Farming for People, Planet & Profit

The mission of the post-industrial agricultural economy is to even out the playing field between industry stakeholders, the environment, and the communities invested in its success.

It can be challenging to incorporate side interests into what has, for many decades & for most incumbent players, been a linear, black-and-white definition of ‘success’ in agriculture and food. Embedded measurements like nitrogen use efficiency (NUE), extract-and-replace soil testing, and backward-looking financial ratios are just a few examples of equations that fail to fully define ‘performance’ today.

As a result, agribusiness stakeholders may feel safe to avoid working to correct negative outcomes on communities and the environment, even while these are increasingly on the radar of regulators, consumers and society. It will take an expansion and redefinition of performance, dismissing singular goals like yield and corporate profits along the way, for agriculture to regain its social license and public trust.

Much of this week’s research was contemplated amid the burning question of post-election impacts on the agriculture and food economy, which is highly integrated across borders in North America. Drastic and sudden changes are now possible, creating an urgency to drop the veils of greenwashing and start real conversations with stakeholders and business partners across commodity supply chains.

Prairie Routes exists to help organizations understand and plan for the opportunities ahead according to their current context. Please email hello@prairieroutes.ca to schedule a free 30-minute consult to find out how we can help you move forward with success.

In this recent podcast, John Kempf points to data from a consumer trust survey that ranked farmers near the top, and agribusiness near the bottom. In other words, agricultural landowners where food is produced (i.e. farmers), who are trusted, need to find ways to decouple from the captains of industry, who are not.

Unfortunately, most agricultural landowners today can’t see the reason to decouple their businesses from the giant corporations in industrial agriculture. In fact, there’s a culture of reverence around their size and power, an expectation that the biggest players in agriculture are the ones who will drive change… and a massive misconception that as long as they’re not, there’s nothing to worry about.

This makes no sense, in fact, since the biggest stakeholders have the most to lose in the post-industrial agriculture economy. They are the worst positioned to pivot their operations and corporate cultures to support farms to consider people and planet as important as profit.

Farms that don’t (consider people and planet as important as profit) are also highly vulnerable businesses in the new economy for optimizing land management decisions. Degraded soil and surrounding ecosystems raise a farm’s cost structure because natural capital is needed for displacing synthetic crop input requirements.  

Fortunately, there is a trail of breadcrumbs leading out of the corner that commodity farms have been painted into, but it must start with a fulsome definition of success. Then it takes time for businesses in agriculture to arrive at a place of self-determination and well-being.

The Path Forward for Agriculture

A common starting point for commodity farms transitioning into regenerative agriculture is an a-ha moment that inspires a small change. When the small change is successful, the farmer’s confidence builds, enabling better practices to expand.

There are some limiting beliefs in agribusiness that must be overcome by everyone in order for the industry to recover public trust, and the ability to be profitable in the future. Mostly unspoken, staring these new truths in the face can be a fast and effective way for organizations to regroup and build business strategies for future success.