Is Regenerative Agriculture on the Fringe?

Last March, Ridgedale Permaculture’s Richard Perkins put out a video entitled Why are there so few profitable Permaculture Farms?wherein he points to some reasons why “Permaculture farms” aren’t particularly prevalent. I have my own theories on this, but I’ll get to that later. Regenerative Agriculture isn’t necessarily “permaculture,” but a lot of the same principles apply, and Richard points out something surprising to many people: nearly everything barring people from creating sustainable or regenerative systems is self-imposed by the human mind. The other is lack of capital.

I’ll summarize his video quickly, in case you don’t want to watch all thirteen minutes of him walking around in the snow addressing a camera. If you want more feedback from a different perspective you can see the PermaEthos video of Permaculture Smackdown where Josiah Wallingford and Paul Wheaton pick this video apart over an hour and a half video discussion. Fair warning: they do use the full range of the English language so if you have sensitive ears, it may not be for you.

Richard goes through eight main reasons why Permaculture farms either fail or do not get started. His eight reasons are self-limiting beliefs, idealism over pragmatism, undefined context, myth of the perfect place, lack of commitment, lack of planning, fear of the unknown, and finally lack of financial capital.

Self-Limiting Beliefs

Excuses are the lies that we tell ourselves to justify our failures or lack of effort. If a person believes someone has succeeded at something because they have an unfair advantage, then often they will either will themselves to fail or not bother, feeling that the perceived “unfair advantage” is the sole reason for their success. I have known many people over the years to inherit land from an elderly family member. Often times the result from his or her peers is a snap “Must be nice.” What they are really saying is, “I wish that was me,” and are envious over it. Often times those people tend to never do much in this space, or any groundbreaking space for that matter.

Now, back to the person who inherited the land… In most cases, land inherited, unless that person is already in a position to capitalize on it with a particular agricultural pursuit which they are already familiar with, often ends up sold or leased out. It takes a lot of commitment and hard work, along with extensive knowledge, and some plain old good luck to make a farm worth working at. That inheritance may have been a great windfall for the person, but in no way does it guarantee success. In fact, the person who scrimped and saved, lived in a tent for a year in their land, and put everything into their agricultural enterprise is more likely to succeed because he or she values that land MUCH MUCH more. It can be felt in their aches and pains, scars, and proverbial blood, sweat, and tears.

However, even THAT doesn’t guarantee success. Does that mean we shouldn’t try? Absolutely not! For every known regenerative farmer out there, as well as the ones that just do the work and don’t tell anyone, there needs to be a thousand new ones. Just don’t sell yourself short and fail to (in the words of Joel Salatin) “Cultivate your own unfair advantage.” In fact cultivate them all. Use every advantage you can get.

Idealism over Pragmatism

Richard starts this by pointing out that many people in permaculture have been fed overly idealistic ideas. I agree with this wholeheartedly, and even Paul Wheaton in critiquing this video mentioned a thought experiment on his discussion board at Permies.com wherein he compares two people who live very different lives. One lives in the city and lives a pretty typical urban lifestyle, in contrast to the permie in this experiment who has a fully developed homestead which takes care of all her needs, and has very little need for finances and works 10 hours a week. I understand where Paul is going with that, but at the same time I think he needs to emphasize the decades of hard labor and sacrifice that went into that situation. Ideally that is the type of lifestyle I would love to have, but the dynamics of creating that reality are difficult to say the least.

Richard goes on to say that, in order for permaculture to play out there needs to be more reality put into place. If for every hundred people who get excited about regenerative agriculture, only one succeeds, then maybe we are missing our mark somehow. I know with permaculture there is a sort of pie in the sky view that by taking a Permaculture Design Course that somehow this is a pathway to an exciting career wherein you meet lots of interesting people. That statement is both true and false at the same time.

I recall someone, I’m not precisely sure who, comment something about the widely held belief that there’s a three step system at play here. Step 1: Permaculture. Step 3: Profit!! Somehow nobody addresses exactly what the prescribed “Step 2” involves. Permaculture is by and large a design science, at least in the way that I view it. It is part of a tool chest which I use to view the world. It helps me address problems as it’s very solution oriented. However, it has not made me a dime. Not one. Hopefully it will, but I’m still figuring out Step 2, as are many many other people.

Truth be told, Permaculture is, at least to me, a design science and philosophy. Much like architecture, or engineering, knowledge does not preclude a path to financial success. There’s still a whole other set of processes to gain experience and become marketable. The same is true here.

Undefined Context

I found this particular point interesting, since this is the first step in Allan Savory‘s Holistic Management framework, which I feel is separate from Permaculture, though complimentary. Holistic management has a component known as “Holistic Context.” With this, you can formulate what your real end goal is. And while many people may have an idealistic view of what they want their end result to be, the goals and steps to get there are unclear, and often unrealistic. Does selling produce from a farmers market actually get me any closer to my goal of financial independence? Does planting trees improve my way of life? Questions such as these really need to be asked and answered at every step of the way.

Honestly, undefined context leads to a lot of half-baked decisions, and is not confined in any way to agriculture. Holistic management and it’s holistic context are really about making decisions. It seems to be more or less universally applicable, even though it was designed initially to make better decisions about grazing systems.

The Myth of the perfect place

If only I had this place with a gentle southerly facing slope (in the Northern hemisphere) with 34.5 feet of deep dark fertile loamy soil, protected from the prevailing wind and where it rains half an inch a week all year round… If I had that then Permaculture would be frivolous. Richard makes the case in the video that when searching for a suitable site for Ridgedale, that he had a checklist of fifty goals for the property of his dreams, so to speak, and that the end result didn’t meet every point on that list. In the end he made an educated decision based on the facts at hand and worked within the restrictions of what he has. The site CAN be improved, obviously, though some things you simply cannot get around. Richard, for instance lives at an extremely high latitude and has a short growing season.

Geoff Lawton has been known to make a statement from time to time that the more restricted a property, the more elegant the design. This seems to ring true, and there are often examples of amazing systems producing food in the most unlikely of locations. Geoff has done a video series of short clips at Geofflawtononline.com wherein he demonstrates amazing sites all over the world in every environment imaginable. From small back yards in Canada to the Dead Sea Valley, (as in the case of his “Greening the Desert” video) and almost anywhere in between.

So my opinion in summary; it doesn’t take a perfect place; it takes someone to make a place perfect.

Lack of Commitment

Let’s be honest. Farming, in any sense of the word is hard. It’s physically demanding. It’s emotionally stressful. It usually doesn’t pay off in currency so much as it does in good health and accomplished fulfillment (though neither are guaranteed). Farmers are usually very tough people, and they don’t get that way by having things go their way.

That said, there are a lot of people who approach permaculture, and all regenerative agriculture for that matter, because they like the idea of it. It’s easy to romanticize about it, but to be honest, there’s a lot more complexity involved than can be learned from reading books and watching YouTube videos.

Richard suggests working on a farm for one of the people who has a model which you wish to look into. And here is where the going gets tough: Pioneers such as Joel Salatin, Geoff Lawton, or Mark Shepard all take on interns, but the competition for such slots is steep and in the end there are only so many to go around. Looking aside from that Richard suggests interning with nearly anyone to gain experience and see if the lifestyle is even correct for you. Signing on to do hard labor for the rest of your life isn’t ideal if you hate every minute of it. Want to know what farming is like without committing too deeply? Read the transcript of Paul Harvey’s 1978 address to the National FFA Convention named “So God Made a Farmer.” While some of the tasks described are a bit dated, the complexity described within is not.

Lack of Planning

I think that this goes without saying. Farming is a business and can very easily be run into the ground financially just as any business can, without proper financial planning and goals. Farming, regenerative or otherwise, is a business model that is what many financiers refer to as “high risk.” Part of this is the luck of the draw nature of, well, nature. You cannot anticipate every hail storm, drought, hard freeze, wildfire, plague of locusts, etc. The other side is that while many people are skilled at business, and many people are skilled at producing whatever the agricultural product of choice is, very few people are both. Say what we will about farmers in this day and age, they aren’t stupid or unskilled.

Richard reports that there is a lack of focus on business or rejection of business or even of agriculture within permaculture. I can believe it, as there are many individuals with counter-cultural ideals within that space. I don’t begrudge them their ideals against current capitalism and agriculture, but some of them do not work within the financial paradigm that exists at this time. For better or worse our economics are primarily capitalistic, and working outside that system, while not impossible, isn’t easy. Also, agriculture in it’s current state DOES feed most North Americans (albeit poorly), so rejecting it in it’s entirety is a bit folly. Rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater by rejecting both, it might suit some people better to find out how to use these powers for good.

Fear of the Unknown

Fear of the unknown is a normal human reaction, and one that is nearly universal. I once read a short story about a warlord who had captured some enemy soldiers and given them a choice; face certain death by beheading, or face what was behind the black door. In this narrative, which is too ridiculous to take terribly serious, every enemy soldier was put to death because they feared impending death less than they feared what lay beyond the black door, which was simply the back door to the warlord’s stronghold. While unrealistic, this does paint a sort of satirical picture of human nature. Fear of the unknown is something that we all have to overcome, and is the primary factor in all of us which keeps us from obtaining our goals by failing to try.

Lack of Financial Capital

While it is possible to start from nothing, pulling ones self up by the bootstraps, it can shave years and years of work by using financial capital to speed the process up. Access to finances and land (another capital asset) are the two primary restrictions which bar people from entering into agriculture, whether regenerative or not. For the first time in this list, its not all in the head of the practitioner.

Financial woes can be worked around by living very efficiently and sacrificing to get started, like such permaculture practitioners as Joel Salatin, Peter Allen, and Grant Schultz. Access to land can be worked around by working out agreements with current land-owners. Cattleman Greg Judy is a master at that particular maneuver, raising himself out of poverty by pioneering a system wherein he grazed someone else’s cattle, on someone else’s land.

So to slightly alter Geoff Lawton’s earlier saying, the more restricted the situation, the more elegant the solution.

My Take

I agree with most everything Richard has to say in his monologue, stepping briskly along fence rows in the snow. I enjoyed his video immensely. I am not going to hold myself within the Permaculture box, as that is too restrictive to describe all that is going on in Regenerative Agriculture, and some wonderful people providing elegant solutions aren’t even aware of permaculture.

My take in a nutshell is this:

There are a few examples of regenerative agriculture out there which are publicly known to be profitable. These are the people who like to talk and who are not shy. These are the people who work incredibly hard at getting their story out there to inspire others. As they spend a lot of time at telling their stories, in some cases they are sought out to help educate their fellow humans in the ways of their crafts. For every one of those people who are public personalities, there are one hundred or more who are doing what they do quietly, known only to their neighbors and friends. Some are more secretive than that, avoiding ridicule from their peers.

As an aside, there has been criticism that these same people personalities cannot make it financially without the money that they gain from educating others. The claim that regenerative agriculture, or at least permaculture is somewhat a pyramid scheme because (it is claimed) that the income stream derived from educating others is what’s necessary to remain economically viable. I find that to be ridiculous personally, as much of what I’ve seen indicates that permaculture education is barely a break-even endeavor unless it’s done poorly or electronically. But I digress…

Permaculture, like Holistic Management, or Restoration Agriculture, or the Regrarians movement, was a fringe pseudo-science/philosophy known only to select few prior to the recent (5-10 year) swell in interest and notoriety propelled by the ease of information exchange via the internet. Fifteen years ago, in 2002, I didn’t know what permaculture was. It’s likely you didn’t either. There were just a few at that time practicing the craft. Geoff Lawton, Joel Salatin, Ben Falk, Sepp Holzer, and Mark Shepard to name a few. These men made a commitment to do things differently when it wasn’t in vogue because it felt like the right thing to do. We can now stand in awe at their results, because they put in the hard work when there was no immediate reward for doing so.

So why are there so few profitable regenerative agriculture farms? Because there aren’t enough of us that have gotten to that point. There aren’t enough of us who have gone to conferences and saw pictures of amazing productive systems with results which thumbed their metaphorical noses at commonly understood principles of science. There aren’t enough of us that took a PDC or found YouTube videos of how to do some of these things, fifteen years ago. Agriculture takes years to establish. Regenerative agriculture takes decades. And it takes people. Lots and lots of people.

Ultimately, I feel that we are all on the cusp of a transition in the way agriculture is practiced in North America. However, we cannot turn this proverbial ship on a dime, and we cannot do it with the less than the two million farmers that we currently have.

We don’t need a centralized authority and distribution system. We need redundancy like hasn’t been seen in this hemisphere since before WWII. We need ideas, and systems, and practices that are as unique as each of us individually. We need innovation, and education. We need to strive for what the FFA Creed describes with it’s “promise of better days through better ways.” The good news for now is that the rudder is already turning, and we’re just waiting for the ship to respond. She’s slow, but once momentum goes that direction, it’s equally difficult to turn it back the other way. Is Regenerative Agriculture on the fringe? It has been, but it’s spreading more toward mainstream thought every day. Ultimately I am optimistic, and I cannot wait to see what the future holds. I hope to see you all there!