Straight-talking farmers see “holistic farming” as gimmick, says meat substitutes pose no threat

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Farmers are known to be a straight-talking lot wherever they are in the world. A survey by AgriWebb of farmers in the US, UK and Australia had these takeaways:

• Soybean steaks and “not dogs” are no cause for panic for meat producers, whatever the lab-made meat and plant-based protein advocates say in their PR.

• Regenerative agriculture and holistic farming are buzzwords and “nothing new” as farmers have always used rotational grazing, no-till farming, multi-species over cropping, retention of native plants and reduced fertilizer use. 
• Just under 25% of farmers globally are taking part or preparing to enter carbon and natural resource markets; chief reason for non-participation: don’t know how to get started.
• Organic livestock operations taking a backseat to carbon neutral concerns, hype around regenerative agriculture
• Top five uses of tech in livestock industry: record keeping, animal management, grazing management, accounting and finance, business planning and managing.
• The fancy stuff like drones, internet of things, water monitoring, soil measurement are least used among the current “agtech solutions”.
• Australia leads the globe in adopting tech in agriculture, probably due to the size of its farms. The average farm is 4,294 hectares vs 180 hectares (and under 2 hectares for most farms in China). 
• Water monitoring tech use (23.4%) in Australia agriculture is more than double that of the US (9.2%) and almost five times than the UK (5.3%). 

You can download the report in this link, which takes you to a sign-up page at AgriWebb.