Many of us in the ecological/regenerative ag community are instinctually problem solvers. We look around and see the issues with modern chemical-heavy farming, assess what needs to be done to improve things, and move forward to implement the plan. Problem solved.
In many ways, this is a helpful way to view our callings as farmers, ranchers, agronomists, scientists, etc. It evokes the reticence toward the phrase “sustainable” agriculture — why would we want to just sustain the current system? We want to solve the problems of modern farming and move toward something better.
Sometimes, though, it can be helpful to take a step back and consider the dictum of the economist Thomas Sowell: “There are no solutions. There are only tradeoffs.”
Consider the classic (among us) debate of tillage vs. herbicide. Yes, there are “organic no-till” options that have utility in some situations, for some amount of time — and we earnestly hope these methods will continue to improve — but for the most part, if we want to produce food, we have to remove competitive plants (weeds) via either tillage or some sort of herbicide. As John Kempf pointed out in our April issue, both produce disturbance (even though most of us have been accustomed to think that only tillage is disturbance).
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