North Central US | SIU1990 - 3/2/2026 20:06
I have a friend who has bought hook, line and sinker into the whole regenerative ag thing. I’m not saying it’s good, bad or indifferent. I’m just looking for opinions as I don’t have a firm one either way. His practices include: no till, no dry fertilizer or anhydrous (all manure and some liquid with planter), cover crops, very little pesticides/herbicides, lots of non GMO seed, etc. His yields have seemed to have tapered off since he started doing all this but he’s also been unfortunate to have some dry summers. Should I recommend he go back to using P, K, NH3, less cover crops, more herbicides, etc. or am I wrong on this? With less yields and lower prices, it doesn’t seem like it’s working well for him so I’m truly trying to do the right thing. Again, I don’t have a strong opinion on this. My gut tells me it’s definitely the right thing to do for the environment and animal/human health but ultimately I feel it’s costing him. He probably won’t be talked out of it which is fine but as a friend, I feel obligated to say something when he says his crops were off for the third or fourth year in a row.
The regen ag kick is akin to the current trend of avoiding everything remotely modern about medicine, including aspirin.
People did it that way from the 1870s to 1940s but livestock was where the money was.
My assumption is he is finding out why most of the Bonanza farms quit: they ran out of nutrients. You can't keep taking them and expect them to appear. Nature doesn't take its crop and move it thousands of miles away, it deposits it back in the same general area and imports nutrients via wildlife.
There is a reason why synthetic fertilizers we know today came around and are credited as the reason why mass starvation are no longer common. |
Regenerative Ag
