S2:E11 – Pay-for-Practice Misses the Point: the Behavioral Economics of Soil Health
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Show Notes
Reid Hensen, co-founder and managing partner at Celium Group, is a rancher, agricultural economist, and a data systems architect for some of the leading public and philanthropic soil health programs.
His view is soil health adoption is a human systems problem, rather than an economic or technology problem. In his view “regenerative ag” is wise resource management with long-time horizons supported by trusted advisors and community problem solving.
We touch on multiple financial levers of soil health, including on-farm profitability, management practice change (with some great livestock management examples), stacked enterprises, and risk management.
We kept trying to bring him back to a narrow view of economics, and he kept pulling us out to consider the human factors like technical assistance and advisory support, and the importance of viewing technology as an amplifier of a system rather than a solution in and of itself.
In addition, he offers a deeply informed critique of capital deployment across private, philanthropic and public avenues.
Reid is empathetic, insightful, and wise, and he doesn’t sugar coat his opinions. Hope you enjoy the episode.