Overview
Regenerational Farming means using techniques that are known to restore life to the soil. Richer soil means better yields.
Before Modern Farming
Historically, farmers had to rely on sunshine, rain, and hard work to produce crops. Inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides simply didn’t exist or weren’t viable.
In Europe, farmers relied on rotating crops. Each year they would plant a different crop in each field, including running animals on it and leaving it fallow. They knew that by switching out the crops and bringing in animals from time to time, and just letting the land rest, they could increase yields and actually create more soil.
Throughout the world, farmers discovered different practices all aimed at the same thing: Creating fertile soil that could sustain harvests year after year. Farmers worked not just for one year’s harvest, but so that their great-grandchildren could enjoy future harvests as well.
Modern Farming is Killing Our Soil
In the modern age, with cheap chemicals and the mechanization of the farms, fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides became available. In a rush to take advantage of this new technology, we sprayed our fields with poisons anticipating better yields than ever before. At first these paid off, but over time farmers realized that this wasn’t sustainable.
All of these products are literal poisons, designed to kill one thing or another. In the case of fertilizers, these are often dangerous chemicals that are known to poison the soil if applied in too great a quantity, leaving behind dead soil.
Despite our caution and scientific practices, the end result was inevitable. Modern farms have soil that is practically dead, incapable of growing crops without copious inputs, inputs which are getting more and more expensive every year. Instead of solving the problem and making agriculture more sustainable, it made things worse.
Regenerational Techniques are Being Rediscovered and Invented
Regenerational agriculture techniques bring life back to the soil, and end our dependence on fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides to grow our food. Not only does this improve the bottom line, making farming profitable again, but it increases the output over time.
The central focus of regenerational agriculture is the soil. We seek to understand the natural processes that already exist to create living soil. We avoid practices that injure the soil, and apply practices that improve it over time.
Healthy Food Again
Food grown with living soil has a higher nutrient density. Animals foraging on living pastures are healthier. The products from these animals are also incredibly healthy. People who eat crops and animals grown on regenerational farms are showing signs of improved nutrition and health.
Our ancestors understood the connection between soil, plants, animals, and humans. They knew that they couldn’t understand everything that was happening, but important things were happening.
Modern farming techniques tried to disassociate these things, taking complex systems and reducing them to simple systems that just aren’t sufficient and don’t produce healthy products.
Regenerational farmers understand that although we understand a lot more than our grandparents did about soil, nutrition, and health, we simply can’t understand everything and it is best to let nature do her thing, and simply try to augment or increase her natural processes.
Ruminants are the Key
Ruminants, such as cattle, goats and sheep, have a unique digestion system and grazing habits that make them ideally suited to increase soil fertility, especially when combined with rotational grazing.
Ruminants eat grass and other forages that we cannot eat. These plants are critical to restoring soil health. Ruminants also deposit manure in the very place where they are grazing. This manure is just as important to soil health.
Keeping ruminants in one spot for too long causes all sorts of problems. Not only does it kill the vegetation due to overgrazing, but manure can build up and poison the soil. Animals also get sick when they eat their own manure, or graze too early on pasture that they visited. Thus, it is important to keep the animals moving.
Through experimentation and practice, rotational grazing techniques have advanced to the point where we can maximize the benefits with minimal effort. A little know-how and experience can go a long way. Most importantly, farmers who use rotational grazing techniques must pay close attention to their soil health and the biology that is developing.
The Nutrient Cycle
You might have heard of nitrogen as a super-vitamin that makes plants grow strong. This is only partially true. While nitrogen and other elements are critical to all life on planet earth, it is equally important that we not interfere with the natural cycles. In the case of nitrogen, too much nitrogen can actually poison the soil and weaken the plants. This is because nitrogen stimulates some processes while inhibiting other processes. That’s why we have bigger and more colorful plants in the grocery store, but their nutrient value is diminishing.
If the soil is healthy, then nature has already provided all of the needed nutrients in a form that the plants can use. In fact, plants can stimulate the soil to render necessary vitamins when they are needed, in the correct quantities.
All of the nutrient cycles, from water, to carbon, to nitrogen, to phosphorus and everything else, are better managed by nature than by man. We have a crude understanding of how plants grow, but Nature has been doing this for far longer than we have.
Regeneration
We are not just interested in regenerating soil to improve yields and outputs while minimizing inputs, we are also noticing that as the soil health returns and expands, so do other natural systems. We notice more wildlife in our fields. We notice a variety of plants, especially native plants that we thought were once disappeared.
Nature has a unique ability to heal herself. We intend to see it through, and if possible, make it healthier than it has ever been. We hope that in the future we will be able to graze more animals, grow more food, and see an improvement in the surrounding environment.
We are not here to interfere, but to assist and learn from natural processes.