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NMany young people in agriculture today are looking to the past and what they are discovering is this: nature’s model works best. (Photo: Ali Jafri/flickr/cc)

It is easy to forget that once upon a time all agriculture was organic, grassfed, and regenerative.

Seed saving, composting, fertilizing with manure, polycultures, no-till and raising livestock entirely on grass-all of which we associate today with sustainable food production-was the norm in the “old days” of merely a century ago. And somehow we managed to feed ourselves and do so in a manner that followed nature’s model of regeneration.

We all know what happened next: the plow, the tractor, fossil fuels, monocrops, nitrogen fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, feedlots, animal byproducts, e. coli, CAFOs, GMOs, erosion, despair-practices and conditions that most Americans today think of as “normal,” when they think about agriculture at all.

Fortunately, a movement to rediscover and implement “old” practices of bygone days has risen rapidly, abetted by innovations in technology, breakthroughs in scientific knowledge, and tons of old-fashioned, on-the-ground problem-solving.

Take Dorn Cox, a young farmer in New Hampshire. He tossed away the plow, preferring to use no-till practices on his parent’s organic farm, then he developed a biodiesel alternative to fossil fuels (his sister and her husband use draft animals). He also measures the carbon content of the soil through sophisticated technology, aiming to raise the content as high as possible. And he co-founded Farm Hack, an open-source, virtual café for young and beginning farmers. “Farming isn’t rocket science,” he often says, “It’s more complicated than that.”