Revolutionising Carbon Sequestration: Regenerative Agriculture with Richard from Re-Generation Earth

Hold on, let's just take a step back, and instead of doing monoculture— Mother Nature doesn't work in monocultures, she works in a broad range of things. So let's enhance that and improve the soil on the way.

Hello and welcome to Rethink What Matters. The podcast dedicated to aligning the economy with the ecology and everyone for improved business performance, stronger families, and a greener, cooler planet. And today I'm joined by Richard Bowe of Regeneration Earth. And we're going to be discussing regenerative agriculture.

Hello, Paul. Good to be here.

Brilliant, brilliant. So Regeneration Earth are working with land managers to unlock the natural capital potential in their land, build more financially and environmentally resilient businesses, and help them benefit from the new— from new income streams. You know, I'm really excited to be speaking with you today, Richard, because, you know, this is, you know, regenerative agriculture. And I know you're doing some really great things there at Regeneration Earth. So keen to learn all about that. So, I mean, this really is addressing the 240 years of damage that we've been doing and how can we repair that in a natural way. So great. Perhaps we could start off with you just telling us a little bit more, please, about Regeneration Earth.

Well, Regeneration Earth was a combination of my past experience from farmer's son, farm manager, and then lastly into regenerative agriculture, and then Doug's family farm and his journey. He did an Uffield Scholarship in 2015, and we met in a field of maize, and the rest is history, shall we say.

Yeah, so tell us, you know, what does, uh, what services are Regeneration Earth providing?

Regeneration Earth was set up to act as a conduit between businesses and individuals that want to reach net zero and farmers and landowners that can do something. We've got a huge carbon sink underneath our feet, and let's face it, crops and the soil actually works better by having carbon in it rather than floating above the surface. So what's better in joining the two together and getting a positive outcome, or a negative outcome, should I say?

Yeah, I like that, like that. So, and how do you do that then? How do you actually approach that problem and solve that problem?

Well, there's a lot of schemes out there that just rely on, um, almost analytical data, whereas we like to go and delve a little bit more involved in that. So first thing is conversation. We We like to go out there and understand the farmer or the estate, the landowner, understand his farming system, whereabouts he is on the regenerative journey, understand what he's wanting to do, his outcome. And then we'll come away and put a proposal in place, and that will include auditing of the farm so we know where they are on the carbon journey, how far carbon positive they have to be. We then do baseline surveys randomly across fields, and so we know we've got a starting point. And then we sit down with the farmer and just see how much we, we think that he can sequester in a 5-year period. He then has that to sell, and which we do the balance of that in year 5 when we do another secondary baseline survey. So we know actually what's sequestered in the soil. Along, along the side of that, we do mapping. So we identify areas of percentage of biodiversity net gain, nutrient mitigation. Um, we've got a very good GIS expert on board with us, so we can identify— sorry, spatial awareness— so we can identify areas of where we can concentrate ecologists to the right area rather than them wandering across the whole estate and trying to find where the best part is. We can send them to where there could be the best, um, net gain of biodiversity.

Right. So, so do the other farmers coming to you in the first place because they're concerned about the state of their land or because they see it as an income stream?

Interesting question. There, there's a varied amount. There's farmers that have been on this journey for a long time and they want to make sure they are doing the right thing. There's people on the start of the journey and then there's those in between. And so it's really a broad spectrum of different people that come to the front and they know with their heart of hearts they're doing the right thing. But they want to be on this journey and be rewarded. The payments aligned to farmers is phased out, BPS payments, and we're moving more into public money for public good. Well, why don't we look at this a different way? Businesses have to reach their net zero potential. So if they pay farmers for sequestering the carbon, looking at BNG, looking at natural capital, um, then that's got to be a win-win while saving taxpayers money to be able to do good with that money also.

Sounds superb. It sounds like massive wins all around, doesn't it? So is this, uh, I mean, it's a viable income stream for farmers then, is it? I mean, does it replace other income streams that, that are probably less profitable for them at the moment, or is it really just about land which has no use at the moment and they're finally trying to, trying to find a for it?

Well, the biggest thing, I mean, when you take into consideration soil, soil has become addicted to nitrogen, to pesticides, and one thing or another in the same, the same way as our mindset has. So if we go cold turkey, we just withdraw them all and start from scratch, we see massive reductions in yields and quality of grain, whereas if we introduce different methodology into this, but we can slowly reduce the amount of nitrogen, pesticides, and so forth that we're actually utilizing in the soil. And just simple things like if you dig a hole around the outside of the field along this hedgerow, that's all of the bugs in there that's supposed to be in the soil throughout the field. So mixing them with a bit of water and applying them to the soil gets those microbiome, the bugs, all of the bacteria and fungal working in the soil how they should do. And we've just driven them all out and made them lazy. So it's just invigorating all of that, but doing it slowly. It takes 7 or 8 years, possibly more in some soils.

So what's the difference then between what you're doing there and just great land management. It sounds like you're doing a fantastic job of land management, sorts of things that perhaps farmers, you know, might already be doing, but perhaps not doing it well enough.

Well, no, I mean, we, we were tasked post-war to feed the nation, and, um, post-war it was considered the right thing to do to pull hedges out. We weren't concerned about biodiversity. It was feeding the nation that was important. And now we've got to farm smarter, not harder. So by— I love the analogy. A predatory spider takes 6 weeks to get into the middle of a 100-acre field or 40-hectare field to do any good eating aphids or whatever. We've got to think carefully about how we approach this. The monoculture is not working. We're proving that we're having to do more and more on on the, um, GM of crops and get them working in the lab. Well, hold on, let's just take a step back, and instead of doing monoculture— Mother Nature doesn't work in monocultures, she works in a broad range of things. So let's enhance that and improve the soil on the way.

Sounds brilliant. And does it improve the yield of crops for the farmers, other crops? I mean, other—

well, interesting enough, we've done some trials here at Bank Farm and we've reduced our nitrogen. Typically, 7, 8 years ago, we were putting 250 kilos of nitrogen on, and now we're down to 70 kilos of nitrogen. And, um, over half— under half of that is, um, foliar applied. So there's no chance of any of that leaching into the water courses or up into the atmosphere, which is totally— nitrogen use is something that we've got to bear in mind, not only carbon.

So the crops of these farmers growing on their fields and on their farms, we typically here we grow wheat, beans, oats, spring barley, oilseed rape.

We're growing a full range of crops here, including grass for our forage-fed beef. And yeah, we're not receiving any yield penalties because of the way we've done it to slowly get away from the nitrogen dependency and addiction. But we still need to grow food and that's our biggest principle. We're in a climate emergency, so we've got to do something with the carbon. but we've also got to feed ourselves.

Yeah, sure. Okay. So when it comes to then selling this carbon sequestration to individuals or businesses, how is that achieved?

Well, we, we go through something called the UK Carbon Code of Conduct, and very early on we, we spoke to a number of the code, um, companies, um, there's, there's a few out there And we very soon realized there was complete loopholes in there. So Doug, my, my business partner, decided that was his focus and left directorship of Regeneration Earth and started working on the UK Carbon Code of Conduct with some like-minded people, landowners and individuals, small group. But they, they've come along with this and It is gaining more traction because they've linked it to the voluntary carbon markets that Mark Carney's setting up, rather than the ad hoc markets that leave various loopholes and carbon cowboy territory.

Right, okay. And does it require companies to show that they've got a reduction plan in place first?

The, the ultimate sale will be, um, to the companies. And we're not here for greenwashing. They've got to areas, solar panels, a reduction in their emissions to go on to that ladder. We just don't want to supply people that just want to buy them to offset. We're on a journey, so everybody should be on that journey.

Right, yes, absolutely, absolutely. So it's very much about identifying high biomass crops then to make this effective, is that right?

No, I would say that we need— first of all, we need to feed ourselves, but also we need to look at what we clothe ourselves with. Where we've got huge potential with wool, um, and farmers are getting paid less than, um, less than what, 10 to 15 pence a fleece. It's wrong with that. That's just wrong. We've got natural fiber that for generations has been good enough to keep us warm. We're also looking at hemp fibers for various things. There was a company that we work with use bulrushes for insulation in puffer jackets, right? And so we need to start looking at all of the different things around us to utilize them better. But ultimately, we've got to eat. And so rewilding is a great thing, planting trees is a great thing, but ultimately we've got to eat. And importing food from right the way across the planet Isn't sustainable either.

No, absolutely. I'm with you on that one, 100%. And so your work is helping with that then, is it? To, you know, so that we can grow more food locally.

Yes, we're working with farmers both to promote local foods. I mean, we're very lucky here. The Wansell family have a vending machine. It's called the Egg Machine locally. It's principally there to sell eggs. But they upcycle people's, um, local fruit, local, um, apple juice. And Doug's mum makes Scotch eggs, they make sausage rolls and cookies and all sorts. And it's all about connecting with the local people to sell that produce locally. So it's— they understand the journey, right?

Right. So it's really all-encompassing, isn't it? It's The farm is carbon offsets, it's an additional income stream for farmers, it's helping to improve yields by the sun, or at least allow, allow more local—

maintain yields, maintain yields. Yes.

Yeah. Okay, okay. And, um, yeah, and, and obviously help to feed ourselves as well. So it's, it's much more— so that's what we— so regenerative agriculture. It's very much about finding nature-based solutions then, is it, to, to the way that we've done, learned to do things over the last 100 or 200 years, maybe with lots of pesticides?

Well, interestingly enough, I looked that up on, on the dictionary about regenerative agriculture, and it says a farming practice that aims to enrich soil and protect water and increase biodiversity. And that kind of sums that All up in one phrase.

Right, okay. So what is your view on soil erosion? Because I know that has— that is a big problem for a lot of farmers at the moment.

The biggest part of soil is uncovering it. You see bare soil, which reflects the heat back. And we're also losing soil at a vast rate. So the best thing for a soil is to be growing things. It keeps hold of the nutrients within that crop. And then when you plant a crop in there, it slowly dies away, a natural progression to let the other crop come through. And all the nutrients are held in there, the, the roots hold on to the soil, and it's just a natural process. We've just become used to seeing bare fields, but it's, it's all changing.

Right, okay, okay, yep. So high biomass CO2 crops.

They are crops that basically produce a lot of volume. Miscanthus, we can use that for miscrete, a replacement of concrete blocks. So effectively with growing those in agroforestry, we could actually grow our own houses. What better way to lock CO2 up? Hemp gets a really bad rap because it's connected with cannabis, and that's a dirty word. But we're learning it's got a huge area of fibers for clothing, um, and also for making fabrics as well as, um, making building products. The bulrushes— bulrushes, they're being used as like the puffer parts of the coats. So these are all natural products that we can actually use, and wool Well, there's another one we seem to have forgotten more. Sheep need shearing. It doesn't matter what your beliefs are, sheep need shearing to shed their coats, and it's, it's a good way for them to lose their coat and also use the natural product. We seem to have lost our way with that.

Okay, and, and high biomass CO2 crops, are they all the reason for highlighting high biomass CO2 crops then? Is it because it's a very good way of, you know, of achieving carbon sequestration, or are there other reasons just for biodiversity in itself?

Well, done in the right way, high biomass crops can be very good, but we're in danger of carrying on with monoculture. So they need to be broken up and varied biodiversity across the farm. Is a great way to start with the use of high biomass crops in the areas that aren't productive for, um, traditional crops— wheat, barley, vegetables, etc. Um, it's a good way of increasing biodiversity within those areas as well as getting them some natural products that are always beneficial.

Okay, all right. And I think that brings us on nicely because you mentioned timber there, tree planting. So what would your tree planting cover as part of the service that you're providing?

Well, we, we back a very, um, fast-growing tree called the Paulownia. Now, if you Google Paulownia, you'll go, Richard, what on earth are you doing? But we've isolated a sterile-cloned hybrid, so this tree will grow to the size of a 40-year-old oak in 8 to 10 years. You cut it down, and very similar to chestnut, it regrows from the same stump. And we know this for about 5 years, which is the data we've got. The interesting— it's got a C4 metabolism. So rather than conventional trees, native species trees, it breathes in at night, whereas oaks, etc., breathe out in the night. And so they're not taking in the amount. So typically, a Paulownia tree, right from the day it's planted, which is typically about 30 centimeters high, it's over an average over its lifetime is taking in 63 kilos of carbon per day per tree, which is phenomenal, right?

Okay, it sounds fantastic. Why isn't everybody doing this?

This sounds too good to be true because it's got a label and of non-native. It's, um, it's been grown in China now for about 2,000 years And it has got a bad rep because it tends to spread, but that's why we've used a sterile cloned hybrid, and we've got a lot of data before we introduced it into the UK, um, to do trial work. And we, we're importing phenomenal amounts of timber from places we shouldn't be cutting it down. And if we introduce this in an agroforestry system such as we've got at Bank Farm Um, it— you can have both, and, and that's rewarding farmers. It's doubling the income from a hectare of land and doing both, offering shelter to both livestock and to crops. It's picking up all the nutrients underneath the crops that would typically be leached away, and a revenue stream and timber into the market.

Brilliant. And I was reading about Google making timber cities. So that sounds like a fantastic idea because apparently the steel and all the materials that go into making these buildings, they, you know, they obviously generate a lot of CO2. So, um, that's one way around of, you know, producing—

this is an ideal opportunity to grow our crops and also grow our timber that we require and sequester carbon all at the same time. And it doesn't hinder the traditional arable crop, because we see massive fields, small and large fields, that the hedges were taken out, which was the right thing to do at the time. I'm not going to get into that, but we can introduce these trees as biodiversity superhighways. And we, we introduce things like cob trees and walnut trees to encourage the field mice and dormice into those areas to enrich those 2-meter strips full of biodiversity, and they link from hedge to hedge. So it's, it's benefiting everybody, right?

Great. And, and this all helps towards achieving biodiversity net gain then, which I know something is, uh, so I was speaking with, um, I recorded a podcast recently about green roofs, living walls, and rain gardens. And, uh, so I have it, you know, bringing, bringing nature to, you know, an urban environment. And biodiversity net gain is obviously very important to that. There's some laws coming in whereby, you know, they need to improve biodiversity by at least 10%. Is there a link here between what you're doing and biodiversity net gain in an urban setting?

Well, I'm not sure about urban settings, only on the edge of urban settings completely, but Within an arable or a farm setting, there's always that field that backs onto a village that's not very productive. And as you said, developers need to offset a minimum of 110% of their biodiversity net gain from any development. Most councils are insisting on 130%, which is quite, quite doing some good. We work with farmers to unlock that capital, and that's all part of our mapping system. We can identify those areas because, let's face it, ecologists are very expensive, very short on time. So if we can identify the areas, the field corners that are not productive, that kind of thing, in front of the ecologists, that saves their time on the ground and enables them to take on so much more.

Right, excellent. I see, I see. And you mentioned already, I think, the UK Carbon Code of Conduct.

One way or the other, it falls very neatly into the Voluntary Carbon Code that Mark Carney was working on, which should be released later this month in order to straighten the voluntary carbon market. There's nothing validated out there. And the UK Carbon Code works on MRV protocols, so they're measured, reported, and verified, and looks at the whole— takes a holistic approach to the whole estate.

What's been the interest in your service then from the— from business, um, in terms of the carbon sequestration?

It's a slow burner, um, as, as it has been worldwide. I mean People remember Boris Johnson signed a declaration and people seem to forget this is mandatory. This is in law, irrespective of the climate emergency that we're in. We are subject to law to get things done and people seem to be lost in that. And we're just carrying on in the background, learn by doing and rewarding people that are doing the hard work. and, and businesses are starting to realize that.

What are— what laws are in place at the moment to encourage people to, you know, sequestrate their carbon?

The only company over 250 employees has to do a carbon audit so they know where they are on the carbon footprint, but there's no— nothing in law to say that they have to offset them. It's just a lot of greenwashing out there by big, big companies to say that they, they are carbon neutral. And to me, carbon neutral is not good enough. We need to be beyond zero, not just at zero, beyond it.

Yeah, brilliant. That's definitely an award-winning philosophy. We need to be net gain. Moving companies to being net gain and what exactly that means for them in terms of the investment.

They— yes, they're trying to do the right thing, but also they want to see where they're doing the right thing. There's lots of moves to move away from fossil fuels into electric cars, But also that final bit that they can't offset, they want to see a tree or take their customers to see that tree or involve their whole, um, employment, all of their employees to see what they're doing and get them involved. It's more so than that's just a commodity over there that we have to buy in. They want to get involved in it. They want to have open days there. They want to see where their bang for their buck is.

Great. I know you can buy mangroves, can't you, in the jungle somewhere, or swamp?

Well, let's sort of go back to what you said about the mangroves. Those farmers will be getting sub-$2, maybe $1 a ton for their offset, right? That's, that's not rewarding anything to change. That's just greenwashing. But how about we pay those farmers to, to do more good and democratize carbon and make, make the whole system so the farmer in Africa gets paid the same as a UK farmer for doing good. Let's, let's knock the world on the head and just say, look, instead of ripping these people off, let's just make them work together. So maybe we introduce Paulownia, the sterile clone, so they start bringing in shelter and then they can start cultivating their soil. Perhaps I'm too idealistic, I don't know.

We've got to be idealistic today, you know, that's got to be our goal, you know, that's got to be part of the North Star that we head to because we've got so far off, you know, so far off, um, our ideals, I think, and our values in the last couple of hundred years.

I mean, the last thing people want is charity. It doesn't matter whether you're at home or, or Africa or wherever. If you can do something yourself and you can democratize that carbon and grow your own food, that's got to be a win-win, not only for, for communities but for the world.

Yeah, absolutely. I don't know, just in terms of obstacles that you face on a day-to-day basis, what's your biggest frustration there?

Greenwashing. I look at some of the adverts that we see on television, um, and just think, do you know what, this is just absolute greenwashing at its worst. We need to be going out there and not being selfish about it. Let's be open book. Where a very good friend of mine put, we're in a climate emergency. You have a— your house is on fire, for example. You have a state-of-the-art hydrant that all the bells and whistles, and you have a garden hose. Which one do you use to put the fire out? Well, of course, the answer is both. So let's not just look at the bigger people in this. Every single one of us can play a part in this by their choice in buying things, by what they do in their garden. Is it essential to have an artificial lawn, or are we— do we need to start looking at what we're doing in our own gardens to make that much of a difference? And that, that to me is, is important. We always seem to blame farmers for, um, all the negative in the world, but perhaps we need to look in our own backyard once in a while.

I think it's, you know, landowners and farmers are really the key to solving this problem, aren't they?

They have a part to play. They have a part to play within this, but so does everything. You look at the, the vast swathes of, um, trees that are planted on the side of motorways and, and not looked after, and they have a huge carbon debt. So let's work a bit clever in what we're actually trying to do here. Instead of saying we've done the right thing, let's make sure we do it, not just say it.

I think, uh, your colleague was saying— Doug was saying that a lot of these trees planted on the sides of motorways, you know, a lot of them just die, you know, it's because they're not looked after.

Well, that's exactly my point. I mean, people— we've supplied the Paulownia trees to surfboard manufacturers, to furniture manufacturers, and because they've seen that tree within their lifetime, they care for it. And you manage— you get farmers to— to— that's what they do. They look after livestock, they look after crops. They get them to see the potential and the revenue of growing this crop. And they'd be on it all day long, right?

So nature-based solutions is really what we're talking about here, is that right?

Yes, totally. We, we've driven nature out of our lives so much, and it's time to bring it back, and with abundance. We, we've got to learn that having the latest phone, having the latest, um, computer or car isn't excuse me, isn't essential. We need to start looking at our lives, and that is a big frustration for me. I know we're in a cost of living crisis, and I know food is hard for some people, and, and I'm, I'm fortunate that we have enough to live. But the days of the, the cheap and cheerful food, the processed food— look at what we're doing to our bodies. We need to start looking closer to home.

Absolutely, I'm 100% with you there. That's definitely a waterloo, and the whole processed food thing is very central to waterloo as well. You know, making a nice meal at home is so rewarding, so much better for the planet, and the family enjoy it too, don't they? Nobody ever says, yeah, you died when you took the, uh, the chicken Kiev out of a box, but they might if you made a hash of it yourself. And I believe also that, um, natural carbon sequestration could meet all of our needs in terms of carbon sequestration that we need to meet the 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels?

I think we have to grab every opportunity because we're in such a mess. Doing nothing isn't an option. So I think we need to throw everything at it. The quicker we can get those 2 degrees down, the faster. And if that's by mechanically harvesting carbon out the atmosphere and putting it deep underground, then so much the better. We have more time to, to get to that stage. If we just rely on one set of sciences, then we're so slow to adopt it. And it might be 10 years before regenerative agriculture gets to be the mainstay, and that's too long, right?

Got you. And a lot of the practices that we'll see, you know, somebody visits your farm— and come on to that in a moment— whatever they— some of the things they're seeing that you're doing at your farm, they would be able to do at home for themselves in their own gardens?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, um, making compost, the compost teas. Instead of buying, um, slug pellets and fertilizers, you can make your own bear traps and and also compost with the waste, vegetables, grass, and whatnot. It's easily— anybody can do it. It's just because as a human nature, we've become lazy, right? It's easy to open a bottle, it's easy to open a can or a bag in order to apply these things rather than actually having to do something. I get a lot of satisfaction from teaching my daughter how to make compost tea and how it improves and working with the worms.

If somebody wants to visit your farm, where should they go? What's the address?

Well, we're based just south of Ashford, but if they get in contact with us, we have an open day once a week. We may be looking at a couple of times a year. Um, but also, um, we, we work with various groups to have visit— visits. We have the Tree Men of Kent coming in a, in a couple of weeks, and various other people, um, come for visits just to see what we're doing.

Brilliant. What's your website address, Richard?

It's www.re-generationearth.com.

Brilliant. And if people want to contact you directly, can they do that, or to the— best to go to the website?

Best to go through the website. I think my email address is on there, or they— the hello one. Either way, they'll come to me.

Brilliant, that's fantastic. Richard, it's been a real pleasure to have you on this podcast. Thank you very much for your time and explaining all about, you know, regenerative agriculture and what you're doing there at Regeneration Earth. It's a fantastic— you know, it's a fantastic thing that you're doing there, and, um, you know, we need more people like you doing exactly what you're doing. To help us all out of a big mess, the big mess that we're in. So once again, thanks very much, Richard.

Thank you for having me, Paul.