I think that this is a great article.
As a scientist I think true regeneration is impossible. It is like the second law of thermodynamics.
The second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy of an isolated system can never decrease over time, and is constant if and only if all processes are reversible. Isolated systems spontaneously evolve towards thermodynamic equilibrium, the state with maximum entropy.
More simply stated any real world process or system will have some losses.
We can regenerate some biomes but only at the expense of some imported inputs. Outputs removed from the system will cause an increase in the need for more imported inputs. Actually biomes are not isolated systems so they possibly receive free inputs.
Free inputs, carbon dioxide from the air, nitrogen from the air and excrement, minerals from the wind (dust and meteorite fallout), water from rain and condensation. Solar radiation.
I take exception with this statement;
It does not take much reflection to realise that depleting the earth of precious minerals without being able to recycle them leads to quick degeneration.
Two words make this most problematic, recycle and quick. Also for clarity we might want to replace earth with soil. I would suggest instead:
It does not take much reflection to realize that depleting the SOIL of precious minerals without being able to REPLACE them leads to GRADUAL degeneration.
The rate of degeneration varies. I worked on a degenerative farm when I was young. While I worked there they actually cleared some forest to make new cropland and a house lot for my sister and her husband. They cut the trees and sawed them to lumber for the house. We pull and burned the stumps, brush and limbs. We dug the big rocks, spread the ash, plowed the ground and picked the smaller rocks. They planted the next year. It is now half a century later and this is still a productive field and the other fields some even a hundred years older are still productive. The older fields are considered better because each year more and more rocks are removed from the field. They grow corn and potatoes. Harvesting potatoes removes rocks from the field because the harvester picks the rocks along with the potatoes and the rocks a separated and dumped in the headlands. The degeneration of these fields is very slow and they replace the depleted minerals.
These fields will probably be regenerated because the economics of farming will cause the owners to stop farming them and they will become pasture or even eventually forest. I have seen pastures of my Grandfather’s farm become forest. They can take a crop of trees off that land twice or three times a century totally regeneratively and it removes tons of carbon from the air.
Some of the farms that I have visited and worked on could be regenerative but they would see reduced production and would be unprofitable. Even their current degenerative production is not really profitable, they need some level of subsidy to stay in business.
I remember a couple sustainable and maybe even regenerative crops that grew around me growing up.
First was hey. Wild grass hey. Like the pastures of my Grandfathers farm. All you had to do was cut it once a year. It came back the next year every year it was cut. The new owners stopped cutting it and it became a spruce forest. I don’t remember his fields going to Dandelions but I have seen other fields that were just a blanket of yellow. Dandelion greens have become thing these days. My folks would try and get me to eat them when I was young but I had no taste for bitter greens. I can’t imagine that you could not grow Dandelion regeneratively but there must be some magic because it was not every field or every year that they would be a field of yellow without even trying.
Wild Blueberries, some rocky fields did not grow strong grass or trees but would go to Blueberry bushes. They did not need fertilizer. Sometimes the owners would burn the fields if productivity was low, grass was high or other brush was growing.
Next is Elderberries, Chokecherries, Raspberries and Blackberries. These bushes grew wild in the margins of fields, in forest clearing and around marshes. We would get a crop every year, more than we could eat before they went bad so we would freeze some. I still find wild berries to pick 2000 miles to the south. I can’t keep them out of my garden, very invasive native.
Mushrooms, fungi, and ferns, we ate them as well. A mixed growth forest, field, and meadows with natural waterways and various soils produces a variety of crops but the productivity in bushels per acre is very low but it is regenerative. This does not even count the meat that it can produce.
TEK
