thesephantomhands
thesephantomhands t1_iwcmnkw wrote
Reply to comment by mhornberger in Farmers in China and Uganda move to high-yielding, cost-saving perennial rice by tonymmorley
If that's true, it would definitely be a hurdle. But the benefit of a perennial (according to the book in the way that it's presented), it would require no tilling, less pesticides, herbicides, etc. Just the difference in no-till versus tilling every year is a dropoff in labor. There might be other things that I'm missing. What extra labor are you talking about?
thesephantomhands t1_iwauthl wrote
Reply to Farmers in China and Uganda move to high-yielding, cost-saving perennial rice by tonymmorley
I just finished the book Regenesis and it talks all about this as a way of establishing better connections to the soil and a less rapacious relationship to the environment in general. The world needs food production to be high yield low impact, with tilling, fertilizers, and herbicides being some of the most taxing things we do. This represents a step in the way of a more sustainable future. And Regenesis is a truly great exploration of these issues - definitely worth a read.
thesephantomhands t1_iwco6a7 wrote
Reply to comment by mhornberger in Farmers in China and Uganda move to high-yielding, cost-saving perennial rice by tonymmorley
Okay, I could see where you're coming from, but I don't remember him talking about things that wouldn't scale or things that were prohibitively labor intensive. I'm very new to all of this, but I was quite inspired by the book. If they're going to be solutions or helpful, we would need to take those factors into account.