The Adoption Bell Curve

Where is Regenerative Ag at?

We've likely all seen the technology adoption bell curve, and we've likely all rated ourselves favorably in relation to the adoption of our favorite piece of tech. Everyone wants to be early, and no one wants to be a laggard. I am going to apply that same technology bell curve to regenerative agriculture.

I think seeing the bell curve in relation to time as well as level of adoption is helpful in understanding what problems we need to solve immediately. My assessment right now is that regenerative agriculture is in the early adopters phase overall.

Maybe some Nuance

I think there are two categories of people to classify:

First, farmers: as a category, these folks have been making a living on the land for some time. Out of this cohort of the population, regenerative agriculture have moved through the innovators phase and is somewhere in the early adopters phase. Farmers have been exposed to regenerative ag the longest but their adoption is slow. Change requires a new set of beliefs, additional skills and different actions - all things that come slowly to those entrenched in an established operating paradigm.

Second, outside industry folks: The second group of people are those with little to no prior exposure to agriculture. Regenerative ag is at the innovator stage with these folks. They see the value in self sovereignty and the opportunity in regenerative ag. These folks are ready to leave cities and adopt a new cadence. They are seeking change, and adoption among this group is accelerating quickly.

What these two categories have in common right now is that they are both on the lower left side of the adoption bell curve. Again, we're in the early days. And being in the early days, we have the opportunity to shape the adoption narrative and clarify the problems that regenerative agriculture can solve.

What’s at stake

I believe the next 10 years in this industry are crucial. We are losing agricultural lands at a rapid pace to misaligned investments, soil erosion, and general neglect.

What's at stake in the next ten years is not some kind of environmental catastrophe, but the real possibility of losing sovereignty and individual ownership of agricultural lands.

What regenerative agriculture offers, and the big opportunity for innovators and early adopters is to demonstrate the critical role humans play in the ecosystem. We are not a leach extracting value, nor are we a burden to the land. Humans offer the ingenuity and ability to effectively translate knowledge into practice and manage the life around us in such a way as to create more abundance through symbiosis.

Harping on the Problem

The degradation and loss of farmland in the last 50 years has increased in tandem with the shift from family-sized farms to large corporate farms. The common thread: removing people from the land. Corporations aim to achieve efficiencies of scale by replacing people with machinery/robotics. What they remove is the human ingenuity that is capable of making decisions in complex and ever-changing environments.

Conventional agriculture has ceded more and more ground (literally and figuratively) to government and corporations who have no direct oversight of the land. And the more efficient a corporation gets at scaling farm operations, the less symbiosis happens on the land between microbes, plants, and livestock. Managing this complex web of life is too burdensome for the hands-off management of corporations.

Doing a 180

Regenerative agriculture is doing the opposite. By nature of the hands-on management necessary in regenerative ag, it adds people back to the land. It reintroduces humans to oversee and bring their ingenuity and creativity to bear on the complexity of the ecosystem.

By adding humans, we can accelerate restoration.

So as we sit on this left side of the adoption bell curve, the foundation that we must build for those who follow is this: The land needs the creativity and ingenuity of human beings.

If you're a farmer, don't cede the land you have to the highest bidding corporation. If you're looking to get into regenerative agriculture, find a manageable piece of land and begin exercising your knowledge and management capabilities to enhance the life that is present on the land. As you prove yourself a capable steward of the symbiotic relationships you oversee, get some more land and invite a friend to join you. Bring people back to the land.