Has the World Changed Enough to Rethink How Our Farming Systems Work?

Aug 4
6 min read

Dr. Ray Weil in a soils pit on the Groff farm in Pennsylvania (2014) — Dr. Ray Weil in Pennsylvania during the Science of Soil Health tour (2014). Over two years of filming and conversations with researchers and farmers, I began to see soils less as something we manage and more as living systems that perform functions we too often replace with purchased inputs.

When the Ground Shifts Beneath us—and Things Don't Go According to Plan

By Buz Kloot

When the World Changes

Since just before this year's planting season, most of us have been paying closer attention to events beyond the farm gate. Fuel prices, fertilizer markets, supply chains, and global events have reminded us that today's farming decisions are influenced by much more than what happens within our own fence lines.

In my previous blog, When Should Farmers Buy Diesel? Managing Fuel Price and Supply Risk, I explored ways producers might manage fuel price and supply risk within the context of their own operations.

As we move toward fall—a time when many of us step back to evaluate one season before planning the next—it may be worth asking a broader question:

What is the context in which we are farming today?

We still farm within the realities of our soils, landscapes, and climate. But we're also farming within an economic and geopolitical context that looks very different than it did just a few years ago. Fuel and fertilizer prices fluctuate. Grain markets remain uncertain. Every growing season seems to bring its own weather challenges.

We can't control those conditions, but we can decide how dependent our farming systems are on everything going exactly right.

That's the question I'd like to explore.

Listening to 38,000 Producers

One of the really enjoyable things about having a large online following at Growing Resilience is that when a post generates 50, 60, or even 100 comments, it's a bit like sitting in a coffee shop listening to 38,000 farmers talk.

Mention no-till, for example, and people tend to lose their minds!

Frankly, we welcome objections. If everyone agreed with us, we'd learn very little. The comments often reveal the questions, concerns, and fears producers have, and understanding those concerns is just as important as understanding the science.

One of our most active discussions came from a short video of soil scientist Dr. Ray Weil standing in a seven-foot-deep soil pit in Pennsylvania (see short clip), explaining how twenty years of no-till and cover crops had transformed the soil profile. The reactions ranged from genuine curiosity to outright disbelief. Comments included "You have to plow first!", "The people who think that soil should not be tilled are delusional," and my personal favorite, "Give me a ripper and a barrel of diesel and away I go."

A different discussion emerged when we posted Dr. Dwayne Beck's observation that herbicides are only one part of weed control, alongside competition, sanitation, and crop rotation (Here’s the 60-second clip). Some readers focused on the herbicides rather than the system. One person wrote, "I sprayed Roundup and it killed the weeds. Not sure what you're talking about." Others argued that tillage remains essential: "Plowing the fields also kills the weeds and doesn't add any 'cides' to the fields." Still others reinforced Beck's broader systems approach with comments like "Cover crops" and "Crop canopies can control weeds"—both speaking directly to the competition and rotation strategies he advocates.

Finally, Carl Coleman's post about "getting off the treadmill" (see short clip) generated a different kind of conversation. One reader immediately challenged the idea: "Where do we come to see your 'regen' farm? I want to see your system and your accounts." Another producer shared a photo of a corn crop and commented, "Not one penny of NPK in this corn... It has maintained soil tests for seven years with no inputs." A third reminded us that "On-farm commodity prices are the problem."

Listening to this 38,000-person coffee shop, despite all the different viewpoints and disagreements, I kept coming back to one question that seemed to unite many of the more thoughtful comments:

How do we build farming systems that are less vulnerable to forces we can't control?

I think that's the question that brings us back to context—and perhaps why I'm beginning to believe context belongs at the beginning of the soil health conversation, not the end.

Rethinking Context

When I first encountered the four principles of soil health nearly fifteen years ago, it felt like a Damascus Road moment. They completely changed the way I thought about farming.

When the fifth principle—integrating livestock—was added, that made perfect sense to me. Livestock complete biological cycles that cropping systems alone simply cannot.

But I struggled with the sixth principle: context.

For years, I never quite understood why context belonged alongside the other soil health principles. I mentioned it because it was on the list, but if I'm honest, I didn't think it carried the same weight as minimizing disturbance, keeping the soil covered, maintaining living roots, increasing diversity, or integrating livestock.

I was wrong. Today, I believe context may be the first principle of soil health.

When I first thought about context, I thought about rainfall, soil type, topography, geography, and local climate. Those factors remain fundamental. Every farmer knows that what works in eastern South Dakota may not work west of the Missouri River, just as what succeeds in South Dakota may not succeed in Georgia or Pennsylvania.

Today, our context has expanded. We're farming not only within an ecological landscape, but also within an economic and geopolitical one. Fuel and fertilizer prices and availability, labor shortages, herbicide resistance, volatile grain markets, supply chain disruptions, and increasingly unpredictable weather have all become part of the management decisions producers make every day.

Perhaps that's why some practices that seemed almost automatic twenty years ago deserve to be reconsidered today. Not because those practices suddenly became wrong, but because the context in which we farm has changed.

When the context changes, good managers adapt.

Before deciding which practice to adopt, perhaps we should first ask a simpler question:

Given the world we're farming in today, what farming system is most likely to be resilient tomorrow?

Three Conversations that Resonate

If context really is the place where every management decision begins, then several conversations I've had over the past few years suddenly fit together in a new way.

Dr. Ray Weil often asks us to imagine farming in a flower pot. If crop roots are confined to a shallow layer of soil, they can only access the water and nutrients within that limited volume. Deep-rooted cover crops and improved soil structure effectively enlarge that "flower pot," allowing roots to explore a larger volume of soil. Healthy soils aren't simply about producing higher yields—they're about enabling the soil itself to supply more of what the crop needs.

Dr. Dwayne Beck makes a remarkably similar point about weeds. Herbicides, he reminds us, are only one part of weed control. If we rely on the same herbicide, on the same weed, at the same time every year, resistance is almost inevitable. Competition from healthy crops, diverse rotations, living roots, and crop residue all become part of a farming system that prevents weed problems instead of simply reacting to them.

Then there's my friend, farmer Carl Coleman, whose words have stayed with me ever since I interviewed him:

"I farmed for 36 years. I was on that treadmill... As long as you keep running really, really fast, you're probably going to be okay. But if something happens, it's really easy to get behind in a hurry."

Carl wasn't arguing that fertilizer, diesel, or herbicides are bad. He was describing something much more practical. The more our farming systems depend on purchased inputs behaving exactly as expected, the more vulnerable they become when prices rise, supplies tighten, or the weather refuses to cooperate.

At first glance, Ray Weil is talking about roots. Dwayne Beck is talking about weeds. Carl Coleman is talking about economics.

I think they’re all talking about the same thing.

Healthy farming systems restore function.

As biological function returns, soils capture more rainfall, roots explore a greater volume of soil, crops become more competitive, and farmers become less dependent on purchased inputs to solve problems that healthy systems increasingly solve for themselves.