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ryan ackett, PhD(!) @ryanackett.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

yet interminable doomers will still look this gift horse in the mouth and say "it must be bad for you."

Bright side vs dark side view on a train meme

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ryan ackett, PhD(!) @ryanackett.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Pretty nice new office if you ask me

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ryan ackett, PhD(!) @ryanackett.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

Fabulous newsletter out by Sarah this morning on the contradictions between beautiful *dreams* of agriculture and the real making of a better food system. These ideas could not be more important, and yet could not be more marginal. substack.com/home/post/p-...

And I think this phenomenon becomes especially pronounced at the intersections where food and ag cross with climate change and environmentalism. Most of the very strongest and most insane beliefists I’ve encountered live there. In beliefs like, “we can use agriculture to make landscapes healthier than they were before agriculture” and “companies have a financial incentive to protect the environment.”

On some level, I totally understand both of these beliefs. They seem wonderful and incredibly powerful. I mean, if agriculture can make land even healthier than it was before, then we never have to think about what’s the right amount of agriculture! And if companies will do environmentalism, than we never have to deal with our fucked up farm policy!

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ryan ackett, PhD(!) @ryanackett.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

Details not mentioned in this glowing bio: her peddling of vaccine skepticism and autism conspiracies. This is a premier science community, we really need to do better than this.

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ryan ackett, PhD(!) @ryanackett.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

Why is @agu.org honoring an antiscience conspiracy theorist, including dangerous falsehoods about autism, as the keynote speaker for the largest climate science conference in America? I could not be more disappointed by this decision

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ryan ackett, PhD(!) @ryanackett.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

Hello friends! After being away from this website for a while, it is my pleasure to announce that I have become the very first Dr. Ackett! After defending my dissertation on nitrous oxide GHG emissions from ag soils, I hope to finally return to my passion of making posts on the internet. #PhDone

Dissertation presentation titled: Soil nitrous oxide hot moments: identification, characterization, and prediction across agroecosystems.

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ryan ackett, PhD(!) @ryanackett.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

when you notice a serious error in the work of an academic rival

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ryan ackett, PhD(!) @ryanackett.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

listen I am diagnosed asd level 1 and I am officially giving you all permission to call elon a nazi. you have the pass to call that man a moron

screenshot of "journalist" Batya Ungar-Sargon
posting "As a person with a *strong* track record of criticizing Elon Musk, I feel extremely confident asserting that this was not a Nazi salute. Elon Musk is a friend to the Jews. This is a man with Aspergers exuberantly throwing his heart to the crowd. We don't need to invent outrage."

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ryan ackett, PhD(!) @ryanackett.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

"You will be visited by three spirits" The three spirits (soil scientist edition):

A soil texture triangle of sand, silt, and clay percentages

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ryan ackett, PhD(!) @ryanackett.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Just had the pleasure of an excellent AGU poster presentation by Christopher Oates on what I think is a critical but underdiscussed reason why ag continues to be allowed to dominate among sources of water pollution: we're not even measuring it! @ngnelson.bsky.social

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ryan ackett, PhD(!) @ryanackett.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Somehow just noticed for the first time this quote up on the wall of my lab building from none other than.... Allan Savory. lol

"Without agriculture it is not possible to have a city, stock market, banks, umiversity, church, or army. Agriculture is the foundation of civilization and any stable economy." -Allan Savory

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ryan ackett, PhD(!) @ryanackett.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

This Bradley’s Fertilizer Company Super Phosphate advertisement states “More than 20,000 tons of animal bones… are used annually by Bradley Fertilizer Company.” They also advertise the “highest cash price paid for bones.”

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ryan ackett, PhD(!) @ryanackett.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

A good article but really undersells a primary reason why people would take the effort to stack all these bones: they were piled near railroads so that the bones could be loaded up and shipped back East to be ground into phosphorus fertilizer for Eastern plantations.

A pile of bison bones next to a railroad car

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ryan ackett, PhD(!) @ryanackett.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

this one is again a very important aim (my research focus 😅) but idk about the mechanism. why not just cap the fertilizer inputs to realistic yield levels and let regulatory action do most of the work, and maybe provide some subsidies for input reductions beyond that level?

Denmark will pay farmers $100 per ton to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from nitrogen fertilization of farm fields, such as nitrous oxide. It intends to use funds from EU’s Common Agricultural Policy. Nitrogen use by the agricultural sector has been one of the leading causes of marine, freshwater and groundwater pollution and overall nature degradation in the EU.

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ryan ackett, PhD(!) @ryanackett.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

I'm of two minds about this. Scaling the tax with animal population seems like its trying to lower emissions per animal, which idk how possible that is. if it lowers the marginal profits of factory animal farming and thus reduces CAFO population, that would be a win though

The agreement includes a marginal tax on livestock emissions that exceed reduction targets. Pork and dairy producers will not pay taxes on 60% of average emissions per animal, so farmers can avoid taxes if they can cut their emissions by 40% of today’s average. But farms will pay about $40 per ton of emissions (carbon dioxide equivalent) above these average levels in 2030, which will rise to around $100 in 2035. Taxes at that rate provide a powerful incentive to reduce emissions to the target level. The revenue these taxes generate will go into a fund designed to help all producers reduce emissions.

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ryan ackett, PhD(!) @ryanackett.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

Even better! When I said it matters which land is taken out of cultivation and restored, peat/wetlands is the absolute biggest bang for your buck. HUGH climate benefits, HUGH biodiversity and ecological benefits. Again, this may not be the last you hear about this idea... :)

Denmark will restore 140,000 hectares of drained peatlands currently in agricultural use and establish 250,000 hectares of new forest by 2045. Overall, around 10% of Denmark’s land will be turned into valuable habitat in ways that either reduce carbon emissions or store it. Forest restoration will focus on native trees and those fields that leach the most nitrogen into coastal waters. To support this restoration, Denmark is establishing a new Green Area Fund with 40 billion Danish kroner ($6 billion).

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ryan ackett, PhD(!) @ryanackett.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

This is very good. In fact, you may be hearing about some similar ideas applied to a US context from a certain policy outfit ;) It does matter which lands are taken out of production and rewilded and how, but overall this is bold and has huge climate upside.

Denmark will convert 15% of its farmland into forest and natural habitats in an effort to reduce fertilizer usage, which has resulted in severe oxygen depletion in Danish waters as well as the loss of marine life, lawmakers said on Monday.
Denmark, among the most intensively cultivated countries in the world with almost two-thirds of its territory farmed, set aside 43 billion Danish crowns ($6.1 billion) to acquire land from farmers over the next two decades.

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ryan ackett, PhD(!) @ryanackett.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

This is already happening in other existing carbon markets! California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard is incentivizing methane biogas production at large dairy operations, essentially shifting fuel emissions to expanding factory animal farming

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ryan ackett, PhD(!) @ryanackett.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

someone who is good at energy systems please help me, my grid is dying

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ryan ackett, PhD(!) @ryanackett.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

If I could beam one idea into every ag person's head, I think it might be that applying manure can help a field, but it can't help the planet. It doesnt represent either net carbon sequestration or a reduction in synthetic nitrogen. It's just laundering those things from elsewhere through an animal.

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ryan ackett, PhD(!) @ryanackett.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

fun soil fact as a Floridian now in Appalachia: Florida's soil is actually Appalachian soil. As the Appalachian mountains formed and then eroded, their quartz, silt, and clay was carried through waterways and deposited on the underwater carbonate shelf formed from dead marine skeletons

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ryan ackett, PhD(!) @ryanackett.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

I wonder how many people are aware the largest land retirement conservation program in the US, which we spend ~$2b/yr on, is designed to trend toward zero actual long term ecosystem conservation but rather to cycle land between conservation and row crops as countercyclical farm income support

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ryan ackett, PhD(!) @ryanackett.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

...and there it is. Regenerative agriculture as soft climate denial.

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ryan ackett, PhD(!) @ryanackett.bsky.social · 09/01/2024

I imagine you could fill in some more gaps by adding hog CAFOs

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