Everything, it turns out, comes with tradeoffs. Time is the universal example of this truism; each minute I spend on one activity is necessarily not spent on any of the infinite other things I might be doing, a fact I try to keep front and center whenever I pick up my phone.
In the world of farming the tradeoffs are much more material, and they generally hinge on productivity and cost. One way to view the history of farming is through the lens of productivity; as each acre of cultivated land has produced more food with less toil, we have nearly eliminated famine and given people the freedom to choose life paths beyond subsistence. In theory, using farm land as efficiently as possible leaves more land for other purposes, like parks and wilderness.
But maximizing productivity comes with obvious issues, especially the excessive use of fertilizers, which can degrade the soil and contaminate the water system, in addition to being wasteful. A farmer who doubles the fertilizer applied to move from 90% of the theoretically possible yield for a given crop to 95% will go bankrupt.
Regenerative agriculture struggles to admit to tradeoffs, but nowhere are they clearer. For farmers who grow corn and soybeans, controlling weeds is critical. At scale, there are only two practical ways to do this, which are cultivation (plowing) and herbicides.
Regenerative grain farmers must choose one of these. To the extent that it has a unifying principle, regenerative agriculture is about not disturbing the soil, which means virtually all grain grown under the name relies on herbicide at some point. To be sure, good regenerative farmers implement careful rotations to minimize the need for spraying, and many use a small fraction of what's applied by their conventional counterparts. But use it they do.
Because my farm only grows pasture, I luckily don't need to worry about this particular choice. But the way I raise animals also has tradeoffs. It is more time, labor, and land extensive than factory farms, which means production costs are higher at every step.
In theory the land use could also become an issue; grass fed beef and lamb take more space per animal than a feedlot does, even when you account for the land required to grow the corn that feeds the animals in confinement. I say this is a theoretical rather than an actual concern because as of now there are hundreds of thousands of acres of degraded farmland throughout the northeast that could be used to raise cows and sheep but are instead growing nothing but goldenrod. The story might be different a few decades from now, but at the moment land use isn't a problem around here.
Tradeoffs even extend to the garden. Last year I wrote a post going through all the different ways we've gardened. If you read it you'll notice that each practice comes with both benefits and problems.
That said, it's possible to improve. Right now the garden is the best its ever been. Aggressive hoeing has controlled the weeds, while cover crops and biochar are improving soil quality despite this tillage. Floating row covers protect the most vulnerable crops, and paying more attention to regular fertilizing has high demand crops like sweet corn and onions growing more vigorously than ever before, while attentive watering has grown celery that's actually edible.
But it's still far from perfect. The squash went in too late and don't look like they'll produce anything. I dropped the ball on planting some of the early greens, which means salads have been more limited than they should have been. Cover crop selection and management could be better.
In addition to these errors, next year will bring new challenges. The wonderful local greenhouse that has long started many of our veggies for us is closing, which means we'll have to do it ourselves and also attempt to direct seed many more plants. No doubt there will be failures and successes, and all we can do is hope for fewer of the former and more of the latter.