Farmers, professionals, hobbyists

Against the purism that separates those who grow for a living from those who grow for themselves, and why a farm’s regenerative character should be judged by the direction it has taken, not by where it stands today.

In agriculture, as in many other fields, there is a tendency to marginalise, and at times to ridicule, those who do this work without earning a living from it. They are called amateurs, or hobbyists, an expression I find unfortunate: these are people who grow their own food, who seek self-sufficiency, who grow for their families. And they are often seen as a separate category, inferior to those who grow professionally.

Those who can afford to take risks

These are, on the contrary, often the very people who can afford to take the most risks. Those who farm for a living have to make the accounts add up at the end of the month, and so are forced to choose techniques partly on the basis of their efficiency and profitability. Those who grow for themselves can invest more time and resources, make many more mistakes and, precisely because of that, try out ideas that would be closed to a professional. Many of them, moreover, work with a fully professional attitude despite earning nothing from it, bringing to the field the precision they developed in another trade, in an engineering office or an accountancy practice, and they have a great deal to teach those of us who grow for a living. Free from the constraints of business efficiency and from the need to accumulate capital to reinvest, they can carry out experiments from which we can all learn something we would not otherwise learn.

It could be argued that this should be the job of university research or of the state. I disagree, and above all I have no hope that it will happen: academic dynamics respond to other interests, not necessarily negative ones, sometimes questionable but largely legitimate, and in any case different from those that drive the production of food for a real community.

Then there is a third category, those who do both, in which I include myself. I run a lot of experiments, what might be called research and development, but at the same time I make my living from farming: the main part of our income comes from vegetables, a smaller but substantial part from outreach and consultancy, and Tessa, my partner, also works off the farm for ten hours a week. This label too often sounds like a demotion: anyone who combines farming with a YouTube channel, consultancy, courses or another job is considered by many colleagues a second-rate farmer, one who does not give proper priority to economic sustainability and farm management.

Necessary, not primary

I do not see it that way, because farming means first of all living within the ecosystem we are part of, becoming part of it, feeding ourselves from it and at the same time feeding it: it is above all a way of life. If we then choose to grow food for others too, it is natural that the conditions for doing so must be sustainable in the long term, but that does not necessarily mean a farm business: it could be a cooperative, or a community in which no money changes hands. Of course, poor management of accounts, costs, income and field work leads sooner or later to failure, and for that reason one also needs to be a good farm manager. But this is a necessary aspect, not a primary one.

This is borne out by the fact that I, like perhaps 70% of the people in the Microfarm network and in other small-scale farming groups, had another job before this one, and those who farm by choice rarely do so because it pays better; often they earn far less. If profit were the priority, and to chase it we accepted compromises such that — ethically, in how we work the soil, in plant protection, in how we sell — we no longer took any pleasure in this work, we might as well go back to our old jobs. Few are willing to earn less than they could in another sector without at least the satisfaction of a way of life they love and a contribution they believe in. Making ends meet is essential in order to carry on, but what matters most remains the reason we started.

For this reason I consider those who live entirely from farming on a par with those who farm in their spare time: what distinguishes an amateur from a professional is not the income one earns from it, but the attitude with which one does it. There are those who put the business first and are farm entrepreneurs before they are farmers, and those who live from farming but remain farmers before entrepreneurs; and to the same family belong all those who grow their own food seriously, trying to produce quality food that nourishes and regenerates the ecosystem, without wasting any resource, their own time included. You do not need to make a living from it to be an efficient and virtuous regenerative grower.

Regeneration is a direction

There is, however, a risk, which a friend recently pointed out to me: by pushing too hard on optimisation, regenerative principles risk being pushed into the background, until we end up with a form of agriculture that remains intensive in substance, just in different clothing. I believe the risk is real, even if it does not apply to many colleagues in our movement. It lies in forgetting that it is not possible to revolutionise agriculture without also revolutionising society, culture and the way we think. It will be said that it is natural to start with the easier things and gradually move on to the harder ones; the problem arises when, in doing the easy things, we feed precisely what makes the others hard. This is how what I call neo-conventional agriculture comes about: an improved conventional agriculture, which keeps its strengths but risks inheriting some of its flaws too, and which overall is only marginally better than conventional and organic farming. For me that is not enough, but it is a personal view, and I respect the colleagues who work this way, because they offer valuable ideas on how to combine the entrepreneurial approach with the small-scale regenerative one. Not sharing the same worldview does not stop us being friends and colleagues.

It is also true that a deep transformation on every front is extremely difficult, and it would perhaps be unreasonable to expect farmers to shoulder it alone, each on their own farm; as a collective and as associations, however, there is something we can do. And we all make compromises, me first: silage tarps, used very little this year, shade cloth now and then, organic pelleted manure from non-intensive farms instead of home-made compost, a biostimulant bought because I did not manage to make it in time, the polytunnel.

For me, a farm’s regenerative character is not measured by what it does today, but by how far what it does today brings it closer to something genuinely regenerative tomorrow. If I use the polytunnel because it lets me generate the income needed to buy a tool that will one day allow me to do without it, then the polytunnel is a regenerative tool. If instead I put it up thinking my grandchildren will still be using it, or even hoping that in my climate everything will be grown under cover, then it becomes a tool that is perhaps sustainable, but not regenerative. The same goes for pelleted manure, for ferric phosphate against slugs, for the two-wheel tractor. Statements such as “if you till the soil you are not regenerative” or “if you use ferric phosphate you are not regenerative” catch the detail and miss the picture: the right question is how it is used, and within what long-term strategy. It is the strategy that has to be assessed. If year after year these inputs are used less and less, and there is a concrete prospect of eventually freeing oneself from them in favour of better solutions, then the direction is the right one. As the same friend put it, regeneration is the goal and the vision, not a status.

Doing a bit of everything

OrtoForesta is a case in point. It is a farm that tries to keep three activities in balance — training, research and the production of food for the local area through the CSA — in something that resembles a juggling act. Some might see it as a shortcut, as if the income from courses freed us from the pressure to produce. It does not: with three or four thousand square metres of growing area and fifty households who have paid in advance for their boxes, the vegetables have to be there, and whatever we do not grow we have to buy from others, saying so openly. It rarely happens: this year, for example, we chose to grow squash only for ourselves, bought it from several colleagues, organic and in some cases regenerative, and told the households in the CSA. The quality of our work can be checked by anyone who visits the farm, or by those who receive our boxes.

Reconciling well-run production with courses that are useful to the professional, to those who aspire to become one and to those who grow their own food is far from trivial. The design of the farm has to include elements of efficiency, of regeneration, of small scale and of modest mechanisation: we have no tractor, but we do have two two-wheel tractors, which we show on some courses and not on others. Some agroforestry rows are designed with great complexity and suit those who grow their own food and are looking for multifunctional spaces; others are designed for efficiency, for those who want to fit them into a chicken pasture or into a vegetable plot at wider spacings, with or without machinery. All this has its difficulties, just as living from farming alone has its own, and enormous, difficulties. But it also brings a concrete advantage, the diversification of income: if a crop fails and the vegetables have to be bought in, an extra course or an extra consultancy can make up for it. And every activity remains within the same vision: I do not work for an oil company to fund half my salary, but do work that is consistent with the farming I practise, and that allows me to live as I would live as a farmer, or almost.

I think of a colleague like Gioele Poferi, of Verocibo, who runs a farm efficiently, in a way very different from how I understand the farmer’s craft, but with an honesty, transparency and dedication I greatly appreciate, and who at the same time does excellent outreach on YouTube. We also need people who can tell the story of what we do with the skills of those who know filming, editing and storytelling.

I grew up in a compartmentalised world, in which you do one thing and do it extremely well, as a specialised professional, but cannot fix a tap or service the car, and for everything else you turn, and pay, another professional. My grandparents did not grow up that way, and I believe we should rebuild a world in which everyone can do a bit of everything. In English the saying goes Jack of all trades, master of none. It is often quoted in a longer version that adds but oftentimes better than master of one. That is the version I recognise myself in.

I do not intend to convince anyone, and I am sure there are many other regenerative visions, compatible or not with this one. I would like to hear yours, especially if you disagree, or if you think I have missed a point of view more valid than the ones I have set out.

This post is the written version of a live video (in Italian) recorded during the delivery round.