Perspective: Changing the trajectory of modern agriculture

Article Courtesy of AGDAILY (see original article here)

By Jon Stika

February 04, 2021

Money talks, and what producers spend their money on drives modern agriculture. Producers purchase inputs based on what they feel are the needs of their soil and crops. They determine those needs by sampling and testing both soil and plants, studying yield maps, personal experience, plant-tissue testing, and other current technologies to fine tune their systems of crop production. This is all based on time-tested methods that match inputs to a crop yield response. A proven process of successful soil and plant management.

Or is it?

Depending upon the health of a given soil, the need for producer-purchased inputs can vary dramatically. Healthy, functioning soils require a fraction of the inputs of dysfunctional soil. Our current revered process of soil and plant management was developed around dysfunctional soil and the corresponding inputs that will generate yields on those dysfunctional soils.

Think about it. By the time modern input-based agronomy (built on soil testing and fertilizer applications to achieve a given yield response) was developed, the soils we were testing had already been severely degraded by decades of tillage and erosion.

As a result, we have for some time regarded dysfunctional soil as “normal.” If a person is unhealthy, we seek to restore them to full health and capacity to function. If the engine in a tractor is running poorly, we seek to restore it to full horsepower. When something is not functioning to its full potential, we refer back to the source of how that thing was originally designed to function in order to restore it. Except for the soil. We continue to overlook poorly functioning soil as a problem because we have come to accept it in its current state of disrepair. We have since built all of our agronomic practices around that standard of dysfunctional soil. Because we have not recognized the need to restore the capacity of the soil to function, it continues to decline, requiring ever-increasing inputs to make up the difference.

Because the paradigm of managing dysfunctional soil by applying inputs has enveloped the entirety of agriculture, it seems that no one can see the way out. Without a great awakening and corresponding paradigm shift, the insidious decline of our soil and rural economies will continue. Because most producers are ignorant of how fully functioning soil should perform, the paradigm persists.

Agricultural research in the interest of helping producers is currently focused on managing dysfunctional soil with inputs, often funded by an agricultural industry that sells those inputs to farmers. So, the paradigm persists, with producers footing the bill as they try to prop up soils that continue to decline. Regrettably, this is a death spiral for farmers. Some will get bigger before they get out, but the downward spiral is the same.

While the current systems of modern agronomy strive to satisfy the demands of producers to meet their crop yield goals, only a small minority of producers are aware that restoring their soils to a higher level of functionality is the real issue they face if they are to stay in business.

Those few enlightened producers are working their way toward a goal of restoring the capacity of their soils to function while becoming more profitable at the same time. Crop yield has never been a good metric for success. Profitability, while restoring soil health, might be a better way to measure success in agriculture.

I believe that an awakening of the urgent need to restore our soils must come from producers. It is producers that determine where the money will flow; not only to produce each crop, but for research that will help them restore their soil and become more profitable. I encourage producers to begin, or continue, to educate themselves on restoring the health of their soils, then set themselves on a path that will make it happen. What they spend their money on to achieve a restoration of both their soil and their profits will hopefully bring the folks in agricultural research and industry along that same path as well.

Courtesy of AGDAILY (see original article here)

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Living an irony in uncharted territory: When a bountiful maize harvest co-exists with hunger

Article Courtesy Of Daily Maverick

The irony of widespread reports of lockdown-related hunger, is that South Africa is experiencing one of its best-ever maize harvests.

As the reality of the catastrophic way in which the Covid-19 pandemic is being managed by the powers that be slowly sinks in, we realise that we’ve become the first people ever to put a stop to an entire, worldwide, economic system and everything else that is involved. Nations, several million strong, have willingly surrendered civil liberties long fought for with blood, sweat and tears. 

With load shedding Stage 6 a minor blip in the distant past, welcome to Offload100 (DBT) – the 100% offload of both the local and global economy. With no historic reference point, this is uncharted territory on a global scale. 

We are in a time that can be compared to a land marked on an ancient map by a DBT inscription (“Dragons Be There”), suggesting that beyond a known frontier, there might be dragons. This is an area saturated with unknowable unknowns: welcome to the new normal.

With Offload100 (DBT) in full swing, comes social fragmentation and polarisation combined with economic inequality. In this hour, we are asked to commit to physical distancing – shredding society into even more pieces. 

People have become afraid of each other, not willing to make contact, not even to look each other in the eye; a handshake a sign of ill-intent. Afraid of what might prowl in the cough and sneeze or what might lurk in the hands of a once close friend. Afraid of the unseen, the unknown, the dragons in the air – and so we profusely wash our hands and hide our faces behind masks. 

South Africa has seen some of the harshest Covid-19 responses globally, but at what price? Amidst the government’s obsession with control and ongoing bickering about who may and may not extend a hand of kindness in the form of a food parcel to a person in need, while consuming it themselves, unemployment is skyrocketing. It is estimated that unemployment will reach 35% in the third quarter of 2020, the highest it has ever been. While hovering around 25% for many years, suggesting one in four people is unemployed, we’re about to breach the one in three threshold (see the figure below). This is truly uncharted territory – beware the dragons!

https://tradingeconomics.com/south-africa/unemployment-rate

Ask Africa, in its Week 17 Covid-19 report, states that 33% of respondents in the survey went to bed hungry or without food for a day, while 44% were suffering from some form of emotional distress and were either afraid or depressed. 

This is supported by NIDS-CRAM which found that 47% of respondents reported that their households ran out of money to buy food in April 2020. It thus comes as no surprise that the news is awash with headlines such as “South Africa faces mass hunger”, “Children eat wild plants to survive”, “Child hunger on the rise”, “The biggest lockdown threat is hunger hunger everywhere”, “The horror of child hunger stalks our land”, and “South Africans are literally starving”.

With the future of South Africa at stake, let us not be masked by a blatantly obvious, yet tragic irony – with irony defined as an absurdity between what is expected and what occurs in reality. Given the facts above, with suggestions of famine reminiscent of times of war or depression, one would expect equally depressing crop harvests – yet the opposite is true.

Surrounded by a sea of hunger and political ineptness, South Arica is enjoying the second-largest maize harvest of all time, second only to the bumper 2016/17 crop, as shown in the figure below. 

The 2016/17 maize production was 16.7 million tonnes, with the expected production in 2019/20 to be 15.2 million tonnes, or about 250% higher than the 1994/95 harvest of 4.4 million tonnes. 

From me, a non-producer, a word of sincere gratitude and appreciation to all producers. Thank you. You have done your part.

DBT: With both hunger and unemployment at unprecedented levels, while the granaries are filled and politicians are seeking innovative routes to self-enrichment, the people’s patience is running out.  

There is a realisation that the prevailing hunger is not production-related, but rather institutional – and institutional problems require institutional solutions. Institutional solutions include the strengthening of relationships among all growers (large and small), and the shortening of the value chain between producers and consumers. 

It also includes improving ways to transfer knowledge pertaining to regenerative production methods that heal the land, and the enhanced capability to reach those who are in need with the stores at our disposal. To this end, initiatives such as Project Heal wish to contribute.

It is time for the government to step aside and allow caring South Africans to do what South Africans are great at uniting in the face of adversity, facing the storm, and caring for one another. DM

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