Only knowing what to do, without understanding or questioning why we do it, is not particularly useful knowledge in the long term.
Knowledge of what but not why generally leads to destructive results at some point.
To have truly regenerative agriculture requires that we have cumulative constructive outcomes from our management decisions, not destructive ones.
To consistently achieve constructive outcomes, such as the continual renewal of soil health, plant health, livestock health, ecosystem health, and human health we need to understand WHY things work a certain way in our soil/plant ecosystems.
In July this year, I taught a two-day intensive course where we focused on describing why.
Why do we have diseases only on some varieties? Why do insects only show up in certain parts of a field first? Why does weed pressure become more intense with continued herbicide applications? Why do some weeds show up in certain fields and not in others? Why do some crops require more fungicide applications than they did a decade ago? Why do some crops not produce the marketable yield they seem to promise earlier in the year?
Understanding why is very empowering, because it gives us the knowledge we need to change the conditions to produce different outcomes. Positive outcomes that benefit the health of everything we manage, particularly our bottom line.
We just released the recording of this two-day course this morning at the Regen Ag Academy.
