A Long-Term Plan: Regenerative Farming
Small farms are being held back. It’s time for a new vision. It’s time for bold new regenerative farming policies that restore both ecosystems and rural communities. We must avoid or eliminate policies that can be exploited by industrial producers at the expense of small or midsize farmers.
“As it stands now, it is not the farmer who is being subsidized so much as the lords of corporate agribusiness. Why shouldn’t the profits be plowed back into the rural community instead?” —Wes Jackson, Nature as Measure
The following is an excerpt from Small Farm Republic by John Klar. It has been adapted for the web.
The Benefits of A Long-Term Regenerative Farming Plan
The policies I propose as a regenerative politics will quickly and cost efficiently advance environmental benefits while preserving and nurturing liberties, food security, human health, and rural economies and cultures. These policies are tailored to focus resources on regenerative practices by reversing historic regulatory, tax, and subsidization policies that have favored large agricultural interests. It also seeks to implement flexible supports for local food production, processing, and distribution that are market-based and economically beneficial.
To improve regulatory policies on small farms, government rules should be eliminated that promote unsustainable or destructive food production or that prevent sustainable or more healthful agricultural or processing practices.32
To effectively implement food production and regenerative agriculture policy, a thoughtful long-term plan would:
- Implement a five-year (or other intermediate period) of tax credits supporting local food production, in concert with the gradual phasing out of current federal subsidies for industrially produced monoculture crops.
- Offer favorable credit terms and/or grants and tax benefits including accelerated depreciation for water and soil preserving technologies and equipment.
- Prohibit zoning regulations that interfere with basic American rights to grow food.
- Enhance public marketing and distribution networks for locally produced food.
- Implement immediate favorable regulatory revisions to protect and encourage investment in small-scale, widely dispersed slaughtering and processing facilities, milk houses, cheese houses, and other value-added food production facilities, including maple syrup.
- Invest in research and development of programs to reduce waste (especially food waste) and to compost more biomass (especially food waste).
- Inform the citizenry about the benefits of regenerative agriculture and local farming. Public relations is pivotal to reversing misinformation about food and correcting disastrous stigma against the farmers who are needed now more than ever.
- Dramatically shift university investment away from industry-controlled research that undermines farmers and the environment and saps talent for industrial hegemony and instead fund research into regenerative techniques that reduce fossil fuel and fertilizer dependency, secure nutrients in soils, and protect plants and animals from pests and disease using natural organic (chemical- free) methods.
Additional areas for creative policy discussions include:
- Local real estate tax credits for small- and medium-sized farms, or federal income tax credits designed to offset those property taxes. This would particularly benefit farmers in states (such as Vermont) with exceptionally high property taxes (often attributable to regressive funding of education using real estate).
- Tax credits or grants for additional employment hires at small farms.
- Tax credits or grants linked to diversifying products or expanding processing or value-added products.
- Link tax benefits to increased productivity per acre.
- Tax credits for reduced erosion.
The important factor is to avoid or eliminate policies that can be exploited by large industrial producers at the expense of small or midsize farming operations.
This includes agricultural carbon markets, which suffer from numerous weaknesses including: failure to measure microbial improvements rather than simply carbon; unreliability and inconsistency of carbon measurements; ability of large producers to benefit at the expense of small and family farms; the encouragement of ongoing pollution by credit purchasers (who essentially buy “pollution indulgences”); insecure payment guarantees; rewarding chemical-based operations at the expense of organic. An insightful discussion of the many problems with agricultural carbon markets is “Agricultural Carbon Markets, Payments, and Data: Big Ag’s Latest Power Grab,” a March 2023 policy brief prepared jointly by Open Markets Institute and Friends of the Earth.33
Notes
32. Linnekin, Biting the Hand That Feeds Us, 12.
33. Open Markets Institute and Friends of the Earth, “Agricultural Carbon Markets, Payments, and Data: Big Ag’s Latest Power Grab,” March 2023, https://foe.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Carbon-Markets-Report_ExecutiveSummary_Final.pdf.
Recommended Reads
Read The Book
Small Farm Republic
Why Conservatives Must Embrace Local Agriculture, Reject Climate Alarmism, and Lead an Environmental Revival
$16.22
You may like...
-
Original price was: $20.00.$13.00Current price is: $13.00. -
Original price was: $22.95.$14.92Current price is: $14.92. -
Original price was: $24.95.$16.22Current price is: $16.22.
Recent Articles
Living in a colder climate doesn’t mean you need to give up on more fragile plants. By adequately preparing your less-hardy plants for the winter, you’ll set them up to survive and thrive! The following is an excerpt from Cold-Hardy Fruits and Nuts by Scott Serrano and Allyson Levy. It has been adapted for the web. Protect…
Read More
Want to keep growing great food during the cold months? Try growing winter carrots in your cold house! These carrots, which Eliot Coleman grows on his farm in the winter, are even sweeter and more flavorful than the more conventionally timed “spring carrots.” The following is an excerpt fromThe Winter Harvest Handbook by Eliot Coleman. It has…
Read More
Want to keep your protected crops heated and healthy all season? Get your greenhouse ready for winter with these snow removal tips! The following is an excerpt from The Greenhouse and Hoophouse Grower’s Handbook by Andrew Mefferd. It has been adapted for the web. (Photographs courtesy of Andrew Mefferd unless otherwise noted.) Dealing with snow…
Read More
Want to grow year-round, but a greenhouse feels like a big investment? The low tunnel is here to help! Low tunnels are less expensive than greenhouses and allow you to adjust & respond to the climate outside the tunnel. When it comes to cost and flexibility, low tunnels are the all-around winners. The following is…
Read More
These days, there are a record number of people growing their own food and other crops at home. Whether the homesteader in your life is new to the homesteading lifestyle or a seasoned pro, we’ve got your go-to gifts for anyone who grows everything themselves. In the first edition of The Organic Medicinal Herb Farmer,…
Read More