Ben Taylor-Davies discusses promise of regenerative agricultural methods in the UK with John Kempf

Hi, friends, welcome back. This is John and you are at the Regenerative Agriculture podcast where we talk about the agronomic science and cultural management practices that regenerate plant health, soil health and of course, ultimately public health, which is what regenerative agriculture really should be about. My guest for this episode is Ben Taylor Davis, who is a farmer and regenerative agriculture consultant from the uk. Ben, I'm really glad to be able to have this conversation with you today. We're going to have some fun with people listening to you with your accent. That's going to be interesting exercise for some people, I suspect. So welcome here. Tell us a little bit about your personal story and background. How did you get to be in this spot of having, as you say, all of your play and pleasure being in your business of doing regenerative agriculture consulting?

Thank you very much for having me on. And yes, my accent is a very broad Gloucester accent, so from the west country of the uk, the story as I for myself and to get to this point where we're having this chat today, quite a long story, to be honest, and I'll keep it as brief as possible, but essentially I went to university, graduated, thought I'd come back to the farm. My father decided that there really wasn't a position for me on the farm back here. So I applied for a job to become an agronomist. And that was in the traditional sense of the word with ag chem and fertilizer and everything that came with standard agronomy. And that rather took me on a path and a very comfortable path for an awful lot of years. And I married my wife, Helen, three beautiful children. And then unfortunately, on 28th September 2012, my son, aged 16 months, was tragically kicked in the head by a horse and suffered some very severe brain damage. And what was a very comfortable life and a lovely life all of a sudden was thrown into disarray. And we spent months and months by his bedside in intensive care and pretty much my world collapsed, and mostly mentally. So from that moment on, I probably spent a couple of years just wondering why and how and who was I and what was I and what did I want? My wife finally persuaded me to apply in the UK for a nuffield scholarship that is offered to young farmers to travel the world. An opportunity to travel the world and learn about agriculture from around the world. And I grabbed that with both hands and I was so fortunate. I'll never forget landing in Meno airport in North Dakota and really deciding that this was the moment where I really, really make the most of agriculture and find out as much as I could. And needless to say, I had a most wonderful time in America, in Canada, in South America, and I was fortunate to China and Russia and Australia and everywhere. And of course, that's where I stumbled into people like Gabe Brown and things like that and started seeing that there was an alternative way of farming that really just set that little bit of a niggle in my mind. And I got home and I started talking to people about soil a little bit more and. And I think I started reading a little bit and more and read more. And then I started getting in contact with some authors of books and podcasts, and to my amazement, they wrote back and said, yeah, you know, this is really a journey and it's really good. And I was just overwhelmed by the response of people like yourself. You know, I made contact and you're like, yeah, sure, let's have a chat. It was fantastic. And that's where I started thinking, you know, perhaps the mainstream agronomy was something that was obviously becoming a problem. And after reading books like Chasing the Red Queen really starts getting your whole.

You said that you read a little bit. I think I saw your reading list and I don't think a little bit is the appropriate description anymore.

No, not anymore. I mean, there's never a book that doesn't recommend two, three, or four more. And I find myself, I think I'm up to 600 books on as tentative as you call it, regenerative agriculture. But I mean, anything from rewilding to the fourth phase of water, right the way through biodynamics and paramagnetism and all sorts of books in between, I just find them. And the more obscure you think a book might be in terms of regenerative agriculture, the chances are it's the more you learn. I think the mainstream books, you can probably, if you read five to ten really good books on regenerative agriculture, you know, I think that's as much as you need. It's the fringe books that really do add and bring to the party a lot of. A lot of information. And I'm staring at a pile literally about 3 foot tall on my desk to read. So, yeah, I haven't stopped yet.

That's as big as mine.

Bigger maybe. Yeah. So on my own farm, I decided to start implementing all of the regenerative techniques and ideas. My father, interesting enough back in the day, was a mixed farm of livestock and arable crops. Of course, life became much simpler with the invention of ag chem and fertilizers and things and didn't need the livestock so much and it was a hassle. I've gone a bit crazy on livestock and decided the full integration of anything from pigs to chicken, tractors to goats and sheep and cattle, ducks and geese, all to try and bring diversity back into my farming system and implement pretty much practice what I preach and demonstrate that as well.

When you speak about diversity and bringing all these different forms of livestock and birds back onto your farm, what type of scale are we talking about? Are you doing a few dozen or a few hundred or a few thousand?

So the farm, so in acres wise is just over the 500 acres, which is about an average sized farm for the UK these days. I guess it's probably edging on the small side, to be honest. So what have I got? I've got 100 ewes. What makes it more complicated is I've got five breeds and they're all rare breeds within that. So we've got 20, essentially five, 20 head flocks of which we spend a lot of time trying to promote the breeds and the rare breeds in the UK. So we've got 100 breeding ewes. So with about 150 lambs, we have anything between four and 55 pigs depending on farrowing and how we are exactly in the whole process of breeding cattle. We're only at 14 at the moment, just about to increase that to 24. It's all a bit of a slow process in terms of getting, getting our land in order or a good enough order in order to extend the livestock in such a way that the idea for us is to try and get. And it's very hard in the UK to get two crops off a single cropping year. But we're using clover under storage and things like that and then, and then enhancing that clover as soon as the harvest, then the livestock and that and cover crops and that sort of thing. So the idea being to really make sure that the diversity, it crosses over between the arable side and the livestock.

You described your personal journey a little bit and the ways that you had accelerated learning by reading a lot, listening a lot to what other people were talking about. How did things change on your farm as a result of all that learning? How have your farming practices transitioned over the last decade or so?

Okay, fairly, fairly massive. I've always been really into the environment and just enjoying wildlife and nature. Back in 2000, I did actually plant 12 kilometers of hedges and we established quite a lot of field margins and things like that to try and protect species and some of the rarest species in the uk. So that's always been part of it. So that's the start. But what have we done? We happen to live in the most beautiful sssi, which is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, an area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, which all flows to the River Wye. And the River Wye is quite a famous river in the uk, but it has some serious issues, and those serious issues are related to phosphate. And the amount of phosphate entering that river is, quite frankly, a real problem. So what we started to look at is how do we prevent the movement of phosphate to the river? Number one, why would I want to have a valuable asset that was phosphate and let it end up in the river? So we start looking at reduction in tillage and the increase in organic matter, so whether it's compost or cover crops, that sort of thing, to actually just hold on. Our cation exchange capacity is pretty low. Our TEC's around 7, 8, or WAS. We're building on TECs with our carbon improvement. And the other huge issue in regenerative agriculture for my own farm. And it was a conversation that I had with my wife. We are potato growers. No, till potatoes is something of a problem, and it's something I was very, very on the brink of giving up growing potatoes. And it was only chatting to my wife, who said, if you give up growing potatoes, how are we ever going to show that they can be grown? People are always going to want to eat potatoes. How can we actually start to show that these can be grown in a way that doesn't totally destroy the environment? The government over here is pushing a thing called five a day fruit and veg. We should all be eating five fru veg a day. Unfortunately, most of the fruit and veg production in the UK is some of the most destructive to soils in the environment. So what I'm really focusing on right now, and the great big challenge, is regenerative potatoes. And I spent two years conjuring up regenerative potatoes in my head until somebody told me about Brendan Rocky and said, listen, this bloke's doing exactly what you're talking about. And unbelievably, I just about squared the circle of everything I needed to do and then realized somebody was already doing it. And it's just one of those things you think, oh, my goodness, only if I'd have found him. So I've got a lot of time for what he's doing over there. And we're very much implementing huge Amounts of that over here now with our own challenges.

Yeah. Making those connections and finding the others is something that is so important and has become increasingly challenging in the mainstream social media networks that are out there, which is one of the things that we're hoping to resolve with Kind Harvest. So you're there now. Thank you for joining. The conversations have been pretty incredible, haven't they?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very good.

Yeah. So when we look at how, when you consider your personal journey and the changes that you've made on your operation, our views evolve and our perspectives evolve. What is something today that you believe to be true about agriculture that is perhaps different from the view of many others in the ag community?

Right. I think that the focus of agriculture is the three main inputs of agriculture, sunshine or energy, precipitation and CO2, which are all free. Unfortunately, there is no value to free.

Yeah, we prefer to buy things we have to pay for.

Currently, quite the interesting thing I have, and one of the opening conversations I have with a lot of people is about the farming model, as far as I'm concerned, which is a very simple model. We take three free things, we put it through a catalyst or our soil, and we make money. And if you get too far away from that, then that's generally where we end up with problems and debt. Most people say, oh, that's all very, very good. You know, I can't do anything about the sun, I can't do anything about the rain and the CO2 is rising. So, you know, exactly what would you like me to do? And I actually think you can do an awful lot with the sun of capture, of taking that energy, as essentially we harvest energy, so we've got to learn to harvest that energy far better. So I think that's really important. Precipitation, we happen to be on very degraded soils, mostly in the UK now. Precipitation, we either have far too much at one stage or not enough when we need it. And therefore the management of this precipitation through carbon, through organic matter retention, things like that, is awfully, as far as I'm concerned, another really important part of regenerative agriculture, CO2, is something that's rising. And if I can take some of that rising CO2 and put it in my soil, I will help to capture the precipitation. So in actual fact, I think that for me, the biggest focus should be on those three free things. And yet, like you say, I think most people focus on those minute input buying, and we spend hours and hours and hours discussing micro macro nutrition and seeds and everything like that. And I can't remember the last Conversation or anybody had on managing the free.

I have got a big smile on my face. I love this conversation. I love the perspective of the three free elements. And I actually think over the last couple of years, I've started speaking about the systemic deficiency of carbon dioxide. And it really catches people by surprise when we talk about increasing photosynthesis and photosynthetic efficiency past the threshold of what is considered to be common or normal, which is very degraded. It's easy to manage the nutritional components of that. And almost immediately, we run up against the bottleneck of inadequate carbon dioxide. I know that this is something I've spoken about, but what are your perspectives on carbon dioxide delivery? How can farmers improve their carbon dioxide supply?

So I'm a big believer. And one problem I do have is my books. The amount I read, I get crosswired in terms of being able to reference people. I can recite many a passage, but unfortunately, I can't often name the author that wrote it, and that's a fault of mine. But something I really believe in is the amount of carbon dioxide in the soil is something that actually we should focus an awful lot more on. Respiration of soil microbes is something that is something that is. And as far as I'm concerned, the moon pays a massive, massive influence on healthy soil and the way they breathe. And from what I recite is that as the moon phases, much like they do to tides, pull and push water, as they pull water up through the soil profile in a healthy soil, all of the carbon dioxide that's accumulated in that soil, in that soil rhizosphere, is expelled out of the out of that soil onto the surface of the interface between the soil surface and the atmosphere. And that is what I believe and why I believe that the stomata of most plants happen to be on the underside of a leaf to capture that high concentration of carbon dioxide. So essentially, and then as the moon phases change, that allows it to breathe and allows the oxygen to pass back into the soil. And there we have yet another wonderful system. So if we're trying to increase carbon dioxide going into plants, all the availability, surely it's all about trying to get more and more soil microbial respiration to occur in order to provide more and more. And more. So it comes back to taking these three things again, using them correctly to become that cyclical pump of actually giving more and more carbon to the plant. And as that solar panel grows a little bit larger, it can take some more energy from the sun, and that can pump more root exudates into the soil and it becomes yet another wonderful nature circle.

What you're describing is a shift in perspective from carbon sequestration to carbon cycling. And I think this is sometimes lost in the conversation about the opportunity to capture carbon and mitigate climate change and global warming, etc. The reality is that from an agricultural productivity and a soil fertility perspective, our desire should be to cycle large volumes of carbon. The more we can sequester, the more we can release through microbial respiration for plants to absorb. That increases photosynthesis and we sequester even more. It's a self perpetuating cycle and that perspective is commonly lost that we actually, we want to lose a lot of organic matter as carbon dioxide, but we want to lose it when there are green growing plants photosynthesizing, capable of capturing it. So anything lost when we have bare soil is lost forever.

Absolutely. So, so like, like I said here in the uk, it's that focus very much on. We're pretty awful here in the UK of the. The most energy hitting the earth comes obviously in, in July, August, September, which is generally the time where we have absolutely nothing growing because we've just taken harvest and therefore we lose probably about a third of the energy that comes in the whole year. So this is why we're focusing on these understores and catch crops. But the weather's so variable with these catch crops. We grew various catch crops and try to mix up some C3s and C4s and did all that this year. And then we got a real quite a cold end of August and our C4S barely grew, you know, an inch tall and everyone thought they were fairly pathetic. In actual fact, if you dug the roots, you realize they were actually trying to do quite a lot of carbon building and feeding biology. So that's why I love this close understory are these low clovers that act as my herbicide mulch. So I don't, you know, Mother Nature always, always looks at covering her, covering her skin at any time. We call them weeds, she calls them cover. So I put my clover in there and I allow that clover then to, to release nitrogen to the plants I'm growing. And then as soon as we've taken that harvest, all of a sudden I've got A, a great cover B, a wonderful animal feed and more clover getting into the system and wonderful rooting of drainage and allowing all my soil biology to really improve.

Let's describe the context a little bit. Many of our listeners may not be familiar with UK agriculture. How is your Environment and ecosystems different and what are kind of the status quo management practices for agriculture in the uk.

Okay. Despite the size of the UK and from what I think a lot of people look at thai little islands and assume there could only be one weather pattern and one soil type and pretty much one form of agriculture. In actual fact, we have some of the most varied climates, some of the most varied soil types and when I say varied soil types, we could have a 10 acre field with 12 soil types running from 80, 80% high magnesium clay at the bottom of a field to the top of the field, literally 200 meters away or 200 yards away. And that could be blow away sand, then everything in between. It makes it a very hard thing when you're doing soil testing and things like that. There is no average field. We haven't got these lovely. There are some over in the eastern part of the uk, but most of the UK is got huge diversity in soil types. You've also got quite diversity in climate too. So that really does determine what's grown. But essentially for an awful lot of time it was plow, plow based system across the whole of the UK and parts of it still very much are focused on ploughing. We very much focus on cereals, various pulses, there's potato growing areas, there's sugar beet growing areas as well and there's veg production areas that are getting more constrained at the moment. Yes, essentially it was bashing the soil and when we were doing it with horse and plough, of course we were only plowing at a depth that really didn't affect biology. And I use the example, an awful lot of. We've got a lot of fence posts from stock fencing and if you look where a fence post rots, it never rots at the tip, it only ever rots at about 2 to 3 inches from the soil surface downwards, where the soil microbial activity and life is. And of course the old fashioned plows used to plow no deeper than that. So we used to, they used to recycle an awful lot of that biology. But unfortunately with the invention of tractors and larger tractors and bigger tractors yet again, and wanting to do more, of course the plough is needed to cover more acres, so in order to cover more acres you end up with a wider plough furrow. The only way you can end up with a wider plough furrow is to plough deeper. That becomes this problem of people ploughing 8, 9, 10 inches deep in order to throw a 20 inch furrow. And of course then that's when the massive degrading soil problem stuff come from. So we've carried on and we started to do a really good job and we were good high inputs, growing a lot of cereals. So, for instance, wheat in the UK, most wheat growers would be aiming for 10 ton a hectare or 4 tonnes to the acre of winter wheat, many pushing 12 ton a hectare and even 15. So getting up to 5, 6 tonnes an acre of winter wheat. That of course comes on the back of huge amounts of inputs too. That becomes that very much the treadmill, that is lots of nitrogen, lots of disease, lots of disease, lots more nitrogen, fighting fungicides, fighting with insecticides, and very much trying to put fires out constantly.

Coming back to your comment about the three free things in agriculture, that would make an interesting phrase if you said it multiple times really fast. Three free things. You talked about the yields that are being produced, but what about the profitability of managing that ecosystem with those high input costs?

And this is pretty much another thing that started to frighten me. My father passed away and I was handed all his box files and things like that from when he was farming at the farm. And what I noticed was that in 1994 we did 4 tons of the acre of winter wheat and our input costs were about a fifth of what I took over from him and farmed conventionally. And the price of diesel, the price of nitrogen, the price of all inputs, the very fact that a very small amount of herbicide, a very small amount of fungicide was ever needed and things like that. And the reality struck that in actual fact, that the problem is not so much yield because our yields have plateaued. There's a few that are pushing better boundaries. But if I was going full turn in 1994, I wasn't growing any more than that. In the year 2010, that becomes a real problem. So the focus for us is actually the huge input costs of just. I liken it very much the frog in the boiling water or the water analogy, where I think we've all sat in this water that slowly got warmer and warmer and warmer and warmer to the point where we haven't jumped out. But in actual fact, if somebody came to the UK right now and said, well, these are going to be your input costs and this is your profitability, that would be a real problem. And you'd be like, well, the profit really doesn't square the investment. There's a lot of farmers that are still profitable, don't get me wrong, and doing okay, but unfortunately, and it's Very much the fringe of soil quality that we are seeing. Those with more soil quality have got more ability to keep going in the way they're doing. Those that are on slightly compromised soils have got to the stage where they realize that in actual fact we can't keep taking and putting very little back. And something really has to change. And these spiraling costs are actually making businesses, many businesses, actually lose money. That's where we bring the three free things back. Hang on a minute, how far away have you got from that? I guess for the main of the UK and one of the major penny drops, we've got a weed called black grass. We used to control it very easily with one herbicide. Then a bit of resistance came and we started using 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 herbicides, still getting very little control. It was only at that point that we realized that herbicides were totally failing. What were the other options? Well, of course that's when you start looking at cultural management and all of a sudden you start thinking, well, my soil is in such poor health that we are self selecting an environment for this weed to become established. So in actual fact, if we can change the environment in which it's growing and improve the soil conditions, the black grass, funny enough, disappears. And that's exactly what's happened. So that's something that really has hit home to a lot of growers in the UK and something that really has probably started the regenerative movement, because once you have that seed sown, I think people just want to open that a little bit more.

So now, today, in addition to farming, you're also doing consulting for regenerative agriculture. You described the black grass as being perhaps one motivator of that. But when you think about the business context, the business environment as you just described it, with constantly squeezed profitability in the mainstream system, has the profit motive and the desire to improve profitability gotten people to consider adopting more regenerative agriculture practices? What does the landscape look like in the UK at the moment of transition? Regenerative agriculture?

That's a pretty tricky question to interpret because unfortunately places like Twitter that I spend an awful lot of time on, as I'm sure you're aware, but I find I surround myself with most regenerative growers in the uk, so you end up with quite a blinkered view of how you think the UK is in so much as well, everybody's on the journey on the consultancy side of things as well. Of course, I'm only being contacted by people that are desperate to just have some help along the way how can do this and that sort of thing. And I'm really enjoying that. Of course, I don't really think that's the norm still in the uk. I do think there are people very much still in the bathtub with the frog. Questions are being asked all the time. You know, new generations are coming through and saying, you know, I would pretty much like to have this farm in 25 years time. The way we're farming at the moment, I think they're going to be devoid of soil, if nothing else. So in actual fact, I think there is definitely conversations being had on many farms about how the problem is in the UK and it's something. And the reason why I'm writing a book, to be absolutely honest at the moment is to. I think a lot of places would go well, you know, it's great. It works with John Kemp in America and it works for all these people in Australia and Brazil and things. England of course is very different, very different. We've got different soil, you know, we got a different clay. They haven't seen clay like this and, and before you know it. That's why I'm writing this book which is called Moron and it's about M O R E O N you know, the addiction of British agriculture to inputs. You know, if you put a little bit on more, more must be better and you, you put more on and more on and more on and that's where we've got to. And one of my titles of the chapter that I want to write at the moment, but unfortunately due to Covid, I can't get round an awful lot of very, very good growers in the UK of regenerative. The title is entitled It Won't Work Here and I just go around all these, all these chaps in the UK and prove that, you know, they're doing it and doing it well. So I think one of the biggest barriers for me is proof and that's what I think will be really useful about my book coming out that will.

Hopefully human nature is the same and the world over, everywhere you go, if people want to avoid doing something, they will say it won't work here. Yeah, there are people who have given us that line in probably every state in the U.S. and yet there are growers who are sometimes within very, very close to them proximity who are doing it successfully. So the principles work successfully everywhere. I have a suggestion for you though. I think you should change the title of your chapter from It Won't Work here to it is working here.

Yeah, yeah. Quite. Absolutely. I think that it won't work here. Is more. Is more of a. Yes, yes, it really can and it will and it certainly is and it's working here. It's amazing when you start doing some talks and doing some. And things and talking to clients and things, and especially the generations where they can remember their grandfathers doing various things and they're like, we used to do that. And I was like, yeah, you probably did. You probably did. Any wonder why we haven't? And that's why I think some of the best books I've got and their reference books are from the Ministry of AG of the UK from 1890s to about 1890s to about 1930s, pre development of our friends Harbour Bosch and everything that came with that. And some of the knowledge. The worry for me is the word science and I really don't like the word science because we all assume that a lot of people assume science was only developed in the last 50 years, really. And before that it wasn't science, it just happened. But of course science has been happening forever. I mean the very fact that natural select artificial selection of all the plants we now grow, I mean the science is phenomenal. That went on and therefore, you know, I really do feel that we should start learning about everything, you know, and that's the book I've been buying up recently and just overwhelmed by what they. What they talk about.

I'd like to go back to your extensive reading list. You have your own website and you've published the reading list of all the books that you've read and how you have rated them. Where can people find that and what are the top books that you would recommend for people?

So the website's the easy bit. So that's www.regenben.com and for those that can't actually understand my accent, I'm sure we can put it up on a link after. We will do that. Top books now, funny enough. Well, we had a brief conversation before we came on air, didn't we, about ranking books and ranking interest and that sort of thing. And what would suit some, wouldn't suit others. And I just wonder whether I need to go back over my whole book collection and actually start putting a traffic light system in for beginners, intermediates and almost experts of Regen ag. Because I do think there needs to be your beginning or just wondering the subject, you know, you can't go far wrong from. Gabe Brown is a wonderful story and a wonderful book to read. Nicole Masters, for the Love of Saul is another great Great opening book into Regen ag. I love John Steeker's book as well on Saul Handbook. Then I think if you're going to step up a little bit from there on in, that's when books like your own, I think, very, very good.

I was just ready to say. You're not going to mention my book.

Yeah.

My goodness, that's a level. A level. Well over and above the beginners, so to speak. I think Matt Powers, his book that he's just released, is fantastic at illustrating some of the more complex parts of the whole regenerative system. You know, I just find his energy just absolutely fantastic and it comes through on his book. And then the expert books would be things like the Fourth Phase of Water. It's one of my most favourite books. It. Absolutely. I've read it twice. Probably going to read it for the third time. Whilst I've ranked them all in order of sort of difficulty and importance, I wouldn't want somebody thinking about Regen Ag to pick up the fourth phase of water and probably be put off, if I'm honest.

So as a personal question or recommendation for you, if you enjoy the Fourth Phase of Water and you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend his earlier book that is titled Cells, Gels and the Engines of Life. Understanding that book and what its implications are, what it describes will completely revolutionize our perspective of how nutrients flow inside plants. It completely destroys the foundation of plant physiology and rewrites it from the ground up in a very elegant, beautiful and simple manner, which is really delightful.

Absolutely.

Have you read any of Stephen Herrod Buhner's books? Give Me the Lost Knowledge of Plants and the Secret Teachings of Plants and Plant Intelligence. You have?

Yes. Very good.

Those are some of my favorites as well.

No, they're. I. I mean, the, the problem is when you've read so many, it's very hard to just keep naming. I mean, I'm just gone. I mean, I've got a book, huge bookcase here and another bookcase there and, you know, and I look across and just, you know, I look at them and I just think there's just. Just some wonderful writings. Yeah.

I think you and I could have many interesting conversations because I've. I don't often speak to people who read quite as much as I do and so be interesting to see where we have not overlapped.

Yes. Perhaps we should exchange book reading lists.

Yeah.

When.

With the. With the experiences that you've had, the phone calls that you're getting from growers who desire to begin A transition to more regenerative agriculture practices. From your perspective, what would you say most limits farmers from achieving the potential that they're really capable of on their.

Farms in terms of what's stopping them becoming regenerative or what's stopping them achieving what they could achieve because they are on a journey and they haven't quite got there yet.

Well, I intended it as the latter, but you can answer either way.

The easiest and obvious answer to most problems in UK agriculture, I guess, is, is the world over is fear.

That really is at the foundation of everything else, isn't it?

I spend my life telling people, if you did everything opposite than what you're doing today, right, your farm would be far more resilient than what it is. And they're like, wow. And then you start explaining everything and turning everything upside down onto its head. I think mindset and fear of doing stuff, and that's certainly probably the most major worrying thing for me is the farmers that are tenant farmers, generally paying a rent, trying their hardest, generally in a spiral of debt and trapped on this treadmill because the leap of faith to get off it and say I've got to do something different is the worry that in actual fact, whilst they're not making any money now, perhaps they'll lose even more if things were to go awry. And that really concerns me as an advisor that how do we get this whole debt ridden society, part of or social part of agriculture, into a place where in actual fact they really start? I mean, farming should be enjoyable. You know, putting the fun back into farming is something regenerative agriculture has done for everybody. I speak to the worry and debt for people is the reason why agriculture at the moment is probably one of the highest suicide rate in certainly in the uk, I'm not sure the world over. And that's generally because of spiraling debts and all kinds of other problems that come with it. And what I found, and I know I had my mental health issues when my son was kicked and I know that this regenerative agriculture hasn't just regenerated my farm, it hasn't regenerated, it's regenerated my mind, it's regenerated me, it's my regenerated family, it's regenerated by my whole outlook and my whole aspect on life and my friends and everything. And that's something massive when you start to become part of this journey. The way I wake up in the morning is full of excitement and desire to either help somebody because that's the day I'M doing it or on my own farm to actually implement some ideas, as wacky as they might be at times and do that. So I think it's very much, yeah, the fear of change. Once you can just lead somebody, I think that's when they can really start to just change and adapt and do what they need to do.

When you think about the business landscape of agriculture as it exists at the moment, with the compounding debt spiral that you described and the ever tightening profitability and kind of the mainstream that I think is there's certainly local nuances in different regions and different nations around the world, but there is a. Certainly the major themes prevail across the board when you consider that business landscape and that environment. What would have to happen for regenerative agriculture to speed up and to become mainstream more rapidly?

I guess talking from the uk, mainly proof of concept. It's very easy and I'm spending an awful lot of time because it's just becoming spring at the moment. It's very easy for me to stand in front of somebody and say, whilst on this regenerative journey, you were applying nearly 300 kilos of nitrogen this year, I want you to apply 20 kilos of stabilized N and believe me, we'll have the same results. Okay. And that doesn't compute. Once it's been done and once it's been proven and once people got quite excited about it, it's then rolling out more and more. Very cynical is the farming community of the uk. So even if you've done it on five neighbouring farms and you try and convince the sixth neighboring farm, yes, it will work for you. He'll say, they've got different grain than me, different soil type. Okay. Another challenge. So I think it's confidence in the system.

I've observed you on Twitter and social media being a strong advocate and champion for SAP analysis. And in reality, this is where SAP analysis has been such a powerful tool for us, because you pull a SAP analysis and all of a sudden the farmer has the data in front of his face that says, oh my goodness, I don't need 300 units of nitroge, only need 20.

Yeah. So I think it was yourself that introduced me to SAP analysis 18 months ago, was it? Two years ago? Probably, yeah. Something that, I mean, we send all our samples off to Novocrop Control over in the Netherlands, Interesting enough, we send them on a Friday, our results back on a Monday. If we do a tissue analysis in the UK to a UK lab, you send them off on a Friday, you're Chasing them up a Fortnight, you know, 14 days later. So they are very, very efficient. What I do enjoy about Novocrat Control is that they are very professional in what they do. They don't try and give some sort of interpretation that is left to you as an agronomist or you as a specialist to actually interpret that information. Because the trouble is with all these, a lot of places come back and say, well, this should be this and this should be that. But in actual fact, as you know as well as I know, the interaction of all the different elements is often a reason why something is actually working very well or working not. And it's very hard to come up with blueprint to actually interpret SAP analysis.

I think our big revelation, similar to what you just described from our use of SAP analysis, was the inversion, a complete reversal of the mainstream agronomy paradigm, which is that you pull a sample, such as a SAP sample, and you identify the desired level and you add whatever is low. And what we observed quite quickly is that the reason five of the 20 different elements are low might be because two of them are too high and you reduce those two and the other five come up all on their own and you don't have to apply any. And I think here in the us, sometimes growers look at the price and the cost of taking the samples and sending them to the Netherlands. It's quite a bit more expensive than what you have in the uk, about two or three times as much. I think it appears to be expensive, but I have yet to see a case where we didn't save tens of thousands of dollars in wasted fertilizer bills. And all of a sudden those SAP analysis become really, really cheap.

No, I absolutely agree. And you're absolutely right. I mean, we spent our lives on the laws of minimum. Of course, there are laws of maximum too.

Conveniently ignored by the people who sell fertilizer.

So the laws of maximum are as important as the laws of minimum. Like you say, opens doors.

Ben, what is something that you wish all farmers knew?

Nitrogen isn't the answer. I love it. I love that answer. You know, I. I have this fantasy.

I have this fantasy of being able to tax nitrogen to the point of making it virtually unaffordable. And I shouldn't say virtually unaffordable, but making it very expensive to apply too much. That might be a better way of saying it, because if growers needed to grow their own nitrogen, which is very realistically feasible and possible, that would change our entire agricultural landscape immediately. All of a sudden, we would have more diversified crop rotations. We would care much more about soil biology. We would care more about growing cover crops and growing legumes. It would have radical changes, would produce radical changes on the agricultural landscape if we attempted to grow our own nitrogen or needed to grow our own nitrogen, which is really bizarre considering that the air. You know, we have growers we work with who have evaluated their soils and reported that they have soils where the soil biology is sequestering and fixing 300 units of nitrogen per acre per year. This is not with legumes. This is without legumes, Just biology by itself, fixing nitrogen. All soils have this capacity, and if they're developed and managed correctly. But we don't see that very commonly today because we've adopted a model of agriculture that systemically destroys it.

Yeah, interesting enough. A very good friend of mine, Ian Robertson, who does all my soil sampling and runs a wonderful soil interpretation business, One of the first times I ever met him, he took me to a field of winter wheat and he said, the biomass of this winter wheat, let's measure the biomass, work out how much nitrogen is in this crop. And there was about 425 kilos of nitrogen stored in the crop. We'd applied 200 kilos of nitrogen, and assuming the nitrogen use efficiency was 50%, we'd applied 100 kilos of nitrogen. And he said to me, well, where's the other 300 come from then?

Yep, exactly right.

Wow. The question then is, of course, if you can get 300 kilos, well, why on earth, why can't you get the rest? It's really not that tricky. And those are the pennies that drop. And you think, yes, we've got the system, the broken system, so terribly wrong.

Yeah. Ben. I often find that people who have been on this pathway of asking questions and asking why, questioning the status quo, eventually develop a realization or a different sense of what is and what really might be going on that they may not be comfortable, sometimes aren't comfortable talking about because they sense that other people are not ready to hear that. What might that be for you? What is something you would really like to speak more about or for more people to know, but you often don't talk about it because you think it might make people uncomfortable?

Probably energy.

Energy is a little word that has many different meanings.

Energies in terms of the biodynamic side of things. That wonderful book you made me read the other day by Rupert Sheldrake of, you know, the science delusion, which has sent my head spinning in directions that just Question. Question my questions now. Thank you. And the whole sense of mind and spirit and that sort of thing. I just think there is so much more and I'm not even sure I'm even qualified to talk about this sort of. There is definitely things happen in the world and things and you as a person and your mind and how that works and the power of positive thinking and all of that sort of thing that has huge influence not only on the people around you, but on the environment around you as well. I've read a bit, not as much as I'd like to about. I do really think that there's hidden energies that we can't quantify, but certainly have far more. I'll use an example. When we were in hospital with my son. Okay. This is something that will stick with me forever. He was in intensive care at the time and it was a terrible time. A girl came in next door bed and unfortunately the news was pretty horrific. And unfortunately there was no hope. She hadn't been christened, she was only young. And they decided to have her christened at the bedside. And bearing in mind this is next door to us, they had her christened at the bedside and pulled the curtains round. And I can't describe, but what I can describe is what happened next, which was the very fact that me and my wife went out to grab some lunch, came back in and his child was in a much better health of state. And then two days later was sat up in bed. Four days later, was moved to a ward, 10 days later discharged from hospital.

Wow.

I believe there were guardian angels and that sort of thing. Who knows what there are. There are energies in these, in these places where you need energy. And believe me, we needed a lot of energy for our boy. And I believe it was the power of all of that that made our boy come home. And I might sound really, really strange like that, but I do think there is so much more in it than we give credit for.

Yeah, I'm completely with you on that. And you're right that there are some people who are uncomfortable having this conversation. And yet I would suggest that the way to resolve our discomfort around these conversations is to have them more often and to become more clear about what it is that we're speaking about and how we're speaking about it. Because there are many things that earlier in our conversation you described the influence of lunar activity on the tides within the soil and gas exchange within the soil. And what I have experienced over and over is that when I start having this conversation with people who have a close connection to life and living ecosystems, and they pay close attention to what's happening and what's going on. They all share these common experiences, these common themes of experiencing and observing things in natural ecosystems that aren't really explainable by our current mechanistic scientific perspective. And it's really interesting to me that almost universally, farmers might have different theological and spiritual backgrounds, but almost universally, they will acknowledge that there is more to agriculture and farming and there is more to life than pure science and chemistry.

No, I absolutely agree. I mean, the very thing that makes us human. What We've been having various conversations of late. You can take two soil samples of two fields next door to each other. Those two fields, one is pretty much in a dreadful state and one could be in an absolute wonderful state. And you send it through all the. All the. All the tests you can ever think of, and the results may very much come back. They're almost identical. You couldn't tell them apart. And yet, as a human, you could take two footsteps across each of those two fields and know that they are totally and utterly different. That makes us unique.

Yeah. And we have the same. With different types of soil amendments, we can look at limestone from different quarries that, from a chemistry perspective, has the absolutely identical calcium content, magnesium carbonate, magnesium content and carbonate and bicarbonate content. You can grind them down to the same particle size and distribute them on a field side by side and to get two completely different results. So is it chemistry? Is it biophysics? What's going on? There's a lot more to that story. Well, Ben, I want to say thank you very much for sharing your knowledge and wisdom and your experiences. I've really enjoyed having this conversation with you. I'm going to look forward to having more conversations with you about reading dozens of books and see where we don't overlap.

Yeah, that sounds good. Fun. Thank you very much. Cheers.

The team at AEA and I are dedicated to bringing this show to you because we believe that knowledge and information is the foundation of successful regenerative systems. At aea, we believe that growing better quality food and making more money from your crops is possible. And since 2006, we've worked with leading professional growers to help them do just that. At aea, we don't guess. We test, we analyze, and we provide recommendations based on scientific data, knowledge and experience. We've developed products that are uniquely positioned to help growers make more money with regenerative agriculture. If you are a professional grower who believes in testing instead of guessing, someone who believes in a better, more regenerative way to grow. Visit advancingecoag.com and contact us to see if AEA is right for you. Thank you for listening and we look forward to working with you.