Integrated Farming is more about brains than brawn: Part 1

Aspiring small scale organic and regenerative farmers often talk about diversity, stacked enterprises, integrated farming, agricultural ecology and lots of other cool stuff. People often say that such diversified enterprises are not practical on modern farms because they require too much labour. In reality its not about labour but about brains.

I’ve been meaning to get these thoughts down for a while but a recent article on the amazing story of quadriplegic farmer Rob Cook meant that I couldn’t put off writing this post any longer. Rob shows without a doubt that farming is not about brawn. It is brains and not labour that often limits the diversification of farming operations.

Rob Cook just shows what people can over come when they are given the help and support they need.

Critics say that truly diversified farms are a thing of the past because they require too much labour. Another common critique is that the scale at which such enterprises are attempted is just too small. This suggests that they might be possible with more labour and at a larger scale.

However, if we look at large scale operations we often see numerous failed attempts to diversify. The common large scale integrated farm is the “Mixed Business” farm. Such operations often will focus on a small number of related crops along side some live stock production. The farms are often very well managed and the farmers are incredibly competent at managing around three different forms of production. For example grain cropping, pasture management and beef production. What you often see when such mixed business farms diversify even further is that the over all efficiency of the operation declines. No where is this better illustrated than when people attempt to integrate aquaculture with irrigation.

The CSIRO and RIRDC aquaculture integration research programs completed some excellent research on how to integrate trout, barrmundi and murray cod into various form of irrigation operations. They showed it worked and worked well but in practice they were not able to get their work or methods adopted by the irrigation industry. Even when done on a large scale and with plenty of hired labour available.

Example of a simple integration or aquaculture into a cattle operation. Taken from Gooley and Gavine 2003.

Now you might say that aquaculture is very different from cattle, sheep, grain or potatoes and you would be right. The complete difference in skill sets just made the failures more spectacular. Even with other integrations which don’t require the same huge knowledge leap as mastering aquaculture you still see problems. Often farmers diversify and then later re-specialize. Time and time again you see people focusing on doing extremely well a small group of related crops. For example I know a large scale organic market gardening operation in East Gippsland. The farmer focuses on producing beans and peas. For diversity he grows yellow beans, green beans, runner beans,, black beans, etc. you get the idea. While he also grazes cattle on land that is not suitable for cultivation or that is being left fallow this is not a focus of their business and you can tell. Similarly they have grown other crops to diversify but the farmer says that they are “not worth the effort”. He believe his time is better invested in peas and beans.

Ask your self the question what your ancestors doing when 95% of the population were farmers or farm labourers?

Then ask yourself how smart where your ancestors?

You might be better educated but are you smarter?

If we want to see more diversified farming then its not more labour that we need to get back to the farm. Similarly our farmers are already very well educated and very skilled, the secret to getting more diversified farming operations off the ground is not increasing the education or intelligence of our farmers. Its not how big a brain is an individual farmer is that is the key. Its the number of brains that are working the farm. Increasing the shear number of smart, passionate individual people working on the farm is the key to making a truly diversified farm work.

At least three forms of farming depicted here. Obviously some sort of grain crop being planted in the fore ground but there is also pasture growing behind the house and pigs being fed acorns in the upper right corner. At the very least there would have been a veggie garden and orchard as well.

On a medieval manorial farm or estate almost everyone would have been illiterate. Out of say a population of 100 people on an estate there would have been about ten to fifteen that were not that smart. Everyone else though would have a huge range of skills and abilities that would have been applied to making the estate work. In the modern context all those people become engineers, doctors, teachers, plumbers, builders or whatever. Their aptitude for physical or mental skills gets applied to non-agrarian forms of employment.

Farmers are almost constantly being advised to diversify and while they try they just can’t beyond a limited capacity because they just don’t have the head space. Its not the raw intelligence or skills of one or two farmers responsible for managing the land that makes truly diverse integrated operations work. Its the shear number of individual brains. The number of people each with their own skill sets, talents and passions all working on the land together that makes it work. If we want to see more efficient integrated farming then the key is to develop models that get more people and their brains involved in the operation.