There’s a lot of information about the relationship between agriculture and the environment. Unfortunately, much of it isn’t very good. Come here for a little more nuance.
A Farmer’s Guide to Planting and Protecting Trees, Part Two The first years are the hardest, but nature finds a way If you missed last week’s post about all the benefits trees bring, particularly when planted on farms, read it here. Once trees make it through the tender first few years and have a chance...
The Problem There’s a steady drumbeat of bad news associated with farming. Agriculture plays a role in topics like climate change, topsoil loss, fertilizer pollution, and water depletion. Even as consumers and governments seek to remediate these, global population growth and increasing affluence pressure the existing food system to increase production. The tension between efficiently...
Website Epicurious recently announced that it will no longer be publishing recipes featuring beef. The statement itself is so milquetoast that, despite my best efforts, I have not been able to summon much in the way of righteous indignation. But I am concerned about the ignorance it represents. The exclusive justification for the move is environmental. In...
When it comes to agriculture ‘organic’ and ‘regenerative’ are two words that should mean the same thing. Both conjure pictures of green pastures dotted with contented sheep, clean air, crisp veggies, deep, healthy soil and basically any other positive association farming has managed to pick up over the years. But as is so often the...
By Garth Brown In last week's newsletter I linked to an article that discussed the mysterious circumstances in which New York agricultural workers were excluded from early vaccine eligibility, contrary to CDC recommendations. If most agricultural workers were like me this would make quite a lot of sense. Because I am on a family farm,...
By Edmund Brown Last week in the newsletter Garth used a photo I took of our pigs in the woods. The lead photo in all its anodyne glory shows a bramble patch, and then the pig pic shows the same brambles but zoomed back about 20 feet. This fall I’ve run the pigs along the...
By Garth Brown As a child I loved looking at pictures of Rube Goldberg machines. In case you’re unfamiliar with the concept, these are fanciful mechanisms that accomplish a simple task in a ridiculously complicated manner. So in a typical instance an alarm clock vibrates a ball off a table, which spins a wheel, which knocks over a...
By Edmund Brown Two weeks ago I mentioned rotational grazing. I thought this week perhaps it would be interesting to show all the hardware I use to keep the cows on fresh grass every day. First, a quick summary of the manifold reasons that rotational grazing is a worthwhile practice. Grasses and ruminants co-evolved to...
By Garth Brown An excellent article in The Counter examines the conflict over whether grazing cattle could decrease fires on western rangelands. Proponents say cows could help by removing excess cheatgrass, which is a significant fuel for the fires. Opponents counter that this may be true in the short term, but that in the long run the impact...
By Garth Brown In the public imagination (at least, in my imagined version of the public imagination) farming remains a bucolic activity, consisting of crickets chirping over a field of corn softly lit by the setting sun, while a few cows meander towards the barn for the evening milking. This bears little resemblance to reality,...