The soil on my farm feels like shag carpet.
Readers of a certain age will know what I mean. Shag carpet was popular in homes in the 1960s and 1970s. It looked like thick piles of yarn and walking on it delivered a sensation of cushiness.
On my farm in Maryland, I want the same softness in my soil—not the hard and compacted dirt that is more like today’s commercial carpet, popular in offices and similar spaces.
Soil is healthy when its microbes are breaking down organic matter and its earthworms are opening pores. You can feel it under your feet, like a shag carpet.
It’s what happens when we commit ourselves to regenerative agriculture, as we combine traditional practices with modern technology to create a farming ecology that feeds our communities safe and nutritious foods and passes our stewardship on to the next generation.
Our third-generation farm turned to regenerative agriculture in the 1960s, back when shag carpets were the rage. Nobody called it “regenerative agriculture”—the term came later—but that’s what it was. My predecessors took up no-till, which means they seeded and weeded with minimal disruptions to the soil, allowing it to retain moisture and biodiversity. They also planted cover crops, adding a layer of protection to fight soil erosion: a living blanket that keeps the soil covered in the winter. We keep it up today.
We’ve continued to innovate. In recent years, we’ve relied on precision agriculture, with its satellite imagery and GPS guidance. It makes us more efficient and improves the soil. Our real-time soil sensors and variable-rate seeding allow us to plant in exactly the right places and give our crops exactly the right nutrients, based on soil type and yield history. Productive ground that can support better growth rates gets more while poorer areas get less. Precision agriculture optimizes the resources we put into the ground, improves the resilience of our soil, reducing our environmental footprint while maximizing the use of our inputs.
Back in the days of shag carpets, when my father-in-law was farming, he would have seen these methods as “moonshot” technologies—the stuff of aspiration rather than reality.
We’re always trying novel approaches as we grow corn, soybeans, green beans, and wine grapes—and often with the goal of regenerating the soil. This year we’re testing a new additive in our planter that is supposed to make phosphorus more available to the plant. Our planter has an ‘in furrow’ feature which allows us to dribble nutrients or biologicals next to the seed as it is planted. Sort of like giving the seed a multi-vitamin as it is planted so that it germinates quickly and has an immediate boost of nutrients to thrive and emerge from the soil. In addition to the agronomic impact, we’re going to examine the environmental impact of this additive, because water quality is a major concern in our area, which is near the Chesapeake Bay.
I recently joined fellow members of the Global Farmer Network to write and sign a declaration on regenerative agriculture. “We believe regenerative agriculture is the way forward,” we wrote, as we seek “to produce high-quality food, feed, fuel, fiber, and forests, for resilient and dignified farming lives, and for a future that both nourishes and brings peace to both people and planet.”
We felt it was important for farmers to make a positive statement on behalf of regenerative agriculture. Non-farmers often dominate debates about farming and food. Regulators, activists, and industrialists raise their voices without referring to the people who work the land.
We saw this happen when an anti-science movement both drove and distorted policy conversations about genetic modification and other technologies.
Much of the response was reactive, to the detriment of farmers. It also frequently ignored one of the pillars of agricultural sustainability, which is economic. Farms must be economically sustainable if they’re also going to be environmentally sustainable.
We wanted to speak up as farmers to get in front of the conversation, as we move into an era when innovation is critical to progress and technology will increasingly improve and transform regenerative agriculture.
Soon, for example, I hope that developments in seed genetics and plant genomes will allow farmers to grow crops that capture atmospheric nitrogen and use it as fertilizer, thereby reducing our need for synthetic fertilizer.
Farmers are ready to embrace this kind of technology. People off the farm must join us and support us, for the sake of food security, environmental health, and rural economies.
When it comes to interior decoration, we may have moved past shag carpets—but the principles and goals of regenerative agriculture will always be in style.
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Sign the Farmer Declaration and join us as we affirm our commitment to regenerative agriculture as a pathway to improve ecological functions of farming, feed our communities safe and nutritious food, and secure a thriving future for generations to come with dignity and well-being of farming communities as top of mind.
Use the QR code, or click this link to sign.
A step in the right direction