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Quality Agriculture: Conversations about Regenerative Agronomy with Innovative Scientists and Growers
An increasing number of farmers and scientists believe the foundational ideas of mainstream agronomy are incomplete and unsound. Conventional crop production ignores biology in favor of chemical interventions, leading farmers to buy inputs they don’t need. Fertilizer recommendations keep going up, pest pressure becomes more intense, pesticide applications are needed more often, and soil health continues to degrade. However, innovative growers and researchers are beginning to think differently about production agriculture systems. They have developed practices that regenerate soil and plant health and that deliver much better results than mainstream methods. Using these principles, growers are able to decrease fertilizer applications, reduce disease and insect pressure, hold more water in the soil, improve soil health, and grow crops that are more resilient to climatic extremes, increasing farm profitability immediately. As a leading agronomist and teacher, John Kempf has implemented regenerative agricultural systems on millions of acres across many different crop types and growing regions with his team at Advancing Eco Agriculture. In Quality Agriculture, John interviews a group of growers, consultants, and scientists who describe how to think and farm differently in order to produce exceptional results in the field. Their remarkable insights will challenge you, encourage you, and inspire gratitude and joy for the rewards of working with natural systems.
- GenresAgricultureNonfiction
300 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 8, 2020
35 people are currently reading
113 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 29, 2024
Book #32 of 2024. "Quality Agriculture" by John Kempf. 3/5 rating. 270 p.
This book is a collection of discussions between John and many agricultural scientists and growers. John is the founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture, which is an incredible company trying to push forward regenerative agriculture that will help farmers, our food system, and the world. He also hosts the Regenerative Agriculture Podcast - one of my favorite podcasts! - where some of these discussions are from.
The discussions in here spread over a wide array of topics within the realm of agronomy: from a fourth phase of water, to growing more nutrient dense food, to regenerating soil health. I was really interested in a lot of these topics and learned a bunch about them.
The reason why this did not get a higher rating is that this book is not for the faint of heart! It delves into some very specific biological functions of plants and soil that I definitely didn't completely understand.
That being said, apart from those, (and even there, getting the overall gist) I enjoyed learning some new knowledge and hearing even more about the goals, ways, and means of regenerative agriculture.
If you're interested in learning more about the future of farming, either pick up John's book, listen to his podcast, or go do some research about his company.
Quotes:
"The crop that immediately precedes your target crop is going to provide about 85 percent of the overall disease-suppressing effect."
"We can manage disease and pathogenicity based on how we manage our soils, from a cultural perspective."
"It doesn't have to be every year, but there are some changes that take place with long-term no-till that reduce the efficiency of the ecology - for nitrogen especially."
"You don't have to beat your soil to death to get those effects. It's just a matter of getting enough shift in that soil biology, and enough activity, and we get the desired result from a nutrient standpoint."
"'The biochemical genetics of that plant are about 1,100 bushels.' That's what we could do if we managed the environment and the plant in a proper manner and provided the expression."
"Again, we were producing more than we knew what to do with. I don't know what we'd do with all the corn that we currently produce if we weren't producing so much ethanol. I mean, that's the way to use your crop: find a new market for it. Certainly, population growth is a long way from requiring our current production. We could produce enough food for about fifteen billion people with about 30 percent less land - if we wanted to really do that, if we really needed to do that - with the technology that we had in 1964."
"The greatest need, anyway, is getting nutrient density back and eliminating the pesticides - especially glyphosate. Chuck Benbrook's research in Washington State says that on a 0 to 100 scale, from a health standpoint, glyphosate is about 82. All other pesticides together, other than the neonicotinoids - which would be at about 14 - are less than 1."
"Why would we desire to sustain our current levels of productivity and the externalized costs that we have?"
"But on the other hand, we can change that system quickly. I think this is the framework that we need to be talking about. When we go to a system where we add cover crops, and we reduce the tillage intensity by going to strip-till or no-till, we find that within one year, we can change that negative carbon balance into a positive carbon balance. Then we can put more dividends from that plant back into the soil biology. We go from a negative to a positive carbon balance."
"Yes, and even more amazing is that over a two-year period, we doubled the microbial biomass in the upper twelve inches of that [soil] profile."
"We see that within one growing season, the cover crop has already changed the aggregates in the upper soil surface. We've already seen it change the carbon cycle. In the [cover crop] cocktail, we see a much higher CO2 level, which is indicative of biological activity. We see a better oxygen content in the air - we've opened up the pores, so we get better oxygen exchange between the soil and the atmosphere. We see that we've changed the aggregates. We're putting more carbon in there."
"We have an agribusiness ecosystem that has developed in which our crop have generally become commodities, operating on very low margins, combined with the challenge that we have historically externalized many of our costs. We have externalized the environmental pollution that has been caused by some of the toxins and pesticides that we've used - fertilizers, nitrates, and water, etc."
"The other thing I've spent a lot of time now looking at is water-use sufficiency. How much crop do we get per unit of water used by that crop?"
"As a scientist, I never use the word 'never'! But you're right. Nitrogen is not our limiting parameter."
"[Genetically modified] crops and these plants may have the capacity to actually develop a disease-enhancing soil profile"
"When you use intense nitrogen inputs, like anhydrous ammonia, and you're not putting in more organic residues - whether from the crop, or with cover crops, or with organic amendments like manures and compost - that nitrogen has to be used. If it's not all used by the crop, the microbes are going to use it, and they are going to use whatever carbon is available in the soil. I'm certain that's where a lot of that depletion in the organic matter is happening."
"Some figures released in December of 2017 stated that we produced enough food on this planet in 2016 to feed fourteen billion people. Think about that: we have approximately 7.8 billion people in the world, but we produced enough food to feed fourteen billion. Farmers and ranchers are shooting themselves in the foot if they think they have to increase production to feed the world. There's already enough production out there."
"You tie your hands and limit yourself when you're in this commoditized, industrialized mindset. Producers need to learn how to adapt and observe, and to change according to conditions."
"Over the past nine years, our average net return per acre is $951. Now, how many people out there grow rye and hairy vetch and then combine it and sell it? Not very many. Bingo. People laugh at me because I'm different, but I laugh at them because they're all the same!"
"When I was in my conventional mindset, I used to wake up every day trying to decide what I was going to kill that day. Was it going to be a weed? Was it going to be a fungus? Was it going to be a pest? I was going to kill something every day. Now I wake up thinking about how to get more life onto my operation, and it's much more enjoyable working with life tham with death."
"Look at the work of Dr. Jonathan Lundgren - he just released a peer-reviewed paper that shows that regenerative farms and ranches are much more profitable, and they simultaneously improve their ecosystems compared to those that are using, in this case, stacked-trait corn genetics."
"I understand that it's a bit overwhelming, but I tell producers to just try something. Just do something, but don't think you have to do it all."
"[A]s long as he continues to use synthetic fertilizers, he can never expect to regenerate soil and plants to their full potential."
"[Mycorrhizal fungi] will provide the nutrients to the plants if the plants are required to give that photosynthetically derived carbon to the mycorrhizal fungi - and the consortium of organisms that work with the mycorrhizal fungi - in order to get those nutrients."
"[W]hen you apply the soluble phosphorus fertilizers, you essentially remove the need for the plant to have a symbiotic relationship with mycorrhizae because they can already obtain a generous supply of phosphorus."
"Soluble fertilizer is going to do the most damage as far as outsourcing the jobs of the microbial community. So, as much as possible, if you can, avoid those soluble inorganic types of fertilizers. The organic fertilizers are not going to have that same level of issue because, for them to work, they have to be broken down by the microbial communities."
"[M]ycorrhizal fungi, and possibly other fungi as well, can access water in the soil profile that plant roots might not be able to access and can make it available to them. They also perhaps contribute to crop resilience in other ways."
"We know that plants like flax and buckwheat are also important in being able to help to move nutrients between other plants in the whole system. Flax is really important. It's not a legume, but we have seen, with labeling studies, some micronutrients move between flax plants and other plants through mycorrhizal fungi as there have been demands."
"With the genetics that we already have today on many crops, there is the potential to increase yields anywhere from 30 to 100 percent."
"[W]hen we had more insect species within a cornfield, there just weren't pests. We did not have 'pest' problems anymore."
"What causes pests is a reduction in biodiversity. When you buy a jug, you are counteracting nature's ability to fight that pest. You are causing pest problems. Then you have to buy another jug in order to control those pests. It's this wicked treadmill that just keeps spiraling."
"Fundamentally, reducing or eliminating tillage from youe operation is the first step. Never leaving your soil bare is the next. Increasing plant diversity whenever possible on your field - be that crop rotation, be that field margins, be that intercropping, be that interseeding cover crops in your crop rows. Those are all great practices that work. And then, finally, integrating animals and crops together in the same place at the same time. When a system has these elements, they don't have pests."
"The question that I always ask farmers who come visit is, 'How often can you lose a crop and make more money than the neighbors do?' And the answer is, 'Every single time when you're farming regeneratively.' Every time - because you're stacking enterprises - your farm is a resilient business model. You're not tying your entire livelihood to a single commodity."
"You save bees if you heal the soil."
"The bees' die-off is totally a symptom of the simplification of our food system - the lack of floral resources: flowers, nectar, and pollen for the bees to eat. Nutritionally, they're starving."
"Read books and study nature. And when the two don't agree, throw away the books."
"[The pioneer of spraying chemicals for weed control] wrote that cultural practices form the basis of all weed control, while the various chemical means should be regarded as auxiliary only."
"I think the bigger answer is that we need to be open to what the soil is showing us and be more flexible in our rotations. Think first of what will make the soil healthy and secondly of what's bringing the highest price."
"Ninety percent of nutrient imbalances are created by the grower. It's absolutely incredible. Many of the recommendations that we consist of discontinuing product applications or positioning them at a different time."
"These are symptoms. Modern agriculture has gone to being a series of materials - things that we can buy - that make us able to continue the bad behavior, the offending behavior. But we never deal with the actual underlying problem, which is why there's damage to the long-term productivity of the soil."
"When we started using sap analysis on farms to see what plants were actually absorbing, on many farms - I would say most - we can cut nitrogen application rates from 30 to 50 percent or more, with no decrease in the nitrogen levels in the plant."
"I would recommend that they allow the ground to go fallow for at least one season. What you're doing is allowing the weeds to grow that want to grow on that soil because they're going to do their best to improve it. You want to disc the weeds into the ground because all of that organic matter needs to go back into the soil."
"The second thing you want to do is to apply about five pounds per acre of sugar as often as you can afford."
"Insects are only tuned in to the healthy plant. No insect will ever attack a healthy plant. What they're zooming in on is the unhealthy plant because it's digestible. Healthy plants are not digestible."
"If you believe that insects are attracted to unhealthy plants, your whole thinking changes on insects. Suddenly, you have no use for insecticides. It just follows with that level of thinking because you realize, 'Well, I'm not competing with insects. They're just eating some of my garbage plants that I shouldn't be eating. So I really don't need to spray them anymore.'"
"I'm not using any herbicides or fungicides. I'm just not going that route. I use insects as indicators. I go out and check my corn plants, for example, and I look to see if they're being attacked. If they are, I determine what insect is attacking them, and I figure out why they aren't healthy."
"But are they asking their customers in any other way what they actually came in for? It's possible that they took something away simply because they had to; they didn't have enough time to make another stop. But they won't be back. Or they're not overly enthusiastic about what they took away."
"What I'm advocating is for growers to be as informed as possible about what their buyers expect, as a minimum, and what they apire to."
"You'd be as informed as possible about some of the topics we covered - about what people expect in the product. Be conversant on them so that when there's an opportunity, you can bring up the quality of the products that you're selling - the ones that can't be seen."
"Understand what it might take to provide a deeper red or a brighter yellow or a more penetrating blue or purple and what that could mean nutritionally, and from the standpoint of the flavor profile - we can't ignore that - and be able to converse about that with the buyer."
This book is a collection of discussions between John and many agricultural scientists and growers. John is the founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture, which is an incredible company trying to push forward regenerative agriculture that will help farmers, our food system, and the world. He also hosts the Regenerative Agriculture Podcast - one of my favorite podcasts! - where some of these discussions are from.
The discussions in here spread over a wide array of topics within the realm of agronomy: from a fourth phase of water, to growing more nutrient dense food, to regenerating soil health. I was really interested in a lot of these topics and learned a bunch about them.
The reason why this did not get a higher rating is that this book is not for the faint of heart! It delves into some very specific biological functions of plants and soil that I definitely didn't completely understand.
That being said, apart from those, (and even there, getting the overall gist) I enjoyed learning some new knowledge and hearing even more about the goals, ways, and means of regenerative agriculture.
If you're interested in learning more about the future of farming, either pick up John's book, listen to his podcast, or go do some research about his company.
Quotes:
"The crop that immediately precedes your target crop is going to provide about 85 percent of the overall disease-suppressing effect."
"We can manage disease and pathogenicity based on how we manage our soils, from a cultural perspective."
"It doesn't have to be every year, but there are some changes that take place with long-term no-till that reduce the efficiency of the ecology - for nitrogen especially."
"You don't have to beat your soil to death to get those effects. It's just a matter of getting enough shift in that soil biology, and enough activity, and we get the desired result from a nutrient standpoint."
"'The biochemical genetics of that plant are about 1,100 bushels.' That's what we could do if we managed the environment and the plant in a proper manner and provided the expression."
"Again, we were producing more than we knew what to do with. I don't know what we'd do with all the corn that we currently produce if we weren't producing so much ethanol. I mean, that's the way to use your crop: find a new market for it. Certainly, population growth is a long way from requiring our current production. We could produce enough food for about fifteen billion people with about 30 percent less land - if we wanted to really do that, if we really needed to do that - with the technology that we had in 1964."
"The greatest need, anyway, is getting nutrient density back and eliminating the pesticides - especially glyphosate. Chuck Benbrook's research in Washington State says that on a 0 to 100 scale, from a health standpoint, glyphosate is about 82. All other pesticides together, other than the neonicotinoids - which would be at about 14 - are less than 1."
"Why would we desire to sustain our current levels of productivity and the externalized costs that we have?"
"But on the other hand, we can change that system quickly. I think this is the framework that we need to be talking about. When we go to a system where we add cover crops, and we reduce the tillage intensity by going to strip-till or no-till, we find that within one year, we can change that negative carbon balance into a positive carbon balance. Then we can put more dividends from that plant back into the soil biology. We go from a negative to a positive carbon balance."
"Yes, and even more amazing is that over a two-year period, we doubled the microbial biomass in the upper twelve inches of that [soil] profile."
"We see that within one growing season, the cover crop has already changed the aggregates in the upper soil surface. We've already seen it change the carbon cycle. In the [cover crop] cocktail, we see a much higher CO2 level, which is indicative of biological activity. We see a better oxygen content in the air - we've opened up the pores, so we get better oxygen exchange between the soil and the atmosphere. We see that we've changed the aggregates. We're putting more carbon in there."
"We have an agribusiness ecosystem that has developed in which our crop have generally become commodities, operating on very low margins, combined with the challenge that we have historically externalized many of our costs. We have externalized the environmental pollution that has been caused by some of the toxins and pesticides that we've used - fertilizers, nitrates, and water, etc."
"The other thing I've spent a lot of time now looking at is water-use sufficiency. How much crop do we get per unit of water used by that crop?"
"As a scientist, I never use the word 'never'! But you're right. Nitrogen is not our limiting parameter."
"[Genetically modified] crops and these plants may have the capacity to actually develop a disease-enhancing soil profile"
"When you use intense nitrogen inputs, like anhydrous ammonia, and you're not putting in more organic residues - whether from the crop, or with cover crops, or with organic amendments like manures and compost - that nitrogen has to be used. If it's not all used by the crop, the microbes are going to use it, and they are going to use whatever carbon is available in the soil. I'm certain that's where a lot of that depletion in the organic matter is happening."
"Some figures released in December of 2017 stated that we produced enough food on this planet in 2016 to feed fourteen billion people. Think about that: we have approximately 7.8 billion people in the world, but we produced enough food to feed fourteen billion. Farmers and ranchers are shooting themselves in the foot if they think they have to increase production to feed the world. There's already enough production out there."
"You tie your hands and limit yourself when you're in this commoditized, industrialized mindset. Producers need to learn how to adapt and observe, and to change according to conditions."
"Over the past nine years, our average net return per acre is $951. Now, how many people out there grow rye and hairy vetch and then combine it and sell it? Not very many. Bingo. People laugh at me because I'm different, but I laugh at them because they're all the same!"
"When I was in my conventional mindset, I used to wake up every day trying to decide what I was going to kill that day. Was it going to be a weed? Was it going to be a fungus? Was it going to be a pest? I was going to kill something every day. Now I wake up thinking about how to get more life onto my operation, and it's much more enjoyable working with life tham with death."
"Look at the work of Dr. Jonathan Lundgren - he just released a peer-reviewed paper that shows that regenerative farms and ranches are much more profitable, and they simultaneously improve their ecosystems compared to those that are using, in this case, stacked-trait corn genetics."
"I understand that it's a bit overwhelming, but I tell producers to just try something. Just do something, but don't think you have to do it all."
"[A]s long as he continues to use synthetic fertilizers, he can never expect to regenerate soil and plants to their full potential."
"[Mycorrhizal fungi] will provide the nutrients to the plants if the plants are required to give that photosynthetically derived carbon to the mycorrhizal fungi - and the consortium of organisms that work with the mycorrhizal fungi - in order to get those nutrients."
"[W]hen you apply the soluble phosphorus fertilizers, you essentially remove the need for the plant to have a symbiotic relationship with mycorrhizae because they can already obtain a generous supply of phosphorus."
"Soluble fertilizer is going to do the most damage as far as outsourcing the jobs of the microbial community. So, as much as possible, if you can, avoid those soluble inorganic types of fertilizers. The organic fertilizers are not going to have that same level of issue because, for them to work, they have to be broken down by the microbial communities."
"[M]ycorrhizal fungi, and possibly other fungi as well, can access water in the soil profile that plant roots might not be able to access and can make it available to them. They also perhaps contribute to crop resilience in other ways."
"We know that plants like flax and buckwheat are also important in being able to help to move nutrients between other plants in the whole system. Flax is really important. It's not a legume, but we have seen, with labeling studies, some micronutrients move between flax plants and other plants through mycorrhizal fungi as there have been demands."
"With the genetics that we already have today on many crops, there is the potential to increase yields anywhere from 30 to 100 percent."
"[W]hen we had more insect species within a cornfield, there just weren't pests. We did not have 'pest' problems anymore."
"What causes pests is a reduction in biodiversity. When you buy a jug, you are counteracting nature's ability to fight that pest. You are causing pest problems. Then you have to buy another jug in order to control those pests. It's this wicked treadmill that just keeps spiraling."
"Fundamentally, reducing or eliminating tillage from youe operation is the first step. Never leaving your soil bare is the next. Increasing plant diversity whenever possible on your field - be that crop rotation, be that field margins, be that intercropping, be that interseeding cover crops in your crop rows. Those are all great practices that work. And then, finally, integrating animals and crops together in the same place at the same time. When a system has these elements, they don't have pests."
"The question that I always ask farmers who come visit is, 'How often can you lose a crop and make more money than the neighbors do?' And the answer is, 'Every single time when you're farming regeneratively.' Every time - because you're stacking enterprises - your farm is a resilient business model. You're not tying your entire livelihood to a single commodity."
"You save bees if you heal the soil."
"The bees' die-off is totally a symptom of the simplification of our food system - the lack of floral resources: flowers, nectar, and pollen for the bees to eat. Nutritionally, they're starving."
"Read books and study nature. And when the two don't agree, throw away the books."
"[The pioneer of spraying chemicals for weed control] wrote that cultural practices form the basis of all weed control, while the various chemical means should be regarded as auxiliary only."
"I think the bigger answer is that we need to be open to what the soil is showing us and be more flexible in our rotations. Think first of what will make the soil healthy and secondly of what's bringing the highest price."
"Ninety percent of nutrient imbalances are created by the grower. It's absolutely incredible. Many of the recommendations that we consist of discontinuing product applications or positioning them at a different time."
"These are symptoms. Modern agriculture has gone to being a series of materials - things that we can buy - that make us able to continue the bad behavior, the offending behavior. But we never deal with the actual underlying problem, which is why there's damage to the long-term productivity of the soil."
"When we started using sap analysis on farms to see what plants were actually absorbing, on many farms - I would say most - we can cut nitrogen application rates from 30 to 50 percent or more, with no decrease in the nitrogen levels in the plant."
"I would recommend that they allow the ground to go fallow for at least one season. What you're doing is allowing the weeds to grow that want to grow on that soil because they're going to do their best to improve it. You want to disc the weeds into the ground because all of that organic matter needs to go back into the soil."
"The second thing you want to do is to apply about five pounds per acre of sugar as often as you can afford."
"Insects are only tuned in to the healthy plant. No insect will ever attack a healthy plant. What they're zooming in on is the unhealthy plant because it's digestible. Healthy plants are not digestible."
"If you believe that insects are attracted to unhealthy plants, your whole thinking changes on insects. Suddenly, you have no use for insecticides. It just follows with that level of thinking because you realize, 'Well, I'm not competing with insects. They're just eating some of my garbage plants that I shouldn't be eating. So I really don't need to spray them anymore.'"
"I'm not using any herbicides or fungicides. I'm just not going that route. I use insects as indicators. I go out and check my corn plants, for example, and I look to see if they're being attacked. If they are, I determine what insect is attacking them, and I figure out why they aren't healthy."
"But are they asking their customers in any other way what they actually came in for? It's possible that they took something away simply because they had to; they didn't have enough time to make another stop. But they won't be back. Or they're not overly enthusiastic about what they took away."
"What I'm advocating is for growers to be as informed as possible about what their buyers expect, as a minimum, and what they apire to."
"You'd be as informed as possible about some of the topics we covered - about what people expect in the product. Be conversant on them so that when there's an opportunity, you can bring up the quality of the products that you're selling - the ones that can't be seen."
"Understand what it might take to provide a deeper red or a brighter yellow or a more penetrating blue or purple and what that could mean nutritionally, and from the standpoint of the flavor profile - we can't ignore that - and be able to converse about that with the buyer."
October 11, 2023
Read this book and enjoy the best of the best interviews.
How can you reclaim polluted soils? Read about Dr. Tom Dykstra.
Want to learn fascinating things about insects? Read about Dr. Jonathon Lundgren.
John Kempf's articles in the Acres magazine have always sparked my interest. This book is no different. Obviously,I need to follow his podcasts.
How can you reclaim polluted soils? Read about Dr. Tom Dykstra.
Want to learn fascinating things about insects? Read about Dr. Jonathon Lundgren.
John Kempf's articles in the Acres magazine have always sparked my interest. This book is no different. Obviously,I need to follow his podcasts.
September 7, 2023
I am a huge fan of John Kempf and his podcast, Regenerative Agriculture Podcast. This book is a great resource to revisit the podcasts in a book format at your own pace. I hope so see more volumes soon!
September 29, 2024
I found this book incredibly inspiring and it made my brain bubble with ideas. Highly recommend.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews