In my last blog I wrote about the journey of separation to integration. While it introduced many big ideas and concepts it did not provide any tangible solutions and I am all about solutions!  Well this blog is focused on a BIG paradigm shift we are leading here at Yellow Barn Farm and Dry Lands Agroecology Research (DAR). An actionable solution that YOU can get engaged with this fall! A movement that we want to open source and share – both what is working and what is not. A reframe of the food industry that could feed the world while combating climate change. Want to play!?

When you think of agriculture what comes to mind? For some it will be large fields of row after row of a “cash crop”, irrigation machines that look like giant robots rolling along, trackers, farm animals in pins fed grain or corn, synthetic fertilizers and likely middle aged men with rough, cracked hands and sunbeatned faces and a piece of hay in their teeth. While this is not “wrong”, it is the face of industrial agriculture where the main purpose is production of a “cash crop”, a commodity to be regulated, processed, taxed and consumed. 

Now, I want to pause and acknowledge how important and hard working our farmers are. We all depend on farmers for our survival. They work from sunup to sundown, rarely have real days off, are forced to over-leverage their resources to operate and are squeezed from all sides of the market and controlled by big industry and special interest groups. Farmers are heroes and they deserve our love, respect and deep gratitude – Thank you to our farmers! But our farmers do not have control of the integrity of the food system. Mainly because the food system has gotten so big and disconnected from its real purpose and service. 

We need to take back control of our food! We have a right to know where our food comes from, who grew it, and how it was raised. We have a right to buy eggs not dipped in bleach to be sold in a store. We have a right to support our local farms. The local farms have a right to sell to their members without having to worry about fines or USDA violations. But this is not the way it works…yet…!

What if we reframed soil as a service? What if the main purpose of farming in this century was to restore the carbon cycle and heal the land with food as the by-product? Industrial farming over the last century has stripped the top soil of its nutrients, damaged its ability to grow crops and retain water while failing to feed the world. It is time to upgrade the macro view of farming and reframe its primary purpose. Moving from a “cash crop commodity” to a “farming-as-a-service” model where the food produced is actually the “waste product” and the process of growing the food is what is important. 

In the industrial food complex, the USDA regulates food and food processing to “protect human health”. Food as an industry has gotten so big and so disconnected from where it is grown and how that we have to regulate it for health and safety reasons. In addition, the result of industrial agriculture from the last century has produced new food borne illnesses and diseases in our crops and livestock that we now have to invent to inputs to address these human-caused problems. As a result we have to regulate the food industry ad-nauseam and it confines what small-scale, regenerative producers can do and sell. What if we had such a deep connection to our food and farmers that this sterile regulation was not needed?

In the consumer economy, we are groomed to see food as a commodity: we buy it for a price that does not include the true cost to grow it (unthank you government subsidies), wrapped in plastic and packaged in styrofoam. In the regenerative economy, we can treat food as a method for nourishment and the process by which food is produced as a way to heal landscapes and build community.

Cows, for example, are not really climate enemies. Sure, they fart, but that narrative has gotten way out of hand. Livestock, when managed in holistic ways, actually help to bring carbon out of the air and back into soil. They do this by walking on the ground and well… pooping. Their hooves break up compacted soil and work the manure into it which acts as a natural fertilizer. The process of digestion by our hoofed grazers helps to build biodiversity through landscapes as they eat, digest, poop and walk. This is a real gift, perhaps their highest purpose, and one that farming-as-a-service honors and promotes. Farming as a cash crop cannot support livestock as “carbon cycle healers” because the livestock are not free to eat and roam as they wish. The purpose of a cow is not to get you that thick T-bone cut or NY strip, it is actually to keep the carbon cycle going; you just get to enjoy the T-bone as a by-product –– wow! 

Let’s look at one more animal before I get to the main point….pigs. Did you know that the act of a pig wallowing in mud breaks up compacted soil and helps prepare the soil for planting? No tilling or tractors needed –– just run the pigs through it for a bit. Pigs also eat food waste. We have a “pig bowl” at the farm and each day the boys and I go feed the pigs and we have literally zero food waste at home 🙂 The pigs eat food waste (removing methane emissions), break up compacted soil to get more areas ready to grow food and (spoiler alert) become food themselves –– a complete circular economic and resource flow! But if pigs are kept in pens and fed corn, their greatest gifts are not fully utilized and industrial pig farmers have to spend more money, time, and fossil fuels to raise them. 

Ok, so what is my main point? We need to reframe soil to be a service, not a process to produce a commodity. Farming is a service to regenerate landscapes and communities. Farming can restore the carbon cycle. Farming can create thriving community ecosystems to operate it and the by-product just so happens to be food! This matters because the way we interact with farming now is all about a consumer commodity (food!). We buy goods that are regulated, taxed and mass produced (read: manufactured). The result is degraded landscapes, soils that cannot hold water or nutrients, food with less nutrients available, and more and more synthetic inputs needed to operate the farm. 

What if we reframe the way the money flows, so that when I buy my pound of beef I am not actually paying for the meat? Instead my money goes to the real service cows provide when they walk, eat and poop on a landscape in a way that restores the carbon cycle. I am paying for ecosystem services and I get meat as a byproduct.  

As a consultant I am helping to co-create this model right now with Yellow Barn Farm and DAR. Stay tuned as we pilot and launch the “farming-as-a-service” model this fall and winter. We are gearing up for holiday pre-sales so get ready to be one of the first. We are likely capping “food farm shares” at the first 150 people. You can be a part of this important paradigm shift. You can engage and “vote” with your dollars to help restore the carbon cycle and get a farm share box each week. You can pay it forward and buy a farm share for family, friends or others as a gift. If you are not local to Colorado, you can still participate and buy farm shares because the real service is carbon sequestration, then we can donate your farm share box to a food insecure family. Win Win Win Win Win!