Following on from the previous post on Technology and the Futures of Farming, this post reflects my own personal translation of this into what it might mean for our farm, and pathways forwards that cultivate a healthy relationship to technology. Tangibly, on the ground, can technology be harnessed as a tool for regeneration without adverse consequences? Can we harmonise this relationship without detracting from the more important relationships to each other, soil and landscape? What might it take to model this on our scale and hopefully inspire a different sort of farming future to both the techno-industrialists and the stone age romanticists?
On our farm we are already carbon negative, according to our Farm Carbon Toolkit data and Carbon Calculator tool, storing an average of 217.2 tonnes CO2 per hectare (0-50cm). We are in the early years but already producing high yields of food for over 200 weekly homes, whilst restoring soil, water and biodiversity. These are not empty claims but from measurement and surveys, our soil organic matter has increased from 7-9% in our agroforestry field scale cropping, and from 7-18% in the market garden, with nutrient levels in both spaces increasing, and worm counts and soil biology results all showing positive results. The nutrient cycling, worm counts and carbon storage in the no-till market garden are on average 300% higher than a healthy baseline metric, and better than when we started on the land.. These results have not come about through magical technological innovation, but from the far more advanced and efficient tools of nature which we partner with: trees, soil microbiology, quorum sensing, plant intelligence, cover crop diversity, perennials, photosynthesis maximisation (i.e. syntropic farming), and a team of human hearts to run the operation and make decisions using Regenerative Intelligence and Intuition (no Artificial Intelligence needed in this case). We have of course relied on some appropriate human scale technology and tools to implement this: electric powered tools, a solar powered barn, a small tractor, computers and phones to measure and record, carbon calculators, soil and ecology laboratories. And we also have the vision to take some of this further, to expand our renewable energy, develop pioneering medium-scale tools for regenerative veg production, invest in an electric tractor and replace all our fossil fuels with sunlight energy (if we can find the financing and start-up to do all of this).
We are in an era of requiring urgent regeneration at scale, rather than just sustainability or just doing enough. the notsalgic part of me is content with just using simple hand tools, cultivating a small garden and growing for my immediate family and village, without particular need for much more complicated. The pragmatic part of me knows that it is too late for this, to just do our sustainability bits in quiet corners. As nature is so depleted in the UK, we are invited to facilitate and be of service to a rapid regeneration, and to go above and beyond sustainability or individual action. We could continue as we are and do good enough, making compromises, using a diesel tractor, cultivating land and compacting soils, knowing that yes on the whole we are regenerating because the soil is overall improving, at least in a utilitarian sense. We are regenerating biodiversity but also working to an extend against some species, pests and animals… We are growing without chemicals but also requiring horticultural plastics, mesh and membranes for ‘natural’ weed and pest control. We can continue to be carbon negative on our farm, but beyond these pockets, the wider village and bioregion will continue to emit, degrade and degenerate due to our profit-based systemic design. And flipping this, what if our aspiration was to be regenerative and carbon negative as a village, or as a bioregion, and what if our farm and its ripple effects can play a wider role beyond the farm gates? We can’t rely on everyone individually doing their bit for sustainability, the world needs to reach a tipping point first, that begins to reverse the locked in climatic and ecological breaking points, and we’ve a long way to go.
What’s this got to do with technology? In my reading technology is broadly defined as a set of tools & methods which support, enable or speed up a task. The task at hand is regeneration and restoration, and we need appropriate technologies to support in this. Crucially, technology must support not hinder the natural technologies that do a far better job (trees, plants, fungi, humans, beavers, rivers). The tech must be designed from first principles with this aim, to be of service to life and humanity, rather than designed for profit and more efficient extraction. This requires different financial models and different politics for sure, but we can also all cultivate the healthy technology relationships in our own spheres of life to begin modelling this shift, and we can find grassroots ways to model and pioneer the appropriate technology that is rooted in regenerative intelligence and intuition. Technology has largely bought us, farmers and communities alike, away from the land. I see farmers in big industrial fields on a GPS tractor with AI sprayers, on their smartphone scrolling social media. Mental health declining in proportion from disconnect from the land, and from an economics that puts farmers at the bottom, and funnels food dollars to tech companies and agri-industry. This is the current and likely future trajectory of tech and farming, but a different way is possible. Appropriate technology can aid us reconnecting to the land, freeing up farmers time/balance, support soil and ecology monitoring (to aid our own observation and intuition), cultivate soil in less destructive ways, transition to regenerative and organic, and produce healthy nutrient dense food at affordable rates for a growing population. All of this is possible if we partner with life and design tools from an ethical base. This will play out differently in every context and farm but I will outline some examples of how this could tangibly look on our farm, to ground the theoretical above with the pragmatic roots in the land. This action-reflection dynamic is a key point to get right, because the tech and information industry is currently dominated by top down science and tech, rather than being at least equally informed by farmers, communities and nature.
On our farm we have come to see our weaknesses and compromises as critical gifts for leverage and learning. This is a rooted in the permaculture principle of “the problem is the solution”, and combined with a regenerative mindset of resilience and the simple wisdom of learning from failures. Just some of the critical leverage points I have identified on our farm are below, with an oversimplified summary of their diagnosis and prognosis in relation to appropriate technology (AT) and Regenerative Intelligence (RI).
Source | Diagnosis | Prognosis with AT & RI | Economics note |
Diesel tractor | Inefficiently using lots of fossil fuels to drag heavy metal around and harm soil, with huge upkeep/repairs/stress associated | Replacement with an electric tractor powered by our solar panel array and a lightweight robotic weeder (already in operation at fellow growers Farringtons organic and freeing up more time for land stewardship and soil care). | £45,000- £60,000 |
Refrigerated delivery van | Most deliveries by e-bike but for further afield customers and freshness a van is needed and a large source of our emissions from farm | Replace with electric refrigerated van for distance deliveries and upgrade our delivery e-bikes to lithium ion batteries to go further and carry more for the inner city and town deliveries at scale | £29,000 |
Lack of small-medium scale tool innovation and production in UK | Most specialist market garden and net zero tools are imported from US and EU at high costs and there are few places of design, innovation and production in UK (legacy from Thatcher/Reagan erosion of production economy). | Developing a ‘Innovate to Regenerate’ workshop on farm (and in collaboration with nearby partners in engineering with large commercial workshops) to develop the pioneering net-zero tools for regenerative farming. Working with ReAg tools to distribute (who currently have to import similar tools at great cost and inefficiency, and often tools not built for our context/soils) | £9250 for initial workshop and start-up, then further investment model to follow for specific prototypes |
Volume of administrative time for complex organisation | inefficiency of manual invoicing, comms, marketing and distribution models. Detracts farmer focus from the real land and people relationships. | Looking at sofwares and appropriate AI for the purposes of streamlining some of these manual and repetitive processes. Also softwares for complex soil and ecology mapping to monitor much more regularly and accurately. | £3950 to set up then a cost saving of £5800 annually |
Surplus roof space, missing out on photosynthesis on farm, and paying electricity bills in the winter | Not enough solar panels on roof, and other surplus space where we can generate energy and capture sunlight. | Upgrade our solar array from 5kW to 35kW and assess other opportunities for solar on vehicle rooftops and innovative solar cells on polytunnel plastic. | Up-front cost of £27,550 Solar extension saves 11.4 tCO2e and £11,284 annually
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Lack of reliable year-round food production | Increasingly extreme climatic shifts combined with the natural hungry gap in the UK climate which limits the availability of food and thus year-round farm incomes. Need to grow hardier varieties (such as perennial veg) and improve winter storage | a) Growing more perennial fruits, nuts and vegetables b) Innovative (and traditional) storage for year round root and fruit crops c) (long term) taking on commercial size greenhouses on separate land site – retrofit with solar panel greenhouse tech | a) £2200 b) £3450 c) £35,000-45,000 |
These are just some initial ideas and thought experiments that help to develop the practical considerations with future technology relationships, and the numbers attached are to demonstrate a) the reason that most farms cannot invest in such things, even if they are ‘no-brainers’ and low hanging fruit solutions saving lots of carbon and energy. Most farms run at a loss each year, leaving a grand sum of less than zero to re-invest. We have carved out creative ways to operate viably, pay living wages and generate £15-22k surplus at the end of each financial year to reinvest in land and people. We have prioritised this for some essential farm start-up costs, paying growers a better wage, sick pay etc. leaving little for more future thinking changes and pioneering solutions. What if farmers were freed up to be the innovators, researchers and leaders in this regenerative revolution, and abundantly resourced to do this? It would only take a few % of military budget to pay all farmers in the UK to have a basic income floor, or just 1% of the fossil fuel subsidies, or a fraction of 0.1% of what goes into innovation and tech – it need not even leave that budget area but be redirected into a new form of technological innovation – one in my view that is far more likely to generate immediate impact, success, regeneration and solutions on the ground than the billions poured into unproven technologies like carbon capture and storage or soil free farming. What if it is our time to lead now as farmers and communities, not the academics or techies or politicians or economists that have largely failed to avert systemic collapse.. sure we’ll need everyone and need support from all these fields, but power needs to rebalance so it is at least more equally in the hands of those who work the land, produce the basic needs for society and tirelessly steward our natural environment. Now we need to step from stewardship within a broken paradigm into regeneration and prefiguration of a new paradigm.
In the meantime, assuming government and the ‘free market’ is not going to suddenly resource farmers to lead on solutions, we need creative financing models and community support. This blog post is in part an invitation into this, to be part of our regional regeneration and help farmers, land stewards and communities to take change into their own hands. Perhaps this comes in the form of buying food more locally, directly supporting a local farm, or helping fundraise one of the above solutions. Or reaching out to collaborate and share skills, resources, ideas and innovations for a Regenerative Intelligence future , one that connects us rather than separating us further. We are here as farmers ready to be of service and implement the real solutions on the ground and unashamed to ask for help on this mission. We can’t do it alone, we do not have the skillsets, finances, resources, or collective voice to make the changes in isolation. The regeneration must be collaborative and follow different power models to those that got us into this mess. This is rooted in right relationship. Technology may further erode land and people relationships and catapult us further into global tipping points past planetary boundaries, or we may collectively choose to re-define the role of technology and our right relationship with it in in our own contexts; inviting a Regenerative Intelligence rooted in human-scale tools that serve life by design, innovate to regenerate and cultivate reconnection. Perhaps we can cultivate a sense of possibility and curiosity around appropriate technology in farming, married with a generous pinch of discernment. And the synthesis of these two seemingly opposite worldviews could be a doorway into new tipping points, ones of planetary recovery and abundance, one of more harmonious people, farming and nature relationships. Tapping into our own Regenerative Intelligence and intuition whilst humbly learning from both the ancient practices of yesterday and the pioneering tools of tomorrow.
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