Should you do what your neighbors are doing?
Eco-farmers instinctually shiver at the thought. Deciding to follow the precedent of what others are doing is the hallmark of “analogical thinking.” This form of decision-making is inherently rules based: do this, don’t do that. It is also pragmatic: what are others doing that seems to be working?
Analogical thinking is not always bad. Say you’re a vegetable grower who uses plastic mulch, and you have four neighbors: one neighbor sprays synthetic herbicide to manage the rows between the plastic, one plants winter rye and clover, one plants teff and then tills the middles and sprays the edges with an organic-approved herbicide, and one laboriously covers the middles with woodchips. Three of the four practices are basically ecologically sound. Going with whichever practice provides the best results in terms of yield or weed management or soil building is not a bad way to think.
However, there is a mode of thinking that is ultimately more powerful than analogical thinking: reasoning from first principles. First principles thinking is what truly sets ecological farmers apart.
First-principles reasoning breaks problems down to their fundamental truths — basic facts that cannot be deduced any further — and builds solutions from the ground up. It asks, “What do I know for sure, and what can I build from that?”
Consider apple production. Making management decisions based on what your neighbors are doing, or what the extension service or your input dealer recommends, is simple, but it’s unlikely to lead to ecological or economic health.
First principles thinking, on the other hand, starts at a deeper level: with biology, physics and ecology. It asks what natural mechanisms are at work in how apples grow, starting with the stages of fruit development — from bud formation (30-45 days after pollination in the previous year!) to pollination, cell division and enlargement — and how at each stage there are specific nutritional needs and disease pressures. Managing a crop right requires in-depth knowledge of things like cytokinin-auxin balance, how water affects growth, and how the tree will respond to different types of thinning and pruning.
Again, reasoning by analogy is not wholly inferior: it can be helpful when speed and efficiency matter more than innovation. If you farm next door to an outstanding eco-farmer, and all aspects of your context (including labor and time) are nearly identical, it could make sense to adopt many of your neighbor’s practices.
But this is seldom the case. Most of us are doing something new. We face a novel and broken system — one that must be examined from first principles.
First principles maketh the eco-farmer.
And that’s the view from the country.
