Ep. 1: What is Resource Positive Agriculture?
In episode 1 of the Resource Positive Agriculture podcast host and Executive Director of the Potato Sustainability Alliance, John Mesko shares with us the meaning behind resource positive agriculture. Mesko brings over 30 years of positive agriculture experience to the table. He has had the opportunity to see all sides of agriculture working in a wide variety of roles all over the U.S. and Canada.
The words that we use in agriculture (e.g. sustainable, organic, and regenerative) often have evolving or confusing meanings. More times than not, people will interpret the definitions and purposes in different ways. When we start to argue about definitions, the agriculture community becomes more fractured, and meanings then become meaningless. The negative attraction doesn’t serve well in conversations with consumers, investors, and others who are truly interested in food and farming.
Now is the time to keep focused on the long term goal, which is moving agriculture forward in a positive way. Resource positive agriculture simply describes what we all want, an agriculture system which makes full and responsible use of the natural world and honors the scientific, technological, and societal advances we’ve achieved.
The goal is a food and farming system that has the ability to expand productivity and quality to meet the globe’s current and future needs. Resource positive agriculture takes all the resources involved into account – soil and water, carbon, for example – but also technological, human, and community resources as well.
Join along with us on this positive agriculture journey. As we will be bringing you commentary from industry leaders all across our community. The hope is that you will learn more, and hopefully think more, as a result of listening.
Remember to subscribe to the Resource Positive Agriculture podcast so you can be notified when new episodes come out each month. Stay positive!
Connect with: Potato Sustainability Alliance
Twitter: @AlliancePotato, @johnmesko, @positiveagnow
LinkedIn: Potato Sustainability Alliance
Transcription
John Mesko: (00:06)
Resource positive agriculture describes what we all want, a food and farming system which makes full and responsible use of the natural world. In this podcast, I’ll explore how agriculture can be a force for good on everything from the environment, the people, and our society.
John Mesko: (00:31)
I’m John Mesko, and welcome to episode number one of the Resource Positive Agriculture podcast brought to you by the Potato Sustainability Alliance. You might be wondering, “What do you mean by resource positive?” Well, that’s what I’d like to talk about today. For over 30 years, I’ve been working to help the agriculture industry make a positive impact. I’ve had the good fortune of seeing all sides of agriculture working in a wide variety of roles all over the U.S. and Canada. I’ve done everything from fertilizer and chemical sales and commercial application to agronomy services to marketing and communications and biotechnology and seed research in corn and soybeans.
John Mesko: (01:17)
I’ve designed and taught environmental science curriculum at the university level, as well as serving as a university extension educator. I’ve led local, regional, and state-level sustainable agriculture initiatives, a multi-state organic agriculture education initiative, the largest on-farm soil health network in the U.S., and an industry-wide sustainability program for potatoes in my current role as executive director of the Potato Sustainability Alliance.
John Mesko: (01:48)
I’ve worked in conventional, sustainable, organic, and regenerative agriculture. I owned and operated my own farm for over 10 years, practicing what I’ve preached my whole career. And along the way, and over time, I’ve come to see both the importance of categories and definitions in agriculture but also the pitfalls of getting tangled in the weeds of definitions of specific names and titles like sustainable, regenerative, non-GMO, or organic.
John Mesko: (02:19)
The words we use in agriculture often have evolving or confusing meanings and almost always mean different things to different people for different purposes. And while we need a common language focusing too much on getting an agreed-upon definition, it can become a distraction from the message we’re trying to convey. A good example is the word sustainable. In the 1980s, sustainable agriculture described a low-input manner of farming becoming less reliant on off-farm inputs. Sustainable farming advocates offered reduced tillage, pesticide, and fertilizer use as a way of breaking away from a total reliance on a marketplace which had not been good to farmers in the late seventies and early eighties.
John Mesko: (03:05)
Without an educational and government support network in place to foster learning of new techniques and farm practices, which could help farmers become sustainable, dozens of local and regional non-profit organizations sprang up all over the country. Groups like Practical Farmers of Iowa, the Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota, Kansas Rural Network, and the Northern Plains Sustainable Ag Society come to my mind immediately.
John Mesko: (03:32)
Soon government agencies in the U.S. started giving credence to their message and began offering funding for projects to help further learn about and promote sustainable agriculture. After consumers and the general public became interested in sustainability, people started lining up on either side of the line, determining what types of farms were sustainable and what types of farms were not. Over time, sustainability took on a range of meanings, from farming and environmentally conscious ways to just staying in business economically from one year to the next.
John Mesko: (04:04)
We’ve even seen this with organic. The organic community worked hard over 10 years to gain credibility and consistency in the definition of the word organic by leveraging the power of the USDA to define the word organic in a 600-page document known as the USDA Organic Standard. Now, 20 plus years after reaching that definition, as organic farms have grown in scale to match conventional farms, many in the organic community are seeking to add additional terminology to further differentiate their brand of agriculture. There’s now a real organic standard, and some are trying to create a regenerative organic standard. These efforts purport to maintain the spirit of organic agriculture. Meanwhile, many consumers still don’t fully understand what organic means.
John Mesko: (04:56)
The latest word to emerge is regenerative. Just when many in agriculture started to get comfortable with a pursuit of sustainable agriculture, regenerative agriculture has us back at the starting gate now arguing over its meaning and applicability. It seems that when we start to argue about definitions, the agriculture community becomes more fractured, and meanings become meaningless. That doesn’t serve us well in our conversations with consumers, investors, and others who are interested in food and farming. Many industries rely upon the natural resources of our world to enhance society, and nowhere is this more apparent than in farming and food production.
John Mesko: (05:39)
Throughout the existence of humans on the earth, our industry has taken the abundant and free energy of the sun in concert with soil, rainfall, and human intelligence and technology to consistently produce more with less, delivering the very sustenance of life for the human race. Our industry’s capacity has grown, as have the number of people relying on it. Farmers are, in fact, the original environmentalists. No other industry relies on the environment like agriculture does. Worldwide, farming and food production has a tremendous impact on the natural world. And now more than ever, as our global citizenry seeks to respond to and mitigate climate change, and in the face of a rapidly growing population, our industry is at the center of the discussion of how we will satisfy our needs indefinitely.
John Mesko: (06:33)
Now is the time to think differently about what we do. Let’s look broadly at the long view. There will likely always be standards to meet and certifications to achieve, but let’s not lose sight of the long-term goal, moving agriculture forward in positive ways. We should rally around our own capabilities, our resources, technology, and knowledge to ensure our livelihood indefinitely, not just reaching a threshold but continuous improvement.
John Mesko: (07:03)
Resource positive agriculture describes what we all want, an agriculture system which makes full and responsible use of the natural world and honors the scientific, technological, and societal advances we’ve achieved. Resource positive agriculture has no negative baggage by definition. Positive means greater than zero. Our goal is a food and farming system that has the ability to expand productivity and quality to meet the globe’s current and future needs. Resource positive agriculture takes all the resources involved into account, soil and water, carbon, for example, but also technological, human, and community resources as well.
John Mesko: (07:51)
We won’t abandon words like sustainable or regenerative or the pursuit of standards in those areas. We won’t be renaming the Potato Sustainability Alliance. But rather, we will look at the very best of those connotations and seek to build a brand and an understanding of agriculture that truly spirals our world upward and forward. Going forward, we all know what positive means. It means getting better, not settling for the status quo, preparing our world to meet the future with joy, productivity, and health, in soil, water, the environment, and in people and relationships too.
John Mesko: (08:31)
The Potato Sustainability Alliance is special in that we are bringing an entire industry together to collaborate on the important work of telling the unique story of sustainability in potatoes. This podcast will be an opportunity to highlight the successes, challenges, insights, and the future of resource positive agriculture. You’ll hear commentary from me as well as leaders from across our community. You’ll learn more, and, hopefully, think more as a result of listening. So please subscribe and tell others about the podcast. And I want to hear from you. Please feel free to send me your thoughts, comments, and suggestions.
John Mesko: (09:21)
Thanks for tuning in to today’s episode. To hear more podcasts like this, please rate, review, and subscribe to Resource Positive Agriculture. We want to hear from you. Remember to visit potatosustainability.org for show notes from this episode, to leave your feedback, and to learn more about how PSA is collaborating for potato sustainability. Thank you, and remember, stay positive.