Why Sustainability Is Not Enough To Achieve Real Growth in Farming

Editor’s note: When I interviewed Bob Jones for the Jan. 2025 cover story for American Vegetable Grower, he started talking about why our industry needs a better solution than sustainability. He said it so eloquently, I’m handing over my editorial this month and letting him take the podium.

Bob Jones: There’s no such thing as sustainability. Why would we want to be sustainable and carry on the disaster we have? Agriculture in the U.S. and around the world is broken, both economically and agronomically.

From an economic standpoint, most farms are based on borrowing operating capital. You farm all year and hope that you can pay that note back. Then you massage the books to the best of your ability, and you go and beg and borrow for more money for operating for next year.

You’re two bad years in a row from being nonexistent. Because if you had a bad year in 2024, you’re going to use some of 2025’s operating money to pay that off. You’re already starting in the negative. If you have a bad year next year, for whatever reason — weather, crops, market, whatever it is — you’re done.

Your lending institution will highly recommend that you find a different line of work.

From an agronomic side, we have a situation where our farmland is less and less productive every year. From a human health aspect, know that the food that we produce in this country today is 70% to 80% less nutritionally dense than it was in 1940. The USDA data exists to show that.

So what we’re doing isn’t working. Why in the world would we ever want to sustain that?

Sustainability is not necessarily, I think, the correct target for us as students of the science of agriculture today.

How do we improve our lot? How do we help farm profitability? How do we help be better corporate neighbors in our own communities?

Your farm is a reflection of you. How my farm’s ecosystem is functioning is a reflection of our management practices. It’s either regenerating or degrading the farm.

Probably the very best definition I ever heard of regenerative agriculture is you did not inherit the land from your grandparents. Rather, you’re borrowing it from your grandchildren.

Regenerative agriculture is not just about soil health. It’s improving soil health. It addresses your social responsibility of how you treat your employees and community.