Balancing Food Production and Soil Health

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK Investing with Schwab is like spending a Saturday at a great farmer's market. You can fill your reusable tote with a bit of everything Maybe you go for some free range self directed investing, or perhaps you pick up a few farm fresh trades while you peruse. You can even get help from a dedicated advisor. that's full service wealth management Match and change your mind whenever you want because it' Schwab. You can invest your way No matter your goals or appetite for investing, Schwab has everything you need all in one place. Visit schchwab. com to learn more. If you are currently overpaying on software to run your business Remember this number ten thousand That's the number of new businesses that join Odu per month Join Odoo today at Odoo. com at OdWo. com Hello and welcome to your Radical Questions, where I put your questions to one of our radical guests. This is your chance to engage directly with the super smart and interesting people we have on this podcast and ask them about their ideas for the future My name's Ollie Dougmore, standing in for a mole this week I'm executive digital editor of the new statem But if you listen to the main podcast with our guest, Andy Kato, you'll already know that. And if you haven't listened, make sure you do. We talk about Andy's amazing, possibly even radical transition from being one half of Grve Vrmada becoming a leader and pioneer in the regenerative farming movement He wants to change the way we grow things, use different methods to traditional modern farming to protect soil health, restore ecosystems and become more resilient to the challenges of the modern world climate change and global conflict Andy Are you ready There's nothing more intimidating for answering questions have been called super smart, but let's go. Let's find out. if Andy is ind super smart A few of you have been getting in touch about Greenwashing, the marketing tactic of making a company product or policy appear more environmentally friendly or sustainable than it really is. We have an email from Mary Hogan, but also Eva Collins sent us a voice note, which I believe we can listen to now Hi, Ollie Andy, It's Eva here from Bristol I've been impressed with the regenerative farming movement, but one concern I have is for the potential washing Without a regulatory framework comparable to that used in organic agraculture, how can consumers be confident that farms marketing themselves as regenerative are genuinely applying the core principles And like I said, we've also got an email from Mary who asks, Please can you ask Andy for his definition of regenerative farming The term is increasingly a greenwash phrase isn't it Howd you wantserand? I think both are fair. And experience of this is that I farmed organically for many years and so When we were getting Wild fararm up and running and we needed to tell our customers what we were doing We followed organic model, which is the certification is a list of practices, essentially what farmers can do and what they can't do. So we drew up these third party audited wild farmed standards, which followed that model And again sort of practice basase, you can do this and you can't do that And what are some examples of that Well, for example, if you're sowing a spring crop, you have to sow a cover crop over winter. There was limits on nitrogen use, on pesticide use and so on And as I was drawing that up are thinking, well, actually after just my experiences of the last sort of decade or so The one thing we can be sure of is that how we combine nature and food, how we deliver this regeneration continually evolving in quite exciting ways So setting the practicesices in stone. complicated. and actually the dream was an outcomes based system Because in an outcome based system, you say, well, this is what happened and you leave the farmers more flexibility to respond to a drought or a flood or their local context one way or another to see how they deliver that And so the focus for us has been on building a framework which measures water quality, carbon, biodiversity and one which often gets missed off which is farmer welfare because if there aren't good farmer outcomes and all this, then there's nothing else to talk about So those outcomes get measured by parties and last year they were collated by NIAab which is sure for the National Institute of Agricultural botany. And so we do still have some practices. some just you can't do this But we're really trying to push this outcomees based approach because ultimately, if water quality is improving, soil quality is improving Biodiversity is increasing and farmer welfare is up We also test all our grains to be pesticide free If all those things are happening, then your ecosystem is going in the right direction the questions are absolutely right in that Regenerative like natural or healthy is a word that anyone can use We have this once inner species opportunity in my opinion, to make the food system a force for an abundant, healthy and resilient future. cannot let it get greenwashed away And I think it's very important to ask people what they mean and what happened in their fields you believe this is the the only moment where the food system could shift Give me some of that historical context, G me historical perspective. How how does where we are right now play out with human history Well, I think there's there's a a longstanding narrative which betrayed Nature was something that was out to get us rather than nature's default setting of abundance. In fact there was when in the seventies, during the last oil shock When it became clear the extent to which our food system had become oil dependent and therefore the oil shock became a food shock But there was there's an article in Time magazine about that and it sort of begins about how, you know ever since we sort of chased around after woody mammoths and tried to scratch a few grains from the earth and all this you know the threat of hunger has been on our backs. And this real kind of thing of like this hostile nature And it's just not like that I've seen it with my own eyes many times just how quickly nature comes roaring back if you give it a chance. the land wants to heal if you give it a chance practical ramifications of that given how quickly rainfall patterns are changing are something that we need to kind of writ large on the landscape fast, I think. Thank you, Maryian Eva. This next question is a voice note from Mark Mark Smith, my question for Andy is how can regenerative farming realistically be adopted by all hable farmers when it requires long term planning and upfront investment that many tenant or marginal farmers may not have does it risk becoming another niche market like organic farming Thank you Well, I'd say that first of all, I'm a tent farmer and I'm not sure I agree about certainly in terms of kits because I think that one of the things that's come out of working with all these amazing farmers in the community over the past several years arere the sort of twenty percent of actions that give eighty percent of the results And so before anyone gets into changing any kind of kits, if there's a systemic use of cover crops, if people are using saP testing, if people are dividing up their fertilizer applications into smaller doses There's huge strides that we can make without the need for any massive investment, we have to operate in a world where we don't have to make massive investments because as the questioner knows, farming margins are are just so tight. But you know the farmers that we're working with are generally speaking conventional farmers. They're often running two systems side by side and comparing the outcomes So for me, it comes down to giving farmers the opportunity to participate in these peer to peer learning communities and to participate in supply chains that value them doing this becausecause as we said in the main episode, this has to be a collaborative effort and it has to recognise the fact that by doing this, farmers are not just you know building their own soil resilience and ecosystem resilience, but they're having huge assount of benefits that we that we need to contribute towards And as has been mentioned already, you know, some farms will have contractors that come in and do their combining for them, they may lease the equipment, they might not own one themselves. And would it be the same with the necessary equipment to fully adopt this regenerative approach. can they lease the equipment? they have to buy it? How does that work Well, I think that, you know, you're right to flag up the equipment thing because one of the consequences of the unbelievable financial squeezees been placed on farmers and the increase in the cost of the equipment. I mean, you would You would not believe the number of zeros on the end of farm equipment. Even when I came into it seventeen years ago, outside of a farming family. so I had to you know buy my own gear you know, even then it was eye watering. Post COVID is absolutely insane. So want if you wanted a tractor, I don't know if it's the standard model for A couple hundred acre, what are we talking about one hundred and fifty grand If you've got combine harvesters at three quarters a million quid now, you know I mean it it's absolutely insane. So of the one of the consequences of that is a Need cover vast amount of acres with a piece of machinery to even come close to paying off off the loan repayments now have a little bit left for yourself. So contractors are incredibly brave in putting their necks on the line for this equipment. it's all weather dependent, of course But what that pushes you towards is you need to standardize operations. You you need to do the same thing across five hundred acres on the day when the sun's out, you. And And so we need to be mindful of that. That's you know, we could say that's not where we want to be, but it's where we are And so what are the twenty percent of regen actions that can generate eighty percent of the outcomes. And I think we know what those are and they can work within the constraints that we're talking about Thank you for that question, Mark. Here is a question from Joy Hello Andy Kato and team. I'm Dr. Jooy Rooney and I'm interesting whether implementing regenerative farming will also increase the likelihood that the UK will feed itself Given UK farmers production has declined over the past twenty five years. And if so, at what cost to farmers Thank you So Joy' asking about how regenerative farming could damage food production in farmers Lvelihoods. 's answer Andnd Well, again, you know, I think know as the lady mentioned, we are seeing declines in harvest over recent years because of increasingly extreme weather. In terms of feeding ourselves, it's of critical importance that we have soils that are able to infiltrate rainfall and store it so that we can get through these periods where our climate which used to be sunshine and showers And it's now delusion followed by droughts. you know, and the only way we can hang on in there as if we have these porous Sponge like soils And the only way to create por us spponge like soils is to make sure that they're full of life And the only way to make sure they're full of life is to keep them covered in plants and harvesting sunshine. So I can't see, you know, the A lot of the times when we say, well, should we do this? or should we do that? there is an assumption that business as usual is an option And I think we have pretty overwhelming evidence from the fringes of the food system so far, but the business as usual is not an option. I'm noticing Andy A lot of your answers these questions. You're identifying and highlighting assumptions that exist quite often in what's being asked of you And I just wonder if it ties back to something we were talking about in the other episode, which is that educational cultural change is perhaps as much as if not greater importance actually, than the necessary sort of practical agricultural ones that are happening on the ground, that the idea or the frame that people have about what this means and what we do currently pererhaps isn' disonnected from reality, but it's perhaps I don't know, slightly out of focus. Yeah, I think there's a quote, isn't there about that that change comes from persistence and telling better stories,. And so You need the actual thing that you're talking about to be buttoned up and to deliver but movements because of stories And u The great thing about this story is that Ive sense that we liveope in a world that's Short on hope and purpose. And this offers such immense purpose Thank you for that question, Joy Here is another one from James. Hi Andy I'm totally on board with regenerative farming As a reilder I'm keen to know how do we go further and truly restore our ecosystems How can we blend rewilding with farming to create landscapes that don't just sustain nature? but actually bring it back to life I feel like people who perhaps A' not familiar with the countryside they have this platonic idol, right? when they think about Britain's countryside and they look out across the rolling hills and and there they are maybe some oil seed rape and it's a lovely yellow and without necessarily realizing that what they are looking at broadly speaking is a monoculture. You know It is one type of plant over great distances and there might be some of the bits in the headederows It's not necessarily what you would view as a sort of thriving. natural environment. I mean talks to me about how your ideas intersect with biodiversity Yeah, well, I'm very passionate about The fact that we have to combine nature with food producing fields for all sorts of reasons Some of them are agricultural related in that there's pretty well established evidence that increasing the diversity of habitat in the field helps the resilience of that field against diseases But also, you know, wildlife is mobile And so the idea that we can just have these islands of rewildered restoration and nothing in between is just not going to work. So I think there's this huge opportunity to combine the need for wildlife and moability to if we really want to restore our ecosystems with rewarding farmers who are putting nature in their fields. and to be clear, this is not complicated. So for example You know, we've done a lot of work with using the evidence of the UK Center of Ecology and Hydrology, a bit of a mouthful, but they've got data on all kinds of things and one of them is the average range of insects, so between about eighty and one hundred and twenty meters And so in a lot of wild farm field, what our growers do is put down a pollinated strip, a flour strip so that the't there isn't a wheat plant that's more than one hundred meters from the nearest And so therefore you get pretty good coverage across the whole field. Now if you do that it depends a little bit on the shape of the field But you're talking around four percent of the field being taken out to cover the whole thing. And so as a as a as a percentage reduction in cropped area versus the value that's being produced there, which is you know our measurements with Bristol University show this douling of insects biomass s if we can create a value system which pays farmers for that and its value relative to how much people are getting paid for nature as the question was saying in the rewilder systems then there's going to be a net financial gain to farmers even before you get in to the benefits to disease resistance and so on these from the abundance of insects within the field to just drill down into rewilding specifically, which is what the question is about I feel like very often we think about the kind of Mga species. There are people who get very excited about the idea that there might be wild wolves in Britain and That actually gives you a really concrete example of where there might be a tension, right between rewilding and agriculture because If you're a sheep farmer, you're probably less keen on a pack of wolves roaming the Yorkshire Dales or whatever it is you choose. You don't see them Other than that example, which is obviously quite stark, how much of there attension between The ideas of rewilding verses Ariculture is it false dichotomy to say that two are in conflicts with one of another them? Well I don't think that necess the people doing it are in conflict with each other, but I do think there is this ongoing conflict which goes back for centuries about nature versus food. I mean you could say that when the first National Park was greater in the late eighteen hundreds The premise of that national park is that for nature to thrive we need people to get out of the way And I think we just got to flip that on its head and really start Owning the potential that we have to be stewards of complexity and we need to be stewards of complexity. And we don't understand how a lot of soil life works. We don't you know, the shark or the Hawk, that these things are designed to work Nature's designed to work. And so we don't need to wait till we can understand every last detail of sol life because we probably never will but we know the conditions in which it thrives We can monitor them now, and we can respond So this idea of stewardship of placing ourselves back at the heart of nature again rather than saying that if we wanture to give nature half a chance we've got to get out of the way, I think that's a really important psychological shift that we need to make Where do it does that? lack of understanding come from. I mean Would you talk a little bit about chemistry versus biology in the food system Well, mean, in terms of farming its you know, it's quite an interesting tale in that You know, for sil to be healthy, it needs to be covered in plants and it needs to be disturbed as little as possible And so By the time we get into the nineteenth century, a lot of European saws have been plowed and left bare for a very long time and they're tired. And so For a while there was this unbelievable export in terms of quantity of guano I think it was Peru from Peru back to the UK. millions and millions of tons of it. I mean, chiseling that stuff off the rocks must go down in history is one of the worst jobs of all time But anyway, but this idea of like shipping in fertility from elsewhere was going and then when an alternative to that was being looked for, And it's interesting because a couple of hundred years before in the sixteen sixties, I think it was called Robert Hook had observed fungi And he and his mate in Holland had observed bacteria under microscopes and they'd written about it One of the theories as to why that sort of was a dead end was because they were both brilliant at making microscope lenders and neither of them left any instructions So who knows what would have happened if they did. But But in the mid nineteenth century, chemistry and physics were the dominant sciences and there was a certain amount of inevitability, I suppose in ending up with a chemical understanding of soil. So scientists amongst the most famous of which is probably lie bigig burning plants and then looking at the ashes and seeing the nutrients that they were made of, and they came to the conclusion that it was all predominantly nitrogen and potassium and phosphorus. it's the same MPK that you see on the side of fertilizer bags, you know two hundred years later. And of course, when that became possible thanks to Habram Bosch, the best boy by name that never was, who invented artificial nitrogen There was an exponential increase in production And then with that the sort of force feeding of crops and the diminuation of soil biology cameame disease and so we repurpose chemical weapons as pesticides to keep the plants alive and it was miraculous on lots of levels, but it had all these unforeseen. consequences and Rachel Cston the sixties famously walked out Silent Field, wrote Silent Spring and started the environmental movement from there. but We've ended up with this chemistry focused system and One of the great opportunities for AI and its analysis of complex systems is this ability to steward even if we don't fully understand it, but to steward biology in a way that we've not been enough to do before And fininally, we've had this question from Roger It seems that regenerative agriculture would be very appropriate for subsistence farmers in the tropics and subtropics. They have highly degraded land and lack income and social integration To what extent do you think can regenerative agriculture be scaled up in these situations And what are the prime constraints? Thankks bye So how could regenerative farming be used around the world Andy. Well, you know, I don't have any specific knowledge the farming systems that's been talked about there, but what is clear is that the principles of regenerative farming are universal And what we're trying to do is mimic natural systems and keeps all covered with a diversity of plants for as much of the time as we possibly can. And I think that applies in in any context and And I suppose the constraints to that will be There's the knowledge and empowerment part of that There's creating an economic environment which values the societal benefits of doing that in a way which is sufficient to overcome what might be perceived as an easier option for this particular harvest, so we need to value it.