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Comment by chris_va | Hacker News Reader

No-till agriculture, as an example, usually requires different capital equipment for the farm.

It's not a blocker, but financing the capital equipment takes some investment and risk. Farms are fairly dialed into their operations already, and getting people to change (especially when they need to pay money to do it) is a slow process.

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So then is it reasonable to conclude government subsidies for regenerative agriculture could increase adoption?

Yes, that does seem reasonable

Would taxing poor practices be a better approach? Eg Excess water usage, runoff, water pollution, pesticide use, fuel use or some other metric?

That way the cost of food would rise, but the cost of regenerative practices presumably wouldn’t rise as much and would earn more.

One of the problems with no till is that the equipment, or at least some of it, hasn't been invented yet and could be considered 'cutting edge' in that manner.

No till farming is widespread especially in Australia for decades. Nearly all dryland farms take this approach. It just means controlling fallow weeds without tillage, usually with herbicide. Then plant straight through the previous crop residue. This preserves moisture in the soil and the soil structure. Planters mostly do this fine. I'm not sure what has not yet been invented elsewhere.

How do they handle compaction? The biggest thing I have seen is work toward finding a way to introduce large equipment to a no till or RA farm.

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