A Just Transition in Agriculture: Regenerative Agriculture, Wexcombe Farm, Wiltshire, UK.

welcome to wexcom farm the farm is 1500 acres or 625 hectares in size it's a mixed arable and beef farm i felt that the payments we were receiving from uh the european union were unsustainable and that we weren't going to be getting them forever and the system which we were in was not going to be financially viable so i was looking to cut costs out of our system and for me one of the one of our biggest costs was that the tillage prior to planting planting a crop and i came across a clip on youtube of someone planting winter wheat into standing mustard and the light bulb moment was that moment and realizing that there was another way a way that i could reduce the hours spent in the tractor and improve our system in 2014 we we bought a drill very similar to the drill that had been planting that wheat in that clip so we're now able to plant seeds directly into the residues left behind from the previous crop and that's where the sort of the journey began of of understanding how the soil works and how full of life a healthy soil is and how devoid of life uh an intensively farmed soil can be we used to grow wheat for two years then barley and then a break crop which would normally have been oil seed rape when we made our change one of the big things i wanted to add into our system was diversity the biggest way of adding diversity we have is the cover crops when we plant a cover crop we're planting up to 12 species at a time all together and this is putting life into the soil because all plants when they photosynthesize they exude um sugars into the soil to feed the beneficial fungi and bacteria that live around the root zone by growing the cover crop we're planting things that aren't normally planted in our soils so we're putting different sugars into the soil and feeding different microbes and adding to this diversity we're then building soil health which will benefit the crops that we then grow after that cover crop we then added in to our arable rotation grazing the cattle so rather than just keeping the cattle on the permanent pasture when we were growing cover crops we were able to move the livestock onto fields that had been just arable all the time we were reintegrating the livestock into the arable system we're also increasing the herd size of our cattle which will enable us to have more grass in our arable rotation and we're going to move the grass that we grow around the farm so in a 15-year period the whole farm will have been grass at some point with our grazing system um we're as we're mimicking nature by moving them regularly and keeping them mobbed up this has had a number of benefits we now use no artificial fertilizers on our pasture we still get a very similar grass growth to that which we had before when we were using fertilizers the thing we've really noticed because they move every day we don't have to use wormers we test them manure out in the field we take samples and we have them sent off and analyzed and we don't have problems with stomachworms in the livestock anymore and i'm sure it's because we're moving them every day they don't come in contact with too much manure that is lying on the ground in the summertime we move animals daily and we don't come back to the same bit of pasture for about 60 days so that gives a lovely long rest period for the grass to recover it will grasses go through their whole life cycle in that in that short space of time we then graze it and then leave it to go through its life cycle again and get through to a point where it's starting to put a seed head up before the cows come in and graze it because we don't use any wormers or any insecticides on the farm anymore we're finding that the dung beetle is very evident following the cows around any one dungpat will have hundreds of little holes in it where the dung beetles are going in and out and they're breaking down that manure in the field and putting it into the soil where it's then utilized by the microbiology and the plants themselves our lovely friends behind us do produce methane however methane breaks down in the atmosphere in about 12 years so if a herd of beef cattle remains the same size over 12 years they're not actually putting any extra methane into the atmosphere it is just cycling add into that when the soil is healthy there are bacteria that live in the soil called methanotropes which break down methane as it hits the soil so an animal dung out on a healthy pasture much of that methane will be broken down in the field before it even gets into the atmosphere that's very different from livestock that are housed and they're manure stored releasing methane to the atmosphere with the no-till system we're disturbing the soil less so we're encouraging less weed seeds to germinate which means we can reduce the amount of herbicide we use but there is a point in the system where we do need a broad spectrum herbicide at the moment for us in in england and across the eu the only real broad spectrum herbicide available to us is glyphosate now i know there are many who see glyphosate as a problem and it is certainly detrimental to soil health but [Music] i feel it is less detrimental to soil health than heavy tillage would be since we've changed what we do we've reduced the fertilizer bill on our farm significantly we haven't used any artificial phosphates or potash on our farm for six years now and with nitrogen fertilizer we've significantly reduced the amount that we use i believe that as we've increased the amount of legumes in the system and the cover crops and improve the soil health there is more available nutrient for the plant and we don't need to put it on in the expensive bagged form that we always used to as well as reducing herbicides and reducing fertilizers we have completely cut out all insecticidal use so there are no no insecticides on seed dressings we don't dress our seed anymore we always used to use seeds with a fungicide and often an insecticide all coated onto the outside of the seed before we planted it we cut that out three years ago and we've seen no detrimental effects to our yields as a result of that in moving to the no-till on the arable side one of our biggest savings has been diesel we have cut diesel usage by just over 40 since we made the change this is really down to not cultivating with our combine harvester we no longer take all the straw through the combine because we want to leave the straw in the field we now use a different header on the front of the combine to just remove the ear of the corn and leave the straw standing so this means that the combine's taking less material through it and therefore needs less power to run we're holding on to our soil we're not seeing soil moving out of the field we're holding on and building the carbon in our soil keeping the soil covered over the winter has had a knock-on effect the cover crops that we grow through the winter to protect the soil and to feed the soil are acting as a reservoir for wildlife where in the past we'd have had either bare soil or just empty stubbles through the winter we now have a living cover crop often sort of waist high which is providing shelter and food for endless wildlife from brown hares to voles and moles and [Music] little field mice all all increasing and on the back of that we're seeing more kestrels more barn owls red kites buzzards in the summertime we're seeing more butterflies lots more songbirds in our hedgerows these days than we were seeing 10 years ago in reducing the nitrogen fertilizers we're reducing the carbon footprint of this farm significantly the production of nitrogen fertilizers is very energy intensive and on top of that nitrogen fertilizer on the soil gives energy to the bacteria in the soil to burn off carbon in using nitrogen fertilizers we're not only burning fossil fuels to produce them we're also burning carbon out of our soils by not tilling the soil we're not oxidizing the carbon that we have in our soil we're holding it in the soil and that's also reducing the carbon footprint of our soil by increasing the sequestration of the carbon in the soil my plans for the future are to continue adding diversity to our system we'd like to follow the cows with some pasture-raised chickens which will pick over the dung taking out the maggots that might be growing in the in the dung behind the cattle we also have plans to plant a lot more hedges and trees in amongst our fields so we want to create some alleyways within the field where we can still farm the field in an arable or a grazing situation but we'd have rows of trees to break it up and give shelter for the cattle when they're grazing but also protection for the soil and more diversity in that soil we also want to open up some of our woodland and allow the livestock to move through that as well and one of the other things we might do is uh is moving to having a few pigs to also go through the woodland we want to look at getting closer to our to our marketplace so we're looking to work with local butchers so that we can sell our our meat direct to butchers or possibly even direct to the consumer um through a website in 1940 on this acreage we would probably have been employing in the region of 30 staff full-time today we employ two full-time staff that has come about due to mechanization and simplification of systems we're trying to move back to a more complex system involving more diversity and that will probably lead to more employment on the land nature never simplifies it's always complex and if we want to work with nature we have to work towards that complexity and add more diversity to our systems for much of my farming time yield has been king and sometimes we've chased that yield at the expense of profitability that is where i think farming needs to really concentrate hard on how we get that margin there not how we just chase chase the best yield you

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Length: 17min 6sec (1026 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 09 2020