Regenerative Agriculture 101: The What, Why, & How | Lachy Ritchie's presentation at Regen Rev 2021

Welcome to the first ever Regen Rev event. I'm Raechelle Robertson and I'm an ag consultant for advancing Eco Agriculture. Our organizers are Advancing Eco Agriculture, Kind Harvest, Region Farming News and Taneo Biologicals. AEA and Taneo work with growers in North America. Kindharvest and Regen Farming News work with growers all around the globe. Our four companies have been working to further the region mission long before regenerative agriculture was a buzzword. We have partnered together, invited some of the top minds in the industry and exemplary growers to give you the tools needed for your regenerative transition. Our goal is to share the Regen ag basics with you so you can transition one step at a time with resources at your fingertips. Many people are starting their Regen journey, or thinking about starting it, but we know from people who call us, from conferences we go to that growers don't always know where to start. So we want Region Rev to be the place where you start with the right concepts and tips from growers who have made the change. Now it's my pleasure to introduce Laki. Laki Richie grew up in a farming family and has been working for over a decade on businesses that aim to have a positive social and environmental impact on the world. This has led to a strong focus over the past five years towards regenerative agriculture and carbon farming in particular. Laki is now CEO of the Carbon Farming foundation and co founder of Region Farming News, a platform that was created to bring all of the world's knowledge and resources about regenerative agriculture together into one website. Laki joins us from southwest of Western Australia. Over to you, Locky.

Hey, everybody. Welcome. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, depending on where you are. So I'm going to kick things off today with a bit of a what, why and how of regenerative agriculture. So I'll just get my slides up. Give me one second. Okay. We should be in business. So now the team at Regen Farming News, basically we spend every single day scouring the Internet. We do have some little tech bots that do the work for us, but we basically scour the web for any mention of regenerative agriculture, soil health, biological inputs, anything. So, look, basically we get so much content coming in, so much news, so many case studies, podcasts, videos, all of these things that over a period of time, we're able to capture trends, key points that are coming across consistently and constantly in the world of regenerative agriculture. So excellent sound is good according to everyone. We'll press on. So in Addition to that, a couple of years ago, I basically did a comparison and analysis of all of the whether they be formal certification programs that were starting to emerge around regenerative agriculture and also the food brands that were having specific selection criteria around regen Ag and also looked at obviously some of the key, I guess, consultants, advisors, educators in the field. Now this list of logos up here is not exhaustive, but I just wanted to note some of the key sources we used to summarize regenerative ag for you over the next few slides. In particular, I just want to call out Wide Open Agriculture. So I did some of quite a lot of this work while working for Wide Open Ag. So. So I just want to acknowledge their contribution to the slideshow that you're about to see. Now let's get straight into it. What is regenerative agriculture? Now? One second. It's one of these things that people get really caught up on the term and I guess for us we've adopted a very broad umbrella approach to the term. We don't see a lot of value in getting super hung up on semantics. So for us, the simplest possible definition of what is regenerative ag is that it's an umbrella term for a whole range of farming principles and practices that aim to improve soil health, biodiversity and enhance the water cycle. So you'll see these kind of three pillars of soil health, biodiversity and water coming up time and time again in regenerative agriculture. So this is a great little diagram that it's really important just to consider that regenerative agriculture is not binary. It's not a yes or no discussion. I guess it's you kind of or everyone's landing somewhere along a spectrum on a regenerative journey. And obviously you know, of your far one side is degenerative, which is the worst possible type of agriculture we can imagine, destructive to the ecosystem naturally. Now, there's not a lot of people, I'm sure in this day and age who are sitting down that end. Everyone's kind of somewhere along this spectrum and it's just a case of moving further along the journey as best you can. So we take a really pragmatic, inclusive, open view of the term regenerative ag and we encourage everyone to do so. So let's dig into the why, like what actually draws farmers to wanting to get involved in rejection. Regenerative. So there's four kind of key themes that we see come up time and time again and they are legacy, resilience, opportunity and freedom. So I'm going to talk through these Key, I guess value drivers as to why people come to regenerative agriculture. So let's start with resilience. So this would be the big one. This is largely why a lot of people turn to regen ag. Some of the main value they find from it now really lowering input costs is huge. Diversification is another key opportunity here. If you have lots of different types of enterprise happening on the same farm, you're more resilient to shocks in whether they be market shocks. One crop fails, one succeeds, that sort of thing. Now from an ecological perspective, we do see a lot of evidence that regenerative agriculture increases water retention, can result in less erosion, be that wind or water erosion. It's a buffer against extreme weather. Regenerative farms are demonstrated to handle drought storms much better. Now obviously you'll hear a lot today about increased plant health and also animal health. And obviously healthier plants are less prone to diseases, risks, that sort of thing. Now the other interesting one is when you kind of zoom out a little bit further to some of the bigger corporate, whether they be corporate agriculture or larger agriculture companies is there's this increasing understanding about market access risk which is to do with social license to operate. And it's also due to the fact that some of the larger food companies getting increasingly worried about being locked out of key markets if the production systems are not shown to be as sustainable as possible for the environment. So there's a little interesting piece there. And look, the other one that is probably not widely acknowledged is that there's this increasing move in the investment and finance and banking world to hold the investments to a very high account for sustainability particularly that's moving faster and faster towards carbon neutrality. So there is this notion that regenerative farms and taking a step down this journey is going to keep you maintain that access to finance in the future. Particularly interesting of the larger corporate agriculture farmers. So the other key why reason is opportunity. So there's growing consumer demand for products that are seen as positive to the environment. Now the other one is market access. So there's increasing opportunity for recognized products growing within regenerative farming systems to unlock and tap into new markets. Could be carbon neutral certification, it could be a regenerative certification, but there's definitely that there's an edge to try and get you in and get you new customers. Now price premiums is something we're also seeing more and more of. Ecosystem services payments are also an emerging field. We hear more and more stories of regenerative farmers being involved in carbon farming, biodiversity offsetting and we know that this like ecosystem services thing is a new and emerging opportunity. The other opportunity is capital appreciation on the land. There's growing acknowledgment of natural capital and the, I guess natural capital evaluation of farmland values is another key trend that we're seeing growing. And then green finance or investment, there's increasing interest from banks and investment providers to offer beneficial finance or lower interest rates to farmers that have proven environmental credentials, such as regenerative farmers. Now, legacy is a really interesting one. This is something that drives a lot of farmers to start exploring regenerative agriculture. It's this notion of handing the farm on in a better condition than what they received it in. Now, obviously this, this, there's also motivation there around just wanting to have a really thriving, profitable business to hand on to the next generation. And for many farmers who start looking at regenerative ag, it's also about having a positive contribution to the environment. Interestingly, freedom. There is a lot of people moving towards regenerative ag because they kind of want to, they want to break out of the current system that they find themselves in, whether that be the continuing cycle of debt, more and more chemical needed on their farm, higher input bills and associated debt. And there's also this notion of moving to no longer just having to follow the recipe that you're given from an agronomist, being empowered to act and acknowledging that management skill and management technique has the number one impact on a farm business. And then obviously there is opportunity to become a price maker instead of a price taker. If, if you are differentiated from the rest of the farming, you know, most of the farming world, that is. So that, that wraps up the four kind of whys. Now let's get into the house. So you'll see if you've researched regenerative ag, lots of different principles, approaches and associated practices. What we have done is we've from reviewing and scanning all of the existing certifications frameworks that we could find, we've basically pulled out what we recognize as the core themes. You'll see a lot of overlap with other existing published practices. And this is just our version of the story. We're pretty comfortable that if you apply these principles, you will align to pretty much every certification or every other standard or framework out there. So let's get started. So principle one is feed the system. Now, fundamentally, regenerative growers have a completely different mindset when it comes to managing plant fertility. There's a couple of key kind of concepts here. Maximise photosynthesis. So in some Regenerative farming frameworks, you'll see this first point often is described as green roots in the soil year round. So there is this real focus on maximizing photosynthesis to ensure that there are root exudates being pumped into the soil year round and feeding that whole rhizosphere and biological system. And I mean, really, from a nutrition perspective, regenerative ag is about considering not just the plant in isolation, not considering the plant to be growing in a dead inert medium, but the plant is part of the rhizosphere, it's part of the soil. And considering that when you apply a nutrient, you're applying it to the entire system now. So it's got, it's really, it's always really holistic and it's a completely different mindset to nutrition. Now, you're going to hear a lot about this from John, Steve and Dennis today. So I won't, I won't talk too much about it, really. It's looking at things like biological inputs, green manure and cover crops as primary sources of nitrogen in particular. And then the other is things like buffering where you're applying, mixing nutrients with hydrocarbons or humic substances to get them to bond into the soil and be slow release rather than fast release. Just see a comment there from Stuart McAlpine in Western Australia. Yes, Stuart, this is your farm. They are your fruits on your lupin plant. Now, point two is to keep the soil covered. Now, this can be in the form of armour or cover cropping. So in some climates, like we experience over here in Western Australia, cover cropping during the summer is not a reality for much of the area. So in this instance it's about, we have things, it's all about stubble retention, basically. How much cover can you keep to armour the soil through the summer? Obviously, in North America this can be trying to armor through the snow season as well. Now, stripper fronts, if you're not familiar what they are, they're a type of harvester or header that basically just kind of has these combs that pluck the top of the grain off instead of cutting it, so you just get a much, much more retention of stubble. Now, mulching is another strategy here about covering the soil. You will see roller crimping is a common, is a common tool. In America, it's just starting to make its way into Australia. Now that's another tool that's worth looking up. And I mean, really the whole point of keeping the soil covered is to keep direct sunlight off the soil to reduce Oxidation and really just open exposed soil is losing carbon, losing moisture. It's not ideal for the system. So let's have a look. So third key principle is to minimize disturbance. Now you'll most often hear of this through no till cropping, which is really well established. Everyone's heard of this, it's not new, but it moves beyond physical disturbance. Sorry, the other physical type of disturbance is overgrazing. And again, you know, overgrazing will bear the soil, which is not what we want. So beyond physical there's also chemical disturbance. Now the principle here is around avoiding the excess use of liquid soluble fertiliser. That basically if you flood the system with liquid soluble fert, you're putting the natural systems out of balance and you're stopping the trading, the natural trading relationships between the microbiology in the soil and the plant. So you're disturbing the natural system. Now that obviously is also associated with excess pesticides, fungicides, herbicides. Now everyone else coming today is going to talk a lot about this topic. So you'll learn plenty more about this moving forward. I guess the real, the real principle here with regenerative agriculture is as you move further and further along that journey, you can phase off the necessity for a lot of this chemical intervention. And at the very least it's minimizing year on year over time. Our principle four is to integrate animals into the system. So animals are vital for nutrient cycling within the system. We see this through the type of specific techniques. This is looking at mixed cropping and livestock operations. So this is for example, integrating livestock by eating stubble or rotating or mixing your rotations up so that there is a pasture cycle rather than just cropping year on, year out. Silver pasture is another technique. Now high density rotational grazing, holistic plant grazing, cell grazing, pulse grazing, all of these different techniques of grazing that involve generally higher animal density, short periods of impact and then long recovery periods for pasture. That, that is kind of like a very key component to regenerative agriculture. Now multi species grazing is another practice that you see, which is, for example, you might have cow, cows roll through in the first rotation. They might be followed by sheep, followed by chickens. That's the kind of multi species approach to grazing. Now bale grazing is an interesting one. This is basically you see this technique much more in the us we haven't seen a lot of it in Australia, but basically this is where you bale hay in the paddock and then you're feeding cattle out by just purely cattle or sheep by cutting the hay bale, leaving the bale in a big lump. And what happens is livestock come in, they eat it, they trample it, and a portion of the hay goes back back into the soil and builds nutrition in that, in that way rather than scattering and spreading hay all over the field. It's an interesting, interesting tactic that's worth, worth reading up on. It particularly holds microbial communities of soil microbes, that is during, like the snow season or in Australia during, during our hot summer gap. Now, animal welfare is another really important component of regenerative farming. And you'll see it in all of the frameworks and certifications must comply to animal welfare standards. So that's worth mentioning. Now diversity, diversity, diversity. This is critical. Any regenerative farming framework approach stresses diversity of everything you possibly can. It's about stacking different systems on top of one another with crop rotations. It's about moving to as much diversity as possible within your rotations, putting pasture cycles, making sure there's cycles of leguminous plants to get nitrogen into the soil. And the other thing is sporadic rotations of crops. So not having repetitive, you know, corn, soy, corn, soy, corn, soy, but mixing it up so that soil pathogens and bugs don't have time to get into, or pests, that is, I have time to get into kind of repetitive cycles and then they can, they can work around that. So sporadic cycles moving towards polyculture and multi species cropping. We're starting to see a lot of this in our region at the moment where farmers might plant, for example, lupins, canola peas in the same crop together and they will end up harvesting that and now using grain separators to separate out afterwards. And what they find is that by growing these crops together, for example, the peas might climb up the canola plant and together you end up with a higher yield in the sense that where you were previously growing one crop at 100% yield, you might be growing three crops and each of them might be at a 40% to their normal yield and then you end up with 120%. So it's where the sum, the sum of the parts ends up with a higher overarching yield. Not to mention that in a multi species, diverse growing system, each plant is contributing to the health of the other plant and you get, you just get a healthier growing system. And it's also a strategy for nutrient, you know, contributing nutrients to the soil and soil health. So diversity also comes in the form of agroforestry, integrating trees back into the systems, pollinator strips, and then inoculation of mycorrhizal fungi, fungi and also bacteria. And really it's about diversity everywhere you can, in the soil, around it, all over the farm. It's a critical, critical component. Now those five principles that I've just talked through, you'll see them often and they're mostly to do with the actual farm farming system. Whereas there is also these, interestingly there's these three broader principles that we uncovered that move out beyond just the farming system. Now these are probably additional to what, what you will usually see when you hear about region farming principles. Now they are enhanced ecosystem function, have a positive community impact and then commit to a learning journey. So let's talk through those now. So enhancing ecosystem function. Really what I was, to be honest, I was quite surprised when I read a lot of the certifications and standards that they do require. A commitment to considering the whole farmers ecosystem and considering how your farming operation can have a positive impact on the surrounding ecology of your farm and the wider region. This is things like revegetating areas, riparian restoration of waterways, putting in pollinator strips, windbreaks, wildlife corridors, playing your part in invasive species management. And then the other big one that you would hear quite a lot about within the regenerative farming world is hydrology and considering the way water flows through the landscape. So that is coming from techniques and approaches such as keyline, this is swales, this is planting on contours and really reforming the landscape to hold as much water in the soil as possible. So we'll move on to again really interestingly, a lot of the certifications require that farmers are having a positive community impact. So this comes around in a few different ways. You see this through encouragement of community industry partnerships happening on the farm research projects, this kind of thing. Also high standards of wage fairness and worker conditions are generally a requirement within certification standards. And then there's also that giving back to the local economy, buying local, providing food locally. It was an interesting little thread that keeps popping up around local economy. So now this, this was an interesting one. This is about committing to a learning journey. And almost all of the certifications require a commitment to ongoing training, knowledge sharing, peer to peer support of farmers. Which again was quite an interesting kind of bigger picture concept, principle. And really also measuring outcomes and being comfortable to be to I guess share how you are tracking and hold yourself accountable to those outcomes. And the main outcomes that you see being required to be measured or suggested that are measured is the components of soil health, those being physical, chemical and biological. So carbon is a big one that is often measured Microbial biomass, plant nutrient density and also biodiversity are kind of the key outcomes that are discussed as being measured. So moving we've had a real crash course and that was the intention in quickly running through high level principles and really there is eight. So just to summarize, it's feed the system, keep the soil covered, minimise disturbance, integrate animals, increase diversity, enhance ecosystem health, have a positive community impact and commit to a learning journey. So now we will share these slides. So don't worry, there's been a lot of content that we've rolled through. So yeah, you'll be able to see these slides and get more information after the session. So I just wanted to give a couple of quick case studies. So on regen farming news we have these case studies available. I've got the link there so that when you get the slides you can go and have a look. But really regenerative farming we're seeing in all growing systems all across the world, more and more. So for example Adam Chappelle Here it was 8,000 acre farm in a subtropical climate, 55 inch rainfall, their no till cropping, diverse cover cropping and livestock operation. Now really, Adam came to regenerative agriculture really when you read the article, mostly out of desperation because they just could not stop pigweed and were pouring chemicals on year after year the chemical bill was rising and they just could not get on top of it. So for them cover cropping was the only technique that was able to successfully combat pigweed. Now from that, the increased profitability that they found in their system by using less fertilizer, less herbicide really pulled them from the brink of bankruptcy. And the other interesting thread that came out of Adam's case study was that they're now enjoying their farming much more. They're spending less time on the tractor, spraying less chemical and really back into a phase of enjoyment for their farming operation. Really great case study worth, worth reading if you get the chance. Now another One is Stuart McAlpine from Western Australia in our region, so 12,500 acres, we're talking hot dry summer, 13 inch rainfall, very long extended period of no rain, very hot brittle environment. In our environment, cover cropping through summer is a real struggle. Many people cannot manage it just due to limited moisture. So there's a whole range of other techniques that need to be deployed. We talked about armouring the soil and stubble retention I know is critical to Stuart's farming system. But really if you read Stuart's article, a big and common thread is the benefit of biostimulants. So Biostimulants is critical to Stuart's operation. And Stuart in particular found results within two to three years by inoculating the soil and finding basically less pests, less disease, increased water filtration, a whole range of benefits that came from biostimulants. Now, another key thread for Stuart is acknowledging and moving beyond yield as the primary indicator of farm success. This is a common thread within regenerative farmers is, you know, at least in Australia, it's, in the farming communities, it's, you know, if you walk into the pub, all everyone wants to talk about is how many tonnes to the, to the hectare did you crop grow? And no one's talking about profit margin, no one's talking about, well, how much did it cost you to get that yield? So Stuart really advocates strongly for crunching the numbers on what your profitability is versus just chasing incessant yield. So often Stuart would find, for example, maybe a slightly lower yield, though I do know in many cases his yields are right up there with it, with the benchmarks, is increased profitability because you're spending less, basically. Now the other thing, key benefits Stuart noticed was less risk in variable seasons. In his growing environment, you can have pretty well wipeout years where rainfall just essentially doesn't come. And what Stuart was finding is because he had spent less money on inputs and also because his, his soils are more resilient, can hold more moisture, is he was getting, he's getting much less variability and less risk in his operation. All right, so that was, that was very rapid and I'm fast chewing through my time limit. And the intent was to keep this one quick high level before we dig into some more detail with the following speakers. So just wanted to give you a quick run through of region farming news, what it does and what you can find there. Because really our intention with regen farming news is to help people on their regenerative journey from very first interest through to more advanced exploration. So if you go onto our site, you'll find daily curated news resources, podcast videos, or I mean, look, the other thing is if you're not, you're not into jumping on the net every day. We have this really great newsletter that we send out weekly so you can sign up and register for that. We'll make sure we put the, put the link in the bottom and you can basically get curated news and resources from around the world on a weekly basis in your inbox. We have a global knowledge library. So this is searchable by map, sector, keyword, theme. You can, as I've mentioned podcasts, videos, case studies, academic reports, news articles, toolkits, everything you can imagine is being uploaded. There is the capacity for other people to upload content. So we would love to talk to anyone who has an interest in helping to curate this global library. We basically would love to grow this to be an all encompassing resource. Now on our website we also have a whole list of leading businesses supporting the regenerative agriculture movement. Whether they be educators, advisors, consultants, everything machinery companies that works, software, everything is in here. We're building. Ratings and reviews are possible as well. So the intention here is to really help farmers find the best resources from the world leaders when you need them. We also have a global calendar of training events, be they online or in person. You can search worldwide by theme or training type and this encompasses everything we can possibly find on the Internet. So again, if you actually are an educator or you hold field days or workshops, please jump on and upload your event. It is free. There is no cost to upload an event here. So it's just again about providing a resource to the farming community. Jobs we have a growing jobs board, always an interesting one to keep an eye on. Everything from direct jobs on the farm right up to kind of corporate level roles within the larger agriculture businesses. And if you have a job, obviously we'd love to see you post these up here as well. Look, that's a wrap from me. I really want to acknowledge that was a rapid Fire Introduction 101. We obviously didn't have time to delve into many of those principles in a lot of detail, but hopefully that gives you a high level introduction and we can dive into more detail with all the following speakers now.