Regenerative Agriculture on a Small Scale | What it Looks Like

[Music] [Music] hey nerds farmer Jesse here so today we're going to discuss regenerative agriculture in the garden or in the Market Garden because I feel like this concept of regenerative agriculture is often relegated to or at least primarily associated with larger scales and and it's not always clear what it looks like on a small scale so let's go for it is that what I usually say I feel like I have a different catchphrase something about meddling kids that'll come to [Music] me okay so in order to talk about what regenerative agriculture looks like on a smaller scale we kind of have to start with what the heck regenerative agriculture is to begin with and the good news is that everyone seems to use a slightly different definition so I'm going to dig in a a little bit into the definition for a minute so if you're like me and you just want the practices you can skip to this time here for the rest of you nerds let's dive into this regenerative agriculture term for a minute uh in fact one of the more fun elements of researching this particular video was realizing that even more so than the term no till the term regenerative agriculture is just a swirling living breathing bundle of principles more than it is a single term and no two people seem to Define it exactly the same way in a nutshell regenerative means to utilize practices that promote soil health and utilize the regenerative properties of soil I. E the soil's ability to improve or repair itself but as this really fascinating 2020 review of 229 Journal articles and 25 practitioner websites discovered that can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people so that said by and large most papers and practitioners agree on what regenerative looks like reducing tillage using cover crops and crop rotations uh incorporating par meal and livestock Etc and what the outcomes are things like improving ecosystems soil health and biodiversity and carbon sequestration and so on now I should say that I do not use the term regenerative very much or very often uh to describe my own practices or the practices that we really promote here at no till Growers because well no till and living soil pretty much sums up what we talk about but like those terms regenerative agriculture looks at how soil functions and attempts to engage with the science behind it in a given context and moreover regenerative agriculture is not usually just like repackaging indigenous practices and selling them is something different like permaculture unfortunately often does uh now most people Define regenerative through a number of principles I know a lot of people have five principles my friend Helen atau follows 10 principles for what she calls managing ecological relationships which she notably outlines really well in her excellent forthcoming book The eological Farm I got an advanced copy and it's great and anyway check that out we personally role with about four principles for living soil I've talked about these principles in this series here and all over this channel but they are effectively keep the soil covered as much as possible keep it planted and planted diversely as much as possible disturb it as little as you possibly can and use a diversity of Life promoting inputs such as compost compost teas animals if you can Korean natural farming Endor Jam preparations and so on so let's go through each principle and what they each look like on our farm currently and how they relate to regenerating soil in general especially on a small scale first keep the soil covered as much as possible this principle is really about mulches and residues uh the idea here is simply to keep the soil armored against rain wind Dogma sunlight and whatever else might endanger it and I'm not going to go through every mulch because that's what this video here was for but the value of mulches cannot really be overstated especially those that the soil can consume like compost straw hay and so on organic mulches can also retain moisture and can slowly increase soil organic matter which itself will increase the water holding capacity of soil water is a key ingredient in healthy soil and plant biology thus ultimately soil regeneration uh water enables soil microbes to not only physically move and sometimes Boogie through the soil but water also allows microbes to do the work of creating enzymes enzymes are like tiny microbial keys that unlock nutrients found in rock particles and organic matter and Etc water is also essential to photosynthesis the oxygen that you and I are breathing right now was once water molecules that were split apart by a plant or some photosynthesizing microbe in the sea using photons from the Sun in literally the coolest chemical process on the planet photosynthesis they use the freaking Sun just amazing as farmers and gardeners it's our job to manage that process and keeping the soil covered is one really important path to doing so and honestly it's something that we can do much easier on a small scale than the larger regenerative a folks can effectively it's easier in some cases for us to mulch small areas than thousands of Acres so take that principle number two keep the soil planted as much as possible no Amendment no mulch no amount of Shameless begging will ever repair and replenish the soil quite like plants will the reason for this is that plants are the ecological liaison between carbon dioxide and soil organic matter that is to say plants convert the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that stuff you and I and a bunch of other macro and micro creatures breathe out in into carbonaceous things like plant roots and leaves and fruits as well as Tiny sugary cocktails that they feed the microbes through the soil called exudates microbes consume those sugary snacks and use the energy gained to make more of themselves and as they live and die and get eaten and become a part of bigger and bigger organisms and as the plants live and die and get eaten and become a part of bigger and bigger organisms more organic matter is deposited into the soil and into the environment which means more water holding capacity more habitat for microbes more nutrients and more life and diversity so yeah yeah but what does that look like in practice well first it looks like plants lots of them in the ground in the soil year round absolutely as much as possible this can be crops it can be cover crops it can be living Pathways it can be perennials it can be hedges in ecological areas but it needs to be one as diversely planted as humanly possible so not just like an acre of okra because there's no diversity there and honestly that just makes me itch thinking about it and two it needs to fit your climate if you have snow pack all winter I don't expect you to have a green growing crop in the gardens in January if you can get a cover crop down great but obviously context is everything in farming and so if you're on a very small scale and can't take space out for a cover crop I get it having a crop growing is better than nothing so just whatever you can get in the ground and one important note on the need for diversity every plant brings different qualities to the soil from the amount of biomass it produces above and below ground to the depths of its root systems to the specific microbial populations they cultivate in and around their roots and leaves even the pollinators and bugs they attract or repel are going to have an effect on the garden at large and the greater the level of diversity as it is in literally every aspect of Our Lives the more robust and healthy the soil will be so a small phow period here or there is not going to destroy your soil but try to keep the living roots in the soil absolutely as much as reasonably possible again plants feed the soil and as I will say a million times in my life and in these videos if the soil is not being fed it's feeding on [Music] [Music] itself okay thirdly that doesn't sound like a word is thirdly a word I don't think that's a word disturb the soil as a little as possible this is a principle based around the negative impacts disturbance can have on the soil especially repeated deep tillage uh the soil needs air and water to be able to amble through it with relative ease which requires tunnels built by worms or the gaps left behind by dead rotting roots or fungal Hy uh soil requires fluffy organic matter that gives the soil its water holding capacity and water shedding abilities uh soil requires soil Aggregates which are basically just balls of soil particles wrapped around organic matter that offer the soil its texture Iration nutrient storage Etc so anyway we call all this collection of physical soil attributes soil structure but it's really more like soil infrastructure all the pipes and housing and food storage and filtration the soil requires to produce healthy plants but when we Disturb This infrastructure too much uh say with regular mechanical tillage the soil cannot function properly to continue with our analogy when the infrastructure is destroyed and ripped apart and shredded uh the soil has to spend a good percentage of its energy effectively rebuilding itself with fewer residents and let's be honest those micro residents we desire are not exactly clamoring to move into a world without infrastructure oh that reminds me that apartment I offered you um it's just a pile of Bricks now some disturbances are worse than others but by and large you want to do as little disturbance as you can and increasingly minimize your disturbances over time now every context is different I say that a lot but very compacted soils may want to use a broad fork for a little while to help break up the compaction and work compost and other amendments deep into the soil and ultimately making the broadfork obsolete it's great for that uh sandier soils and drier regions may want to avoid broad forking to allow for the slow creation of soil organic matter and soil aggregation and not allow that soil to blow away again you just need to look at your soil and ask it what it needs cuz my soil is not going to need the same thing as your soil but generally speaking if you want the soil to repair itself it needs to have a good foundation I. E good reliable infrastructure so minimizing disturbances is the key to that okay uh using a diversity of Life promoting inputs is my fourth principle the thing is why it's difficult to make a living as a farmer is that the soil requires reciprocity that is when you take something from the land you have to give back to the land or the land will run out dry up stop producing almost every other business in the world including many forms of farming unfortunately are purely extracted you create a widget or you modify a widget but rarely what you're taking out of the land is being replaced by anything else in farming if you do not replace what you took the soil will become exhausted actually in every industry if you do not replace what you took from the soil the soil would become exhausted but for farming the issue is much more acute we can't just exhaust our farm and move every few years to a new one for every other business in the world they just exhaust a resource and find a new one which is ultimately depleting our planet which is super fun but in order to keep farming the same land year after year we have to get back again reciprocity we have to regenerate the oil now keeping the cost of doing that low and drawing as much fertility as possible from one's own land is really the biggest thing that farm owners have to manage in terms of balancing profitability with production uh luckily there are a lot of affordable and farm- derived options for life-promoting inputs obviously mulching and using cover crops fall into this category uh as both do a great job of feeding the soil and promoting soil life but in terms of inputs composts are arguably the funnest easiest and most full spectrum amendments as when made and used well can increase microbial biomass basically how many microbes you have in your soil uh good compost can add organic matter and nutrients they can increase water holding capacity I discussed the four different types of compost in fact in the living soil handbook which when you snag it from noil growers.

com you support these videos so when win is it always only two wins I feel like for that one it's at least four Beyond compost although I don't use it as much as I'd like activated biochar is a great Amendment or even added to your compost it of course is backed by a lot of indigenous history in the Brazilian Amazon with an increasing amount of research that helps unravel specifically why biochar is so beneficial from for long-term carbon and nutrient storage to microbial housing and so on especially in tropical or low nutrient context biochar can be amazing now there is a lot of nuance to making biochar that can affect its efficacy so explore the literature that's out there thoroughly uh if you want to make your own but maybe down the line if I get a good system for it then maybe you can get a mediocre video out of it I'm just adjusting expectations accordingly now I'm a fan of k&f or Korean natural farming sometimes just called natural farming this is a set of homemade amendments that can be largely derived from one's own property um that said although I really like the results when using k&f products and watch the videos of Chris Trump for good insight and introduction into this idea uh I don't make all that many of them anymore because they are a little too timec consuming for me at the moment I prefer instead the jadam microorganism solution which is relative to k&f and comes from these two books which is really really great everybody should own them but JMS has been an effective treatment for us to add to compost before they go into the soil or directly to the soil uh you essentially take an organic baked potato you bake it you smash it up you put in uh put it in cheesecloth or Micron bag or something and then you steep that in water with another big bag of some compost and pinch in a little bit of soil practitioners often recommend adding a pinch of forest soil but I just use garden soil from my best bed uh then you let that solution sit overnight somewhere reasonably warm where raccoons can't dig out your potatoes I had that happen once that was fun the next day it will be a little frothy and smell like a very very light seawater beer that's when you know it's ready then we mix that with compost or soak the soil with it around plants um super easy very simple to explain to our organic certifiers and adding that combo uh to our potato seedlings for instance has been the best microbial Amendment I've come across just like very clear night and day I grow less and less interested in compost teas personally only for the amount of time and energy they take but that JMS and things like compost extracts where I just squeeze the compost out of a bag in water those are my easy fast go-to microbial amendments I know someone will ask also about like micro risal inoculant and those sorts of things and besides legum inoculant which I have used in the past I don't use any lab grown microbial inoculants so like fungi bacteria any of it but I will say our friends at advancing Eco a send us a bag of this bio coat gold that I'm excited to play with um I may do some side by sides with cover crops this summer and we did coat our popcorn with it this spring so we'll see don't knock it before you rock it right that's a phrase that I have in my head all the time lastly on the life promoting inputs things is animals now a lot of the bigger regenerative a folks are using bigger livestock from cattle to sheep or goats and bison and a lot of them consider animals to be critical to regenerative agriculture which is fine for the smaller scale obviously like animals are more complicated so for us we just say the smaller the scale the smaller the animal kind of has to be or at least the fewer of the animals you have to have and so for some of us especially those of us with I don't know like an HOA or whatever animals may be entirely out of the picture which puts a greater emphasis on getting good compost to help make up for it we have been utilizing uh chickens to help scratch up our compost or clean up some of our weed seeds and plots that we used hay or to Simply fertilize a plot or you know a cover crop while it's growing now that our land has shrunk compared to our last Farm we no longer have the Sheep so we've had to scale our animal inputs down if we were much smaller than we are now which is about an acre in production maybe we'd raise quailes or rabbits or Ducks though their down feathers make them really hard to train to Electric netting and your water systems have to be pretty robust but anyway or perhaps we would simply raise chicks until they're pullet size and sell them in the spring I love what animals can do for the soil but obviously they are not always practical on a small scale so utilizing A diversity of those other life promoting inputs is the best way to replicate in animals effect on soil health either way integrating some animals in rotation not just like concentrate ated around your farm in some fashion is a great way to encourage healthy robust regenerative soil let's all go get to work uh like the video if you like the video If you're not subscribed to this channel hit the Subscribe button and if you are subscribed you're awesome pick up a hat or a copy of the living soil handbook from noil growers. com specifically to support these videos and all of our work Andor become a patron at patreon.