By weaving together ecology and economics, and by building internally self-regulating economies, we can create supply chains that support life rather than degrade it
There are threads as old as life itself that tie the world we inhabit together. Life doesn’t occur in isolation, but in a sprawling, intricate barn dance of interactions.
Plants (and chlorophyl-containing cyanobacteria!) breathe in the air, soak up water, and use the energy of the sun to make simple sugars that they then reconfigure to make proteins, oils, lignin, cellulose, root exudates, aromatics and a whole host of other compounds. Root exudates help with the process of dissolving the bones of the planet itself and incorporating those minerals into their own bodies. The plants are food for animals (insects, birds, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, mollusks and more). Fungi, bacteria and other microbes consume the bodies of plants and animals and recirculate energy and matter back through the web of living connections.
The Original Economy
This interwoven set of energy and matter transactions make ecosystems the “original economy” of planet earth. This original economy is resilient, self-sustaining and self-reinforcing and has been in operation way longer than our human economy, which is merely a subset of the original economy. The original economy has survived dozens of planetary cataclysms and will out-last humans no matter what we do to it. Understanding how the economy of this ecological web operates is the foundation of ecological agriculture.
In Chapter 12 of my first book, Restoration Agriculture, I explain how a farm can be designed to mimic an ecological system. A lofty target that we might aim for is to design, plant and manage an “almost natural” system that rivals nature in its diversity, weighted toward perennial crops — creating a polyculture that mimics a regionally appropriate natural plant community. It’s a powerful reminder that farms can be designed for high yields simultaneously with long-term health, resilience and ecological balance.
Weaving through the whole original economy is supply chain ecology. Our farms and ranches are one of the three foundational pillars of the human economy, the other two being forestry and resource extraction. All other aspects of the economy use our basic products. In order for us to keep doing what we do without degrading our resource base — in fact, we want to regenerate that resource base — we need to understand how the self-maintaining economy of nature works.
Natural plant communities (like the brush in the ditch on the side of the road) grow, reproduce and expand their populations all by themselves in the conditions in which they find themselves. They have a self-regulating energy and materials economy. Using materials at hand (sunlight, water, air, soil minerals), plant communities reconfigure the elements and store energy as increased biomass and more fertile soil. With each passing season, the stored wealth (fertility and biomass) increases until it reaches the physical and energy limits of the system.
Our economy doesn’t harm the original economy if we only use the net gains from an ecosystem. Our economy does harm the original economy if our use exceeds the system’s ability to produce a yield without letting the system recover to its previously stable baseline. This is self-evident to most farmers and ranchers.
Supply Chain Ecology Matters
Modern farmers and ranchers, though, beginning in the age of the tractor — my grandfather’s generation — were gradually sucked into treating supply chains as linear and extractive.
In these supply chains, low-cost inputs like synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and fossil fuels are imported to the farm. Commodities or livestock are grown and then leave the land. In many cases, the land is depleted. As long as the inputs were inexpensive and generated enough income to offset the cost, and as long as they continued to be available, on-farm economics were fine. But as soon as there was a supply-chain disruption — just some recent examples include the COVID-19 pandemic and trade wars — our agricultural economics become less profitable and constitute a genuine food emergency.
Energy and matter coming into an ecosystem from the outside are exogenous sources. If they are produced within the system, by the system, they are endogenous. An agroforestry system that captures runoff and mimicks the natural ecosystem can produce most of its inputs endogenously. A diversified portfolio of annual crops in rotation — short-, medium- and long-lived perennials with grazing and browsing animals — is as close as we can get to a self-regulating, circular economy. Such a system accumulates capital (biomass and fertility) and, through strategic disturbance, allows us to harvest annual income (sales of crops and livestock) and occasional capital gains (timber) in order to drive the human economy. This type of self-regulating farm and ranch economy is the foundation for a flourishing regional economy and can regenerate landscapes and communities as a byproduct. Do not underestimate the vital power of eco-ag — our work is vitally important!
For me, supply chain ecology is about focusing on both endogenous and exogenous inputs. Endogenous inputs — cover crops, legumes, compost, mulch, animal manure, ramial woodchips, teas, ferments, extracts — come from within the farm. They cost me very little money, although they do cost time. Exogenous inputs — fertilizers, fungicides, herbicides, pesticides, mineral amendments, nutritional supplements, seeds — these can be sourced wisely (locally when possible) and used to complement and support internal cycles. Together, these inputs create a supply chain that can mimic the circular patterns found in nature.
An example of this is a historic version of the origins of agriculture. Annual floods would deposit mineral-rich sediments on floodplains. The fresh mineral application was shallowly incorporated with surface trash using animal traction, which added a level of disturbance and some well-placed manure and urine. It’s OK to import a certain amount of inputs!
However, it’s difficult to avoid the fact that most farmers are export economies. Richland County, Wisconsin, where I farm, has 220,843 acres of mixed farmland but only around 1,900 inhabitants. If each acre of land produced as much food as a potato or squash field (30,000 pounds), it could produce 6.6 billion pounds of food. If each resident ate 3 pounds of food per day, the entire county would only need 2,080,500 pounds of food, which could be grown on less than 100 acres of land. Let’s throw in a side of grassfed beef, 50 chickens and a whole pastured hog per resident and the land requirements to feed the entire county would take less than 10,000 acres of ground. If farmers were all eco-farmers (this part of Wisconsin has one of the highest per-capita rates of eco-farmers in the country), our natural resource base would be improving, and we would still have billions of pounds of food for export. Let’s add value to that food locally and export value-added products instead of low-cost industrial ingredients.
This is an incredible opportunity for regional economic prosperity. It creates a fully nourished local population and a farm economy that is financially buffered from the vagaries of the market. Imagine a farm economy that grows, ferments and distills its own ethanol, presses its own oil for biodiesel, recycles organic wastes into resources, etc. — this is a regional economy that is selling nothing but recombined sunshine, air and water. It exports ecologically produced goods and imports money.
Building Networks of Regenerative Trade
The shift from linear supply chains to ecological supply networks isn’t just theoretical — it’s happening now. The Organic Valley Cooperative was one of the pioneers of the “food hub” model, where modest-scaled producers pool their production to be value-added and sold far and wide. Nationwide, farms and artisans are connecting to create their own regional food hubs that link directly with restaurants, retailers and families. By choosing perennial crops that build soil fertility, reduce erosion and increase wildlife habitat, we reduce our expenses, resulting in higher margins for the farmer. It’s ecological restoration simultaneous with agricultural production and economic prosperity.
The story of agriculture doesn’t have to be one of extraction and depletion and government subsidies under constantly changing names. By weaving together the threads of ecology and economics, and doing what we can to build internally self-regulating economies, we can create supply chains that support life rather than degrade it. We can reduce expenses and the need to trade with faraway places. Ecological agriculture is living proof that farms can be places where diversity, resilience and abundance arise from an intelligent collaboration between people and the land.
Through this lens, we become more than producers. We become the architects of a new ecological economy — one where increasing the vitality and richness of the entire ecosystem is the measure of success.
