (1) to redevelop bio-active
soils with high organic matter, (2) a soil structure that provides proper water
cycling, (3) an increased diversity in beneficial plant species, leading to (4)
improved and ,more predictable animal performance. These are steps beyond the concepts of
“Sustainable Agriculture”, in which we focus on practices that keep us in
business through controlling cost of inputs (in commodity agriculture, profits
flow to lowest cost producers rather than those who keep buying inputs seeking
higher volume production).
Both Sustainable Ag and Regenerative Ag are clearly
different approaches than what is seen as “spend your way to prosperity”
mainstream agriculture thinking (as extolled by most land grant universities
whose research focuses are financed by industrial Ag vendors). In the mainstream of agriculture, the
typical consultant will say things like “at
current crop values we can’t afford to feed the SOIL so let’s focus on feeding
the next CROP”. Given a strong trend in farming over the
recent fifty years toward more annual row crops and less perennial forages and
permanent pasture, farmers struggle with more soil compaction, less rainfall
retention, more weeds, losing organic matter, and with the separation of
livestock into concentrated feed lots, losing biological balance in the
soil. Thus our animals have more
health and insect trouble, as nutrient density in their feed decreases linearly
with the relentless chasing of higher crop yields via chemicals.
Summary quotes
“Nature will humble you, and if you are fighting nature she
will defeat you.” In the linear study
of individual traits (plant or animal) we have tended to pursue these too far,
into extremes.
Wendell Berry, KY farmer and sage, writing in New
York Times in 2018:
“Agricultural choices must be made by these inescapable standards: the ecological health of the farm, and
the economic health of the farmer.”
[Farmer suicide rates have increased each year since 2018, clearly Mr
Berry’s standards are not being followed.]
Masenobu Fukuoka, Japanese researcher and eminent
farming observer:
“An object seen in isolation from the whole is not the real thing.” [This is applicable to current tendencies
in ag research to break the big picture down to fractions of the total issue.]
What does all this mean?
To focus on animal genetics alone, instead of starting with
soil biology, is to limit your success.
