Regenerating the commons

All of this talk in the media about the farm crisis happening in America right now gets me thinking about solutions. I originally wrote this article for Edible San Antonio. It’s more pertinent today than it was a few years ago.

In recent years the term sustainable has not set well with me. By definition the word sustainable means “to be maintained at a certain rate or level.” In the farming and food world it gets thrown around all day long because we are supposedly doing great things that are “sustainable.” If my goal is to simply maintain the status quo and be sustainable then I’m in the wrong business. Our rural communities and farm land are in the pits right now. For the past Century there has been a mass exodus and brain drain in rural America because young folks simply leave for life in the big city. There are all sorts of reasons that factor into this population shift. Our land is being plowed, sprayed, over-grazed and mismanaged to the point of absolute depletion. Environmentalists will argue that we simply need to take humans out of the picture and nature will fix itself. Have you visited some of these places? Especially in the West there is massive erosion, a lack of vegetation and little diversity. Through human interference we removed most of the large herbivores that once roamed these places such as the American Bison. Bison traveled in large herds sometimes numbering into the tens of thousands. They would graze an area and move onto the next, often not returning until the land was fully recovered a year later. Unfortunately, the United States government thought it was a good agenda to remove the bison (and ultimately the native people) from this great landscape. This land doesn’t need to be sustained in its depleted state, it needs to be regenerated into a productive, ecologically sound landscape through good agricultural practices.  I don’t think we need to practice sustainable agriculture; we need to practice regenerative agriculture.

We need to regenerate the commons by building more soil, more water, and more community. It is our duty as stewards of the land to leave more than when we came. At Parker Creek Ranch we strive to rebuild the commons every day. In 2010 we began to rebuild the soil at our farm through two primary methods: the daily movement of livestock and subsoiling our pastures. In March 2011 we took our first soil samples and learned that our soil had virtually no organic matter and was heavily salted from the frequent use of Nitrogen fertilizers. In March 2017, our soil samples portrayed an entirely different picture. In just 6 years of good management we have increased our organic matter to almost 5%, salt levels have normalized, and micro nutrients are on the rise to normal levels. Beyond the soil tests, the structure of our soil has improved and the pastures are healthier and more vigorous than they have been in many years. As for water, we have fenced off the majority of our namesake the Parker Creek in an effort to restore wildlife habitat, we subsoil our pastures to capture every inch of water that falls on the land, and we leave behind plenty of grass and plant residue which allows the pastures to recover quicker and ultimately reduces rainfall runoff. The results are astounding, our pastures grow grass during low rainfall time periods and the creek runs more frequently than it has in the past. All of these great management practices are achieved primarily through livestock and good management. Ultimately it all results in a clean, nutritious product for people’s tables. This is where the regeneration of rural communities starts. It puts farmers back in the pastures because it’s a challenging, beautiful, non-toxic work environment and the demand for nutritious food is greater than ever. Even more community is built when farmers direct market their products to families and restaurants. I am proud to say that many of our customers are our friends. We hold each other accountable to do the right thing. Consumers buying from local, regenerative farms are voting with their dollar to regenerate the Earth and our communities one purchase at a time. What young aspiring farmer wouldn’t want to be a part of such a beautiful, vibrant agricultural landscape and community?