We spend a lot of time in the regenerative agriculture community debating what “regenerative” means. The etymology — bringing something back to life — helps, since growing techniques that reduce tillage and synthetic -cides, and that increase the number of healthy plants, ultimately bring life back to the soil.
We also talk a lot about how healthy soil leads to healthy plants, which leads to healthy people. The soil-to-plant step takes place right there in the field. But the plant-to-human step requires transporting plants and animals from the field to wherever they end up being eaten. This is the supply chain; it’s a big part of food that we don’t talk much about. A lot can go right or wrong in the multitude of steps between field and fork.
In the case of food grown in one’s own farm or backyard — tomatoes for pasta sauce, say — that supply chain seems fairly simple (albeit labor intensive) — pick the tomatoes, cart them inside, process them into sauce, water-bath can them, then store the jars on a shelf in the basement.
Now consider the cans of tomato sauce you buy at the grocery store. This is Leonard Read’s “I, Pencil” in a nutshell: thousands of people all across the world are involved in the production of a can of tomato sauce. The farmer grows the tomatoes, but someone else transports them to a factory; other people built the truck that was used, and others yet built the factory. Someone, somewhere, mined sand and turned it into glass to make the jar; many others felled trees and produced the paper for the labeling; somehow produced the glue to stick the label on, the metal and rubber for the lid, the ink for the label, etc. All of these people cooperate through the multitude of steps of the supply chain because of invisible market forces, for the benefits of consumers and society.
Now, many will reject part or all of this free market view from the country. But it illustrates how impossible it is to control the supply chain. Direct marketing is one obvious attempt, but even it has limits — COVID showed how shocks to the supply chain originating halfway across the planet can disrupt practically everything in our daily lives.
What’s a farmer to do? The first step is to at least be aware of your supply chain — to understand how it works, what you’re reliant on, and what you’re most vulnerable to. In this issue, we feature several articles that seek to do that — diving into the complexities of the supply chain and how it is affecting (and being successfully used by) regenerative farmers. Marty Travis outlines how his co-op is participating in a new grant program to increase its reach to new customers. Julie Snorek and Julie Davenson share how three different farms are helping create fair and regenerative supply chains. And our interview with Ian Chamberlain goes in-depth on supply chain issues within the slaughter/butchering space and how producers of all sizes can ask the right questions.
We certainly don’t solve all of the problems of how to make supply chains regenerative in this issue of Acres U.S.A. … but hopefully we’re helping you start to ask the right questions.
And that’s the view from the country.
