Technology for Regenerative Agriculture
For a wide-spread transition to regenerative agriculture, two types of technology will be important:
- Technology measuring the positive outcomes of regenerative agriculture (carbon sequestration, nutrient density) — this will allow farmers to be compensated for the true value of their farming methods, with carbon credits, market premiums, or other mechanisms.
- Technology addressing labor challenges — regenerative agriculture in its current form is often more labor intensive than industrial agriculture and may require tough working conditions. To scale as the world population increasingly moves away from hard manual labor, we will need technology that allows farmers to flex from labor to capital as needed
Compared to technologies developed for industrial agriculture, there has been relatively little technology developed for regenerative farms. There are several reasons for this:
- Scale and Diversity — technology, especially equipment, can be expensive and generally has better returns on larger farms with limited crop diversity because the same equipment can then be used across more acreage. Combined with the overall trend toward larger farms, developers have been highly incentivized to develop technologies for larger farms.
- Policy — from a research perspective, US government policy has primarily supported research for the chemical-industrial model of farming
- Ideology — many of the ideological lineages of regenerative ag, such as agroecology, prefer to limit costly off-farm inputs such as machinery and also place a high value on labor-intensive farming as a means of sustaining human livelihoods
As we grow the regenerative movement, it will be important to develop technology supporting the measurement of positive outcomes and addressing labor challenges.
Technology and systems for outcomes measurement are a well-recognized need, with many groups working on outcomes measurements, but there is still much work to be done for cost-effective measurements. Many groups are developing systems and protocols, but I had a tougher time digging into specific technology development.
As mentioned in the financing/ecosystem services post, prominent initiatives for this are the COMET tool and Regen Network’s open source ecological state protocols. To my knowledge the only on-farm measurement scheme is Savory Institute’s Land to Market Ecological Outcome Verification. It requires 1–2 days of inspector time per visit, which could prove expensive or hard to scale. Quick Carbon is Yale initiative that’s piloting lower cost soil carbon measurements.
Edit: Indigo Agriculture is working on this, as is General Mills
Technology addressing labor challenges — This article from the Futures Center offers a good overview of potential technology advancements for regenerative ag, many of which have already been piloted. One highlight is the development of smaller, nimbler machines that operate autonomously, can work with diversified farms, and are ultra-light to avoid soil damage. Of course, the cost right now is relatively high, but with enough investment and adoption, I can see the cost dropping. A bigger challenge is automated harvesting, where robots still struggle, but could improve over time, especially with the current pace of technological advancement.
There’s also a vein of advocates that are wary of profit-seeking technology developers locking farmers in to higher cost inputs (equipment and software in this case), so there’s a strong movement to develop and promote open source tools supported by public funding. The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), established as part of the 2014 Farm Bill, is working with FarmOS and Land PKS to develop an open source platform.
Additional reading:
This is part 8 of a series, written in January 2019
1. Introduction: The Magic of Regenerative Agriculture
3. Defining Regenerative and who’s doing it
5. Farm-level transitions (local learning and infrastructure)
6. Financing Regenerative Agricultural Transitions
